YCLOAK

International business groups are urging Hong Kong to restart international flights after a ratings group warned the travel restrictions, imposed last week because of COVID-19 outbreaks, could have dire effects on the territory’s economy.

Fitch Ratings said, “A new wave of restrictions on various social activities within Hong Kong and a further tightening of controls on international travel … are likely to dampen economic growth prospects.”

Some Hong Kong executives who traveled out of the territory for the winter holidays found that they could not return to Hong Kong because of the new restrictions that are designed to be in place for at least two weeks but may last longer. Fitch said, “We believe the tightening of restrictions on international arrivals will create further obstacles to the territory’s ability to serve as a regional headquarters” for foreign multinational companies.

The Cyprus Mail reports that a University of Cyprus scientist and his team have discovered a new COVID variant. Dr. Leontios Kostrikis told the publication that deltacron has the genetic background of the delta variant and some of the mutations of omicron.

“The frequency of the mutations was higher among those in hospital which could mean there is a correlation between deltacron and hospitalizations,” Kostrikis told the Mail.

Australia’s New South Wales state reported 16 deaths from COVID-19 on Sunday, its deadliest day in the two-year pandemic. The state, Australia’s most populous, already has 200,000 people in isolation, and reported more than 30,000 new cases.

On Sunday, New South Wales Health issued a statement allowing essential workers to return to work if they do not have any symptoms, if their employer says they are needed. They must wear a mask and pass a daily rapid antigen test. Some employers are reporting as many as half their workers are staying home because they have had contact with an infected person.

Victoria, Australia’s second-largest state, reported more than 44,000 new cases and four deaths, Reuters reported. The entire country will surpass 1 million infections sometime Sunday, according to the Australia Broadcasting Corp.

Saturday, more than 100,000 people took to the streets across France to protest proposed new restrictions that will require proof of vaccination to eat out, travel on intercity trains or go to a cultural event. The turnout was four times the government’s estimate of 25,000 protesters who marched on Dec. 18, Agence France-Presse reported.

Protesters also marched in several German cities Saturday, demanding a halt to restrictions on those who have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus. The main demonstrations occurred in Duesseldorf, Frankfurt and Magdeburg.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Friday that proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test will now be required to enter bars and restaurants in the country. Currently, proof of vaccination is required to enter many public venues.

Protests of government coronavirus restrictions also took place Saturday in Turin, Italy, and Beirut.

Global surge

The United Kingdom’s death toll from COVID-19 since the pandemic began topped 150,000 on Saturday, more deaths than any other European country except Russia. Britain reported a record of 146,390 new cases on Saturday.

“Coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on our country and today the number of deaths recorded has reached 150,000,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement. “Our way out of this pandemic is for everyone to get their booster or their first or second dose if they haven’t yet.”

India’s capital, New Delhi, was shut down Saturday to halt the spread of the coronavirus, after a nearly fourfold nationwide spike in infections in the last week alone. Most shops were closed, but some essential services remained open.

More than 140,000 new cases across the country were reported Saturday, the most since the end of May, the health ministry said. It also reported more than 280 new deaths, for a total of nearly 484,000 since the pandemic began.

The surge in infections in India is fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant as political rallies attended by tens of thousands of people continue to be held by candidates before state elections are held later this year.

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

 
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The European Union is under increasing pressure to further ease rules on airport take-off and landing slots to cut the number of “ghost flights” airlines are running to retain them.

Carriers say the requirement for them to use 50% of their slots — down from 80% in pre-pandemic days — or lose them is forcing them to operate empty or half-empty flights.

A sluggish return to air travel, as travelers shrink away from the omicron COVID variant and quickly changing rules for passengers, is dragging out the practice longer than they planned.

Belgium’s Brussels Airlines, for instance, says it will have to operate 3,000 under-capacity flights up to the end of March.

Its parent company Lufthansa warned last month it expected it would have to run 18,000 “pointless flights” over the European winter.

Belgium’s transport minister, Georges Gilkinet, has written to the European Commission urging it to loosen the slot rules, arguing the consequences run counter to the EU’s carbon-neutral ambitions.

The current reduced quotas were introduced in March last year in a nod to the hardship airlines faced as COVID washed over Europe for a second year running, shriveling passenger numbers.

In December, the commission said the 50% threshold would be raised to 64% for this year’s April-to-November summer flight season.

“Despite our urgings for more flexibility at the time, the EU approved a 50%-use rule for every flight schedule/frequency held for the winter. This has clearly been unrealistic in the EU this winter against the backdrop of the current crisis,” a spokesperson for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) told AFP.

He said the commission needed to show more “flexibility … given the significant drop in passengers and impact of omicron numbers on crewing planned schedules.”

But a commission spokesperson on Wednesday said the EU executive believed “the overall reduced consumer demand… is already reflected in a much-reduced rate of 50% compared to the usual 80%-use rate rule.”

The spokesperson, Daniel Ferrie, said: “The Commission expects that operated flights follow consumer demand and offer much needed continued air connectivity to citizens.” 

 
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Ambulances in Kansas speed toward hospitals then suddenly change direction because hospitals are full. Employee shortages in New York City cause delays in trash and subway services and diminish the ranks of firefighters and emergency workers. Airport officials shut down security checkpoints at the biggest terminal in Phoenix, and schools across the nation struggle to find teachers for their classrooms.

The current explosion of omicron-fueled coronavirus infections in the U.S. is causing a breakdown in basic functions and services — the latest illustration of how COVID-19 keeps upending life more than two years into the pandemic.

“This really does, I think, remind everyone of when COVID-19 first appeared and there were such major disruptions across every part of our normal life,” said Tom Cotter, director of emergency response and preparedness at the global health nonprofit Project HOPE. “And the unfortunate reality is, there’s no way of predicting what will happen next until we get our vaccination numbers — globally — up.”

First responders, hospitals, schools and government agencies have employed an all-hands-on-deck approach to keep the public safe, but they are worried how much longer they can keep it up.

In Kansas’ Johnson County, paramedics are working 80 hours a week. Ambulances have frequently been forced to alter course when the hospitals they’re heading to tell them they’re too overwhelmed to help, confusing the patients’ already anxious family members driving behind them. When the ambulances arrive at hospitals, some of their emergency patients end up in waiting rooms because there are no beds.

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer for the University of Kansas Hospital, said when the leader of a rural hospital had no place to send its dialysis patients this week, the hospital’s staff consulted a textbook and “tried to put in some catheters and figure out how to do it.”

Medical facilities have been hit by a “double whammy,” he said. The number of COVID-19 patients at the University of Kansas Hospital rose from 40 on Dec. 1 to 139 on Friday. At the same time, more than 900 employees have been sickened with COVID-19 or are awaiting test results — 7% of the hospital’s 13,500-person workforce.

“What my hope is and what we’re going to cross our fingers around is that as it peaks … maybe it’ll have the same rapid fall we saw in South Africa,” Stites said, referring to the swiftness with which the number of cases fell in that country. “We don’t know that. That’s just hope.”

The omicron variant spreads even more easily than other coronavirus strains and has already become dominant in many countries. It also more readily infects those who have been vaccinated or had previously been infected by prior versions of the virus.

However, early studies show omicron is less likely to cause severe illness than the previous delta variant, and vaccination and a booster still offer strong protection from serious illness, hospitalization and death.

Still, omicron’s easy transmissibility has led to skyrocketing cases in the U.S., which is affecting businesses, government offices and public services alike.

In downtown Boise, Idaho, customers were queued up outside a pharmacy before it opened Friday morning and before long, the line wound throughout the large drugstore.

Pharmacies have been slammed by staffing shortages, either because employees are out sick or have left altogether.

Pharmacy technician Anecia Mascorro said that prior to the pandemic, the Sav-On Pharmacy where she works always had prescriptions ready for the next day. Now, it’s taking a lot longer to fill the hundreds of orders that are pouring in.

“The demand is crazy — everybody’s not getting their scripts fast enough, so they keep transferring to us,” Mascorro said.

In Los Angeles, more than 800 police and fire personnel were sidelined because of the virus as of Thursday, causing slightly longer ambulance and fire response times.

In New York City, officials have had to delay or scale back trash and subway services because of a virus-fueled staffing hemorrhage. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said about one-fifth of subway operators and conductors — 1,300 people — have been absent in recent days. Almost one-fourth of the city sanitation department’s workers were out sick Thursday, Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson said.

“Everybody’s working ’round the clock, 12-hour shifts,” Grayson said.

The city’s fire department also has adjusted for higher absences. Officials said Thursday that 28% of EMS workers were out sick, compared with about 8% to 10% on a normal day. Twice as many firefighters as usual were also absent.

In contrast, the police department saw its sick rate fall over the past week, officials said.

At Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, two checkpoints at the airport’s busiest terminal were shut down because not enough Transportation Security Administration agents showed up for work, according to statements from airport and TSA officials.

Meanwhile, schools from coast to coast tried to maintain in-person instruction despite massive teacher absences. In Chicago, a tense standoff between the school district and teachers union over remote learning and COVID-19 safety protocols led to classes being canceled over the past three days. In San Francisco, nearly 900 educators and aides called in sick Thursday.

In Hawaii, where public schools are under one statewide district, 1,600 teachers and staff were absent Wednesday because of illness or pre-arranged vacation or leave. The state’s teachers union criticized education officials for not better preparing for the ensuing void. Osa Tui Jr., head of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, said counselors and security guards were being pulled to go “babysit a classroom.”

“That is very inappropriate,” Tui said at a news conference. “To have this model where there are so many teachers out and for the department to say, ‘Send your kid’ to a classroom that doesn’t have a teacher, what’s the point of that?”

In New Haven, Connecticut, where hundreds of teachers have been out each day this week, administrators have helped to cover classrooms. Some teachers say they appreciate that, but that it can be confusing for students, adding to the physical and mental stress they’re already feeling because of the pandemic.

“We’ve already been tested so much. How much can the rubber band stretch here?” asked Leslie Blatteau, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers. 

 
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NASA’s new space telescope opened its huge, gold-plated, flower-shaped mirror Saturday, the final step in the observatory’s dramatic unfurling.  

The last portion of the 6.5-meter (21-foot) mirror swung into place at flight controllers’ command, completing the unfolding of the James Webb Space Telescope.

“I’m emotional about it. What an amazing milestone. We see that beautiful pattern out there in the sky now,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, chief of NASA’s science missions.

More powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, the $10 billion Webb will scan the cosmos for light streaming from the first stars and galaxies formed 13.7 billion years ago. To accomplish this, NASA had to outfit Webb with the largest and most sensitive mirror ever launched—its “golden eye,” as scientists call it.

Webb is so big that it had to be folded origami-style to fit in the rocket that soared from South America two weeks ago. The riskiest operation occurred earlier in the week, when the tennis court-size sunshield unfurled, providing subzero shade for the mirror and infrared detectors.  

Flight controllers in Baltimore began opening the primary mirror Friday, unfolding the left side like a drop-leaf table. The mood was even more upbeat Saturday, with peppy music filling the control room as the right side snapped into place. After applauding, the controllers immediately got back to work, latching everything down. They jumped to their feet and cheered when the operation was finally complete two hours later.

“We have a deployed telescope in orbit, a magnificent telescope the likes of which the world has never seen,” Zurbuchen said, congratulating the team. “So how does it feel to make history, everybody? You just did it.”

His counterpart at the European Space Agency, astronomer Antonella Nota, noted that after years of preparation, the team made everything look “so amazingly easy.”

“This is the moment we have been waiting for, for so long,” she said.

Webb’s main mirror is made of beryllium, a lightweight yet sturdy and cold-resistant metal. Each of its 18 segments is coated with an ultra-thin layer of gold, highly reflective of infrared light. The hexagonal, coffee-table-size segments must be adjusted in the days and weeks ahead so they can focus as one on stars, galaxies and alien worlds that might hold atmospheric signs of life.  

Webb should reach its destination 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away in another two weeks; it’s already more than 667,000 miles (1 million kilometers) from Earth since its Christmas Day launch. If all continues to go well, science observations will begin this summer. Astronomers hope to peer back to within 100 million years of the universe-forming Big Bang, closer than Hubble has achieved.
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Novak Djokovic’s legal challenge to the Australian government’s decision to cancel his visa on arrival this week says a certified COVID-19 infection in December meant he qualified for a medical exemption to the county’s vaccination requirements.

A 35-page document lodged in the Federal Circuit and Family Court by his legal team Saturday outlines the Serbian’s case for challenging the visa cancellation which would prevent him from playing in the Australian Open. The challenge will be heard in court on Monday morning.

The tennis world No. 1 has been held in immigration detention in a hotel in Melbourne since Thursday morning after border officials rejected his claim for a medical exemption.

The filing shows Djokovic said he had received a letter from Tennis Australia’s Chief Medical Officer on Dec. 30 stating he had a medical exemption from vaccination on the basis that he had recently recovered from a COVID infection.

The documents show he had tested positive for COVID on Dec. 16, and by Dec. 30 had been free of symptoms or fever in the previous 72 hours.

The application said he had a valid visa to travel and also received an assessment from the Department of Home Affairs stating, “responses indicate(d) that (he met) the requirements for a quarantine-free arrival into Australia where permitted by the jurisdiction of your arrival,” with Victoria the nominated jurisdiction.

The legal documents state that early Thursday morning, after being informed at Melbourne Airport his visa would be rescinded, a confused Djokovic pleaded to be given time to be able to contact Tennis Australia and his agent.

But he said he was “pressured” by authorities to agree to an interview shortly after 6 a.m., despite accepting an earlier offer than he could rest until 8:30 a.m. and saying he “wanted some help and legal support and advice from representatives,” who were still sleeping at the early hour.

Challenged cancellation

The application says Djokovic challenged an official at the airport when told a recent COVID-19 infection was not considered a substitute for a vaccination in Australia.

“That’s not true, and I told him what the Independent State Government medical panel had said and I explained why. I then referred to the two medical panels and the Travel Declaration,” the legal filing quotes the Serbian as saying.

“I explained that I had been recently infected with COVID in December 2021 and, on this basis, I was entitled to a medical exemption in accordance with Australian Government rules and guidance.”

He said he had provided his medical evidence to Tennis Australia for its two-stage independent assessment process, had made his travel declarations correctly and satisfied all requirements to legally enter Australia on his approved visa.

Among the arguments lawyers for the Serbian superstar raised was a section from the Australian Immunization Register which states a person can apply for a temporary vaccine exemption due to a recent “acute major medical illness.”

Djokovic’s legal team said that, among a series of what it says are jurisdictional errors, a delegate for the minister for home affairs did not have “a skerrick of evidence,” using an Australian term for a tiny amount, to suggest the 20-time major champion’s recent infection did not constitute a contraindication.

Tennis Australia’s chief medical officer, Dr. Carolyn Broderick, was one of three medical practitioners on a panel that approved an exemption consistent with guidelines outlined by Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization, the filing says.

The document says the first decision was then assessed by a second independent medical panel set up by the Victorian state government, consistent with the process that has been outlined publicly by Tennis Australia. 

 
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The top men’s tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, spent Orthodox Christmas in an immigration detention hotel in Australia on Friday as he sought to fend off deportation over the country’s COVID-19 rules and compete in the Australian Open.

Djokovic received calls from his native Serbia, including from his parents and the president, who hoped to boost his spirits on the holiday.

On Instagram, he posted: “Thank you to the people around the world for your continuous support. I can feel it and it is greatly appreciated.”

The 34-year-old athlete and vaccine skeptic was barred from entering the country late Wednesday when federal border authorities at the Melbourne airport rejected his medical exemption to Australia’s strict COVID-19 vaccination requirements.

He has been confined to the detention hotel in Melbourne pending a court hearing on Monday, a week before the start of the tournament, where he is seeking to win his record-breaking 21st Grand Slam singles title.

During the day, Djokovic’s supporters, waving banners, gathered outside the Park Hotel, used to house refugees and asylum-seekers.

A priest from the Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church in Melbourne asked to visit the nine-time Australian Open champion to celebrate Orthodox Christmas but was turned down by immigration officials because the hotel is under lockdown.

“Our Christmas is rich in many customs, and it is so important that a priest visits him,” the church’s dean, Milorad Locard, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “The whole thing around this event is appalling. That he has to spend Christmas in detention … it is unthinkable.”

The Australian Border Force said Friday that after further investigations into two other people connected to the Australian Open, one voluntarily left the country, and another was taken into detention pending deportation.

The Czech Embassy identified one of them as 38-year-old doubles player Renata Voráčová and said she won’t play in the tournament.

Australia’s COVID-19 rules say incoming travelers must have had two shots of an approved vaccine or must have an exemption with a genuine medical reason, such as an acute condition, to avoid quarantine. All players, staff, officials and fans need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter the tournament venue.

Djokovic flew to Australia after obtaining a medical exemption backed by the country’s tennis federation and approved by the Victoria state government. The grounds for the exemption have not been disclosed. But the Australian government pronounced it invalid when he arrived.

The dispute has become a touchy topic in a city where residents spent 256 days in 2020-21 under severe restrictions on their movement. Djokovic’s exemption stirred allegations that the star athlete got special treatment.

While some players have sympathized with his situation, others have said getting vaccinated would have prevented any drama.

But amid the latest turn in the dispute, even some who have been critical of Djokovic in the past are now seemingly in his corner.

“Look, I definitely believe in taking action, I got vaccinated because of others and for my mum’s health, but how we are handling Novak’s situation is bad, really bad,” Nick Kyrgios, an Australian player and outspoken critic of some of Djokovic’s opinions on vaccinations, posted on Twitter. “This is one of our great champions but at the end of the day, he is human. Do better.”

Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley said earlier this week that 26 people connected with the tournament applied for medical exemptions and only a “handful” were granted. Three of those have since been challenged. 
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The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled Friday to hear oral arguments against two of President Joe Biden’s administration’s COVID-19 vaccine policies issued by government agencies to combat the deadly coronavirus.

The policies “are critical to our nation’s COVID-19 response,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

The mandates coming under review were issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The OSHA policy requires employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are either fully vaccinated or tested weekly. The CMS mandate for workers at health care facilities accepting federal Medicare and Medicaid funds requires workers to be fully vaccinated, with exemptions, including for sincerely held religious beliefs.

Republican-led states and an alliance of business and religious groups are challenging the policies’ broad sweep and the effects the mandates are having on companies and workers.

The policies have, however, been endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association and a number of former federal health officials.

The challenge is being presented before the Supreme Court after a number of lower courts issued differing opinions on the policies.

COVID-19 has infected millions of people in the U.S. and killed more than 800,000.
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Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, six former health advisers for U.S. President Joe Biden are urging a different approach to fighting it.

Writing Thursday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the advisers wrote three articles urging Americans to learn to live with the virus in a “new normal” as opposed to trying to eradicate it.

“Without a strategic plan for the ‘new normal’ with endemic COVID-19, more people in the U.S. will unnecessarily experience morbidity and mortality, health inequities will widen, and trillions will be lost from the U.S. economy,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Michael Osterholm and Dr. Celine Gounder, who served on Biden’s transition COVID-19 advisory board in 2020, wrote in one of the articles.

The former officials called for building a “modern data infrastructure” and more public health workers, including school nurses, among other things.

“Two years into the pandemic, the U.S. is still heavily reliant on data from Israel and the U.K. for assessing the effectiveness and durability of COVID-19 vaccines and rate of vaccine breakthrough infections,” they wrote.

They called for better access to cheap and rapid testing, as well as more monitoring of air and wastewater to get ahead of potential outbreaks.

They also called for vaccine mandates and the development of variant-specific vaccines.

Moreover, they called for a rebuilding of trust in the nation’s public health institutions, calling the initial response to the pandemic “seriously flawed.”

The three officials wrote that rather than living in “a perpetual state of emergency,” the public should live with the virus by reducing peak outbreaks, and they called for “humility” in dealing with a persistent and evolving virus.

Booster eligibility

In other U.S. pandemic news, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded COVID-19 booster shot eligibility for some adolescents to combat the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus. The move came as the agency faces criticism over messaging confusion on how to cope with infections.

In a statement late Wednesday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky urged young people ages 12 and older to get COVID-19 boosters as soon as they’re eligible. Boosters were previously encouraged for people in the United States who were 16 and older.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the sole option for children in the U.S. The CDC estimates that slightly more than half of 12-to-17-year-olds — 13.5 million people — have received two Pfizer shots. Boosters were first made available to 16- and 17-year-olds in December.

Wednesday’s decision made about 5 million younger adolescents who received their last shots in 2021 immediately eligible for boosters.

“This booster dose will provide optimized protection against COVID-19 and the omicron variant,” Walensky said in the statement. “I encourage all parents to keep their children up to date with CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.”

Although children tend to not become as seriously ill from COVID-19 as adults, the omicron variant is fueling hospitalizations among children, most of whom are unvaccinated.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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A team of scientists is sailing to “the place in the world that’s the hardest to get to” so they can better figure out how much and how fast seas will rise because of global warming eating away at Antarctica’s ice. 

Thirty-two scientists on Thursday are starting a more than two-month mission aboard an American research ship to investigate the crucial area where the massive but melting Thwaites glacier faces the Amundsen Sea and may eventually lose large amounts of ice because of warm water. The Florida-sized glacier has gotten the nickname the “doomsday glacier” because of how much ice it has and how much seas could rise if it all melts — more than two feet (65 centimeters) over hundreds of years. 

Because of its importance, the United States and the United Kingdom are in the midst of a joint $50 million mission to study Thwaites, the widest glacier in the world by land and sea. Not near any of the continent’s research stations, Thwaites is on Antarctica’s western half, east of the jutting Antarctic Peninsula, which used to be the area scientists worried most about. 

“Thwaites is the main reason I would say that we have so large an uncertainty in the projections of future sea level rise, and that is because it’s a very remote area, difficult to reach,” Anna Wahlin, an oceanographer from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said Wednesday in an interview from the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, which was scheduled to leave its port in Chile hours later. “It is configured in a way so that it’s potentially unstable. And that is why we are worried about this.” 

Thwaites is putting about 50 billion tons of ice into the water a year. The British Antarctic Survey says the glacier is responsible for 4% of global sea rise, and the conditions leading to it losing more ice are accelerating, University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos said from the McMurdo land station last month. 

Oregon State University ice scientist Erin Pettit said Thwaites appears to be collapsing in three ways: 

— Ocean water is melting it from below.

— The land part of the glacier “is losing its grip” on the place it attaches to the seabed, so a large chunk can come off into the ocean and later melt.

— The glacier’s ice shelf, like a damaged car windshield, is acquiring hundreds of fractures. This is what Pettit said she feared would be the most troublesome, with 6-mile (10-kilometer) cracks forming in just a year. 

No one has stepped foot on the key ice-water interface at Thwaites before. In 2019, Wahlin was on a team that explored the area from a ship using a robotic ship but never went ashore. 

Wahlin’s team will use two robot ships — her own large one called Ran, which she used in 2019, and the more agile Boaty McBoatface, the crowdsource-named drone that could go further under the area of Thwaites that protrudes over the ocean — to get under Thwaites. 

The shipbound scientists will be measuring water temperature, the sea floor and ice thickness. They’ll look at cracks in the ice and how the ice is structured and tag seals on islands off the glacier. 

Thwaites “looks different from other ice shelves,” Wahlin said. “It almost looks like a jumble of icebergs that have been pressed together. So it’s increasingly clear that this is not a solid piece of ice like the other ice shelves are — nice smooth, solid ice. This was much more jagged and scarred.” 

 
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After launching its next-generation space telescope, NASA scientists mark major milestones in its progress.  Plus, a new spaceplane arrives at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.

Camera: YouTube NASA/ REUTERS/ SIERRA SPACE 
Produced by: Arash Arabasadi
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World tennis No.1 Novak Djokovic has had his visa canceled by Australian authorities and is facing deportation. He had received a COVID-19 vaccination exemption to defend his title at the Australian Open but has reportedly failed to provide proper evidence to border officials.

The Serbian is the defending Australian Open champion, and a nine-time winner of the event, but the government said Thursday he’s no longer welcome.

He was detained at Melbourne airport Wednesday for several hours before border force officials announced that he had not met immigration regulations and would be deported.

Djokovic’s father had claimed his son was being held “captive.”

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic said he was a victim of “harassment.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is standing firm, though.

“On the issue of Mr. Djokovic, rules are rules and there are no special cases,” Morrison said. “That is the policy of the government, and it has been our government’s strong border protection policies and particularly in relation to the pandemic that has ensured that Australia has had one of the lowest death rates from COVID anywhere in the world. Entry with a visa requires double vaccination or a medical exemption. I am advised that such an exemption was not in place and as a result he is subject to the same rule as anyone else.”

With his visa revoked, Djokovic is now an “unlawful non-citizen” in Australia and is being held in immigration detention, where his movements are restricted after he was driven from Melbourne airport by government officials. It is also unclear whether Djokovic is allowed to communicate with his advisers, which is standard practice according to Australian law.

His lawyers are challenging the deportation order in Australia’s Federal Circuit Court.

The 34-year-old tennis star has not publicly confirmed his COVID-19 vaccination status.

He flew to Australia after being granted a controversial medical exemption. Tennis authorities said he had not received any special treatment, but many Australians, who have lived under some of the world’s toughest coronavirus restrictions, believed Djokovic had abused the system.

Australia’s states and territories Thursday reported more than 70,000 new COVID-19 cases. A total of 612,000 infections have been diagnosed in Australia since the pandemic began, according to official figures, 2,289 people have died.

More than 90% of the eligible population have been fully vaccinated.

To curb the spread of the virus, the Northern Territory imposed lockdown restrictions Thursday on unvaccinated residents, who must adhere to stay-home orders until next Monday. 

 
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The World Health Organization says a new coronavirus variant recently detected in France is nothing to be concerned about right now.

Scientists at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Foundation in the city of Marseille say they discovered the new B.1.640.2 variant in December in 12 patients living near Marseille, with the first patient testing positive after traveling to the central African nation of Cameroon.

The researchers said they have identified 46 mutations in the new variant, which they labeled “IHU” after the institute, that could make it more resistant to vaccines and more infectious than the original coronavirus.  The French team revealed the findings of a study in the online health sciences outlet medRxiv, which publishes studies that have not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.

Abdi Mahmud, a COVID-19 incident manager with the World Health Organization, told reporters in Geneva earlier this week that, while the IHU variant is “on our radar,” it remains confined in Marseille and has not been labeled a “variant of concern” by the U.N. health agency.

Meanwhile, an international team of health care advocates and experts is calling for 22 billion doses of mRNA vaccine to be administered around the world this year to stop the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant.  The team is urging the production of an additional 15 billion doses of mRNA vaccine, more than double the projected 7 billion doses.

The report says mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna have demonstrated the best protection against several variants by providing cross-immunity through so-called T-cells, an arm of the human immune system that kills virus-infected cells and keeps them from replicating and spreading.

The report was a collaboration among scientists at Harvard Medical School, Columbia University, New York University and the University of Saskatchewan and the advocacy groups PrEP4All and Partners in Health.
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World tennis No.1 Novak Djokovic has had his visa canceled by Australian authorities and is facing deportation. He had received a COVID-19 vaccination exemption to defend his title at the Australian Open but has reportedly failed to provide proper evidence to border officials.

The Serbian is the defending Australian Open champion, and a nine-time winner of the event, but the government said Thursday he’s no longer welcome.

He was detained at Melbourne airport Wednesday for several hours before border force officials announced that he had not met immigration regulations and would be deported.

Djokovic’s father had claimed his son was being held “captive.”

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic said he was a victim of “harassment.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is standing firm, though.

“On the issue of Mr. Djokovic, rules are rules and there are no special cases,” Morrison said. “That is the policy of the government, and it has been our government’s strong border protection policies and particularly in relation to the pandemic that has ensured that Australia has had one of the lowest death rates from COVID anywhere in the world. Entry with a visa requires double vaccination or a medical exemption. I am advised that such an exemption was not in place and as a result he is subject to the same rule as anyone else.”

With his visa revoked, Djokovic is now an “unlawful non-citizen” in Australia and is being held in immigration detention, where his movements are restricted after he was driven from Melbourne airport by government officials. It is also unclear whether Djokovic is allowed to communicate with his advisers, which is standard practice according to Australian law.

His lawyers are challenging the deportation order in Australia’s Federal Circuit Court.

The 34-year-old tennis star has not publicly confirmed his COVID-19 vaccination status.

He flew to Australia after being granted a controversial medical exemption. Tennis authorities said he had not received any special treatment, but many Australians, who have lived under some of the world’s toughest coronavirus restrictions, believed Djokovic had abused the system.

Australia’s states and territories Thursday reported more than 70,000 new COVID-19 cases. A total of 612,000 infections have been diagnosed in Australia since the pandemic began, according to official figures, 2,289 people have died.

More than 90% of the eligible population have been fully vaccinated.

To curb the spread of the virus, the Northern Territory imposed lockdown restrictions Thursday on unvaccinated residents, who must adhere to stay-home orders until next Monday. 

 
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Omicron may not cause as much lung damage as the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus, according to new lab studies.

That, plus vaccination, may help explain why patients with omicron are not being hospitalized or dying as often as patients infected with previous variants.

But omicron is still killing an average of 1,200 people each day in the United States, about equal to the peak of the second COVID-19 wave in July and August of 2020.

“If it’s milder compared to delta; delta was horrible,” said Joe Grove, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. “This has not necessarily just turned into the common cold all of a sudden. It is still something that we should be concerned about.”

Plus, experts caution, omicron’s ferocious infectiousness means the less virulent virus can still do a lot of damage, especially among the unvaccinated who are elderly or have preexisting conditions.

Lighter on the lungs

A set of new studies in lab animals and petri dishes found that omicron did not infect lung tissue as much as previous variants. And it didn’t cause as much damage or inflammation when it did.

Omicron had no problem infecting tissues in the nose and throat. A preference for the upper airway might help explain why omicron is so infectious, Grove said.

“It’s going to be more easily coughed or sneezed out and spread more easily,” Grove said. “But I am speculating here.”

The lab results are promising, but what happens in lab animals doesn’t always translate to people, Dr. Mike Diamond, an infectious diseases professor at Washington University School of Medicine, cautioned.

“You might say, ‘Well, maybe it’s less severe,'” he said. “But we don’t fully even know that it’s less severe in humans yet.”

Doctors in South Africa said that omicron patients had not been not as sick when the variant swept through that country. Health officials in the United Kingdom reported similar observations.

But it’s not clear if those cases were milder because of the virus or because people were less susceptible.

“In the U.K. there was a very high vaccination rate,” Diamond noted. “And then in South Africa, a lot of people got infected in the first wave, so they’re naturally immune.”

Some encouraging signs are starting to come in. According to an early study in Ontario, Canada, unvaccinated people infected with omicron were 60% less likely to be hospitalized or die than those infected with delta.

Experts warn, however, that the risk of severe disease may be lower, but the odds of catching omicron are higher. The huge number of people infected cancels out the advantage of the milder virus.

Unvaccinated and hospitalized

That’s why hospitals in parts of the United States are filling up again.

In this wave, most hospitalized patients are unvaccinated, by an overwhelming margin.

In New York City, for example, where COVID-19 is spiking again, unvaccinated patients are being hospitalized at a rate 30 times that of vaccinated patients.

The highest rates of hospitalization are among those over 65.

Even if omicron is milder, “it seems to be still doing quite a bit of damage in unvaccinated people,” said University of Texas Medical Branch virologist Vineet Menachery.

“The good news is that there does seem to be a trend that this virus is less severe than previous waves, especially if you’re vaccinated,” he said. For those who got their shots, “the threat of severe disease is probably off the table for most people.”

“On the other hand, for people who are not vaccinated, I think the threat is just as big as it was in March of 2020,” Menachery added. 
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