YCLOAK

New Zealand scientists have found that microplastics have a direct impact on global warming. They published the first study linking airborne plastic fragments and fibers to climate change Wednesday. They also found that microplastics, which have been widely detected on land and in rivers and oceans, are detrimental to health.

This is the first study to investigate the effects of airborne microplastics on climate. The plastic fragments and fibers are carried by the wind. Microplastics are created by the breakdown of carpets, clothing and paint, as well as tires and larger plastics that degrade over time.

Researchers in New Zealand have found that for now, their influence on climate change is small. But if the global average concentration of microplastics increases to levels already seen in some cities, the impact “will be significant,” they say. 

Laura Revell, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, said the airborne particles do affect the environment.

“They are good at scattering solar radiation, or sunlight, back to space, which causes a minor cooling influence on Earth’s climate, and they also are quite good at absorbing the infrared radiation that is emitted by the Earth, which means they also contribute to the greenhouse effect,” she said. “But overall, it is that interaction with sunlight that plays out. So, overall, they have a very, very small cooling influence on Earth’s climate.”

Revell said laboratory studies have shown that microplastics can damage lung tissue. Aquatic organisms such as zooplankton can also mistake the plastic for food, which can interfere with the ocean’s carbon cycle, where carbon is recycled naturally by the environment.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that this is actually a good thing in terms of climate change and that they are offsetting the effects of greenhouse gas warming because, for a start, the effect is very small in the present day and then there are also these other damaging effects to humans and to other ecosystems.” 

Researchers have estimated that globally, 5 billion tons of plastic waste have accumulated in landfills and the natural environment to date. They have warned that amount could double over the next 30 years if current trends in plastic production and waste management continue. 

The research is a collaboration between New Zealand’s University of Canterbury and Victoria University of Wellington.

It is published in the leading scientific journal Nature.
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After a day of high-level talks in Colombia, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Thursday a regional partnership to address deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

“We’ll give much-needed financial assistance to help manage protected areas and Indigenous territories, and we’ll help scale up low-carbon agricultural practices to farmers throughout the Amazon,” he said in the capital, Bogota, after touring its botanical gardens.

“This new regional partnership will help prevent up to 19 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere while capturing another 52,000 metric tons of carbon, and we estimate it will save — save — more than 45,000 hectares of forest,” Blinken added.

The Amazon spans eight countries in South America, including Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The Amazon and other rainforests are crucial because they take in carbon dioxide and produce about one-fifth of the world’s oxygen. About a third of Colombia is in the Amazon.

Colombian President Ivan Duque has ambitious climate goals, including zero deforestation by 2030. Blinken observed in his remarks that Duque won an International Conservation Award this year from the International Conservation Caucus Foundation.

UN conference

Blinken’s announcement came a little more than a week before the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, opens in Glasgow, Scotland, where about 100 world leaders will discuss climate change and how to combat it.

In Glasgow, “the entire planet is hoping for important announcements — actions,” he said.

The secretary was wrapping up a trip to Ecuador and Colombia that focused on discussing migration policy and upholding democracy.

“The core focus of this trip for me, my first trip to South America as secretary of state, is how we make democracies deliver for our people,” Blinken said minutes before the talks began. “That is our common challenge. It’s our common responsibility. And that’s true in our countries and it’s true across the hemisphere.”

Blinken said many common issues would be discussed during the U.S.-Colombia High-Level Dialogue, including COVID-19, the climate crisis and migration.

“We know that one way we can deliver is by working closely with our partners and allies on the biggest challenges we face, and that’s exactly what the United States and Colombia are doing,” Blinken said.

Blinken told reporters Wednesday after meeting with Duque that the two countries have many areas of potential cooperation, including cloud computing, health technology and agriculture.

The United States is asking countries in the Western Hemisphere to step up pledges to tackle the immediate challenges of irregular migration as it expands eligibility for legal migration to the United States.

Migration ministerial

Blinken held talks Wednesday with more than a dozen officials from Latin America at a regional migration ministerial in Bogota. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas joined the gathering virtually.

The United States discussed options, including assisting with voluntary returns to their home countries for migrants who do not have valid asylum claims.

Duque confirmed that his government had received resources from the U.S. to tackle what he called ”the most complicated migration crisis in the world”: the Venezuelan migration crisis.

In a speech earlier Wednesday in Ecuador, Blinken outlined several challenges that democracies face in the Western Hemisphere, including corruption, civilian security, and the economic and social well-being of the people.

He said he was optimistic they could be overcome and noted that the survival of a democracy driven by ordinary people was vital to the shared future of the region.​

VOA’s Nike Ching contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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The U.S. state of Texas on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to leave in place its restrictive law banning most abortions after the administration of President Joe Biden had asked the country’s highest court to block the statute. 

In its court filing, Texas, the second most populous U.S. state, defended an order by a three-judge 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that allowed the anti-abortion law to go back into effect after a lower-court judge put it on hold.  

The state contended, “In sum, far from being demonstrably wrong, the Fifth Circuit’s conclusion that Texas is likely to prevail was entirely right.” It told the high court there was no reason to rush into a decision pending further review at the appellate level. 

The Biden administration has argued that the law is “clearly unconstitutional” because it bans abortions at roughly six weeks of a pregnancy, long before a fetus can survive outside the womb. In its major abortion rulings, the Supreme Court has made it clear that states can regulate but not prohibit abortions before the point of fetal viability, about 22 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy. 

Since the law went into effect, clinics in Texas say abortions in the state are down by about 80%, with women going to clinics in other states to obtain abortions. 

The Texas abortion law is unique in that it also gives private citizens the right to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion. Individual citizens can be awarded $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits.

Aside from the Texas case, in December, the Supreme Court is considering whether to uphold or overturn a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks.
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More than just altering the environment, climate change is threatening to permanently and dangerously reshape the global security landscape, according to a series of new assessments by U.S. military, intelligence and security officials.

The reports, ordered earlier this year by U.S. President Joe Biden as part of an effort to better confront the impact of climate change, warn no country will be spared, and that some parts of the world already may be reaching a tipping point.

“As climate change converges with other drivers — especially geostrategic competition, emerging technology and global-demographic trends — it is reshaping the risk landscape,” the Department of Homeland Security said in its climate change strategic framework, released Thursday.

“The corrosive impact of these trends will make nations increasingly vulnerable to domestic instability, with sweeping implications for regional and border security and core national security interests,” it added.

Preparing for calamities

Defense officials said they are already being forced to prepare for worst-case scenarios, from mass migration events to shifts in the balance of power in key regions to the possibility some countries could collapse outright, spawning “instability across the globe.”

“Competitive advantage in the future will go to those who can fight and win in this rapidly changing strategic and physical environment,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

The Pentagon’s risk assessment warned climate change is likely to spark instability in at least four regions – the Middle East and South Asia, Africa, Europe, and Central and South America – with three of them likely to see increased demand for humanitarian aid.

The U.S. intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimate on climate change is even more dire, pointing to looming disaster for key countries in South and East Asia, and in Central America.

And where existing governments are unable to meet the challenges of climate change, insurgents and terrorists appear poised to exploit the situation.

“We assess that most of the countries where al-Qaida or ISIS have a presence are highly vulnerable to climate change,” the intelligence estimate warned.

Countries in Central Africa, already confronting rising terror threats, also may find themselves overwhelmed.

“Under-resourced and ill-equipped militaries will face severe strains when they are called upon to respond to more natural disasters in their own and neighboring countries,” the assessment said.

In Central America, prolonged dry spells and excessive rains could force 30% of the working population to flee.

No country spared

U.S. intelligence officials also warn that even countries with the most resources could find themselves at odds, predicting intense competition between the U.S. and China over key mineral and clean energy technologies by 2040.

“The United States and others … are in a relatively better position than other countries to deal with the major costs and dislocation of forecasted change, in part because they have greater resources to adapt, but will nonetheless require difficult adjustments,” according to the estimate.

“Adjusting to such changes will often be wrenching, and populations will feel negative effects in their daily lives,” it said. “The impacts will be massive even if the worst human costs can be avoided.”
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Worsening climate change requires that the United States do much more to track, ease and manage flows of refugees fleeing natural disasters, the Biden administration said Thursday in what it billed as the federal government’s first deep look at the problem.

The report recommends a range of steps: doing more to monitor for floods or other disasters likely to create climate refugees, targeting U.S. aid that can allow people to ride out droughts or storms in their own countries, and examining legal protections for refugees driven from their countries partly because of worsening climate.

It also urges creation of a task force to coordinate U.S. management of climate change and migration across government, from climate scientists to aid and security officials.

Each year, hurricanes, the failure of seasonal rains and other sudden natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says. Worsening climate from the burning of coal and gas already is intensifying a range of disasters, from wildfires overrunning towns in California, rising seas overtaking island nations and drought-aggravated conflict in some parts of the world.

“Policy and programming efforts made today and in coming years will impact estimates of people moving due to climate-related factors,” the report said. It was ordered by President Joe Biden and compiled recommendations of federal agencies across government. “Tens of millions of people, however, are likely to be displaced over the next two to three decades due in large measure to climate change impacts.”

The Biden administration is eager to show itself confronting the impacts of climate change ahead of a crucial U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland that starts late this month. That’s especially so as Biden struggles to get lawmakers to agree to multibillion-dollar measures to slow climate change, a key part of his domestic agenda.

No nation offers asylum or other legal protections to people displaced specifically because of climate change.

Biden in February ordered his national security adviser to conduct the months-long study that included looking at the “options for protection and resettlement of individuals displaced directly or indirectly from climate change.”

As part of its push Thursday, the administration also is releasing the first national intelligence estimate on climate change. National intelligence estimates are benchmark documents created by U.S. intelligence agencies that are intended to inform decision-making and analysis across the government.

The estimate found a warming planet could increase geopolitical tensions particularly as poorer countries grapple with droughts, rising seas and other effects, while they wait for richer, higher-polluting countries to change their behavior. Climate change will “increasingly exacerbate risks to U.S. national security interests,” according to the estimate.

The estimate identified 11 countries of particular concern: Afghanistan, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Pakistan. It also lists two regions of concern: Central Africa and small island states in the Pacific Ocean.

Strains on land and water could push countries further toward conflict. In South Asia, much of Pakistan relies on surface water from rivers originating in India. The two countries are nuclear-armed rivals that have fought several wars since their founding in 1947. On India’s other side, about 10% of Bangladesh’s 160 million people already live in coastal areas vulnerable to rising seas and saltwater intrusion.

Intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity under agency rules said climate change could indirectly affect counterterrorism by pushing people seeking food and shelter to violent groups.

The intelligence community needs more scientific expertise and to integrate climate change into its analysis of other countries, the officials said.

The United Nations says there may be as many as 200 million climate-displaced people worldwide by 2050.

According to a World Meteorological Organization report released in April, an average of 23 million people have been displaced each year by climate change since 2010. Nearly 10 million were recorded in the first six months of last year. Most moved within their own country.
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With the U.N. Climate Change Conference set to begin in less than two weeks, a vital piece of the Biden administration’s climate agenda is in danger of dying in the U.S. Senate, at the hands of a member of the president’s own party.

Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat who represents the state of West Virginia, has said he will not support the most important clean energy provisions in the administration’s “Build Back Better” package of infrastructure and social spending programs. Because the Democrats have only 50 seats in the 100-member Senate, and expect zero votes from Republicans, Manchin can kill the entire bill by withholding his vote.

Last week, he indicated he would do just that if the Clean Energy Performance Program, considered the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s climate plan, were part of the bill. The CEPP would reward electricity producers that begin converting to renewable energy at a rate of 4% per year or greater, and penalize those that do not.

The economy of Manchin’s home state is disproportionately reliant on fossil fuel, so oil and gas firms, coal mining operations and natural gas pipeline companies all wield significant political muscle. The coal industry in West Virginia would be particularly hurt by the CEPP, because 90% of the electricity produced in the state comes from coal-fired power plants.

This week, Manchin also rejected a different effort to meet the administration’s emission reduction goals, this time by imposing a tax on carbon. To the frustration of many in his party, Manchin has not offered any alternatives that would come close to the kind of impact on emissions that the Biden administration is seeking.

Bold promises

On his first day as president, Biden announced that the U.S. would rejoin the Paris Agreement, a climate accord that his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump, had exited. In April, Biden announced that his goal was to reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change to between 50% and 52% of 2005 levels.

Experts say the 4% annual increase in electricity generated by renewables required by the CEPP is essential to meeting the emissions reduction goal.

The bold promise was meant to demonstrate renewed U.S. leadership in the global effort to fight climate change, and was made with an eye on next month’s U.N. climate summit, also known as COP26. Recently, the administration announced it would be sending 13 members of Biden’s Cabinet to the summit, which will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, demonstrating a very high level of commitment spanning the breadth of the federal government.

Empty-handed at COP 26?

But Manchin’s unwillingness to budge on the climate issue leaves the president in danger of traveling to Glasgow with little, other than good intentions, to show for his first 10 months in office.

Other Democrats in Congress have warned of the danger of failing to take significant action. Former U.S. Senator John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, told The Associated Press it would compound the reputational damage the U.S. suffered when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, told The Guardian newspaper it would make the U.S. delegation look “ridiculous,” adding, “It would be bad for U.S. leadership, bad for the talks and disastrous for the climate. Just disastrous.”

Manchin’s claims

Manchin has claimed the energy industry is making the change to renewables on its own, and that it makes little sense to spend taxpayer dollars on something that is already happening.

Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said Manchin’s assessment of the industry’s progress is accurate.

“We can get there if we … allow for the various carbon capture technologies to be developed, commercialized and then utilized within the coal and natural gas sectors,” Hamilton said. “Our goal is to reduce the carbon footprint as well, you know. It’s not like anyone’s opposing that.”

But climate activists sharply dispute Manchin’s characterization of the industry’s progress on reducing emissions.

Manchin’s claims are “demonstrably false,” said Michael O’Boyle, director of electricity policy at Energy Innovation, an energy and climate policy think tank in San Francisco.

“Over the last five years, from 2016 to 2020, the U.S. added about 1.1% to its clean energy share annually,” he said. “In 2020, alone, we hit a record of 2.3%, so barely more than half of a 4% increase.”

Manchin’s personal interests

Critics of the West Virginia senator also point out that Manchin has a considerable personal financial interest in the coal industry. He owns between $1 million and $5 million in shares of Enersystems Inc., a coal brokerage that he founded and that is now run by his son. The company has paid him nearly $5 million over the past decade.

When asked about this apparent conflict of interest, Manchin has for years protested that his assets are held in a blind trust. However, his Senate financial disclosure forms expressly name Enersystems.

Manchin also receives major campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry at large, taking in well over $250,000 in the 2022 election cycle so far.

A dying industry

Adding to the frustration of Manchin’s fellow Democrats is that the coal mining industry that he is so intent on protecting has been shriveling for decades, as demand for coal across the United States decreases.

In 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that the coal industry in West Virginia, including “all employees engaged in production, preparation, processing, development, maintenance, repair shop or yard work at mining operations, including office workers,” employed 11,418 people, or about 1.4% of the state’s workforce.

The numbers were down slightly in 2020 because of the pandemic and will likely rise when 2021 figures are released, but the longer-term trend is quite clear. Since the early 1950s, when more than 125,000 men mined coal with pickaxes and shovels in West Virginia, improved technology began steadily reducing the number of people needed to run the state’s coal mines.

By the 1990s, there were fewer than 40,000 people employed by the industry in the state, and the numbers have kept falling.

Add to that the decline in demand, as power companies switched to cleaner fuels, including natural gas, and the picture of a dying industry becomes complete. After peaking at 158 million tons in 2008, West Virginia’s coal production has fallen sharply, to well under 100 million tons for the past several years.
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Scientists temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for lifesaving transplants.

Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but among the hurdles: A sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack.

Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient so they could observe it for two days. The kidney did what it was supposed to do — filter waste and produce urine — and didn’t trigger rejection.

“It had absolutely normal function,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team last month at NYU Langone Health in New York. “It didn’t have this immediate rejection that we have worried about.”

This research is “a significant step,” said Dr. Andrew Adams of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who was not part of the work. It will reassure patients, researchers and regulators “that we’re moving in the right direction.”

The dream of animal-to-human transplants, or xenotransplantation, dates to the 17th century with stumbling attempts to use animal blood for transfusions. By the 20th century, surgeons were attempting transplants of organs from baboons into humans, notably Baby Fae, a dying infant, who lived 21 days with a baboon heart.

With no lasting success and much public uproar, scientists turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes to bridge the species gap.

Pigs have advantages over monkeys and apes. They are produced for food, so using them for organs raises fewer ethical concerns. Pigs have large litters, short gestation periods and organs comparable to those of humans.

Pig heart valves also have been used successfully for decades in humans. The blood thinner heparin is derived from pig intestines. Pig skin grafts are used on burns, and Chinese surgeons have used pig corneas to restore sight.

In the NYU case, researchers kept a deceased woman’s body on a ventilator after her family agreed to the experiment. The woman had wished to donate her organs, but they weren’t suitable for traditional donation.

‘Good could come from this’

The family felt “there was a possibility that some good could come from this gift,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery himself received a transplant three years ago, a human heart from a donor with hepatitis C because he was willing to take any organ.

“I was one of those people lying in an ICU waiting and not knowing whether an organ was going to come in time,” he said.

Several biotech companies are in the running to develop suitable pig organs for transplant to help ease the human organ shortage. More than 90,000 people in the U.S. are in line for kidney transplants. Every day, 12 die while waiting.

The advance is a win for Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, the company that engineered the pig and its cousins, a herd of 100 raised in tightly controlled conditions at a facility in Iowa.

The pigs lack a gene that produces alpha-gal, the sugar that provokes an immediate attack from the human immune system.

In December, the Food and Drug Administration approved the gene alteration in the Revivicor pigs as safe for human food consumption and medicine.

But the FDA said developers would need to submit more paperwork before pig organs could be transplanted into living humans.

“This is an important step forward in realizing the promise of xenotransplantation, which will save thousands of lives each year in the not-too-distant future,” said United Therapeutics CEO Martine Rothblatt in a statement.

Experts say tests on nonhuman primates and last month’s experiment with a human body pave the way for the first experimental pig kidney or heart transplants in living people in the next several years.

Raising pigs to be organ donors feels wrong to some people, but it may grow more acceptable if concerns about animal welfare can be addressed, said Karen Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, who will help develop ethics and policy recommendations for the first clinical trials under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

“The other issue is going to be: Should we be doing this just because we can?” Maschke said.
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A French woman of African origin is leading a campaign to encourage more members of France’s African diaspora to register as bone marrow donors to potentially save lives. Elhame Lecoeur filed this report for VOA from Paris, narrated by Michael Lipin.

Camera: Elhame Lecoeur Produced by: Marcus Harton
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A French woman of African origin is leading a campaign to encourage more members of France’s African diaspora to register as bone marrow donors to potentially save lives. Elhame Lecoeur filed this report for VOA from Paris, narrated by Michael Lipin.
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a vaccine mandate for city workers Wednesday.

The order calls for employees, including police officers and firefighters, to have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by October 29 or else they will be placed on unpaid leave.

The mayor’s office said the mandate applies to about 160,500 workers, and that 71% of them have already received one COVID-19 vaccine dose.

“There is no greater privilege than serving the people of New York City, and that privilege comes with a responsibility to keep yourself and your community safe,” de Blasio said in a statement.
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Authors of a new report on Africa’s climate warn the continent is heating up more and faster than other regions in the world, and they said Africa needs immediate financial and technological assistance to adapt to the warming environment.

The African continent is home to 17% of the global population but is responsible for less than 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, which are leading to climate change.

The report finds changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures and extreme weather triggered by climate change are happening globally, but notes these events are occurring with greater frequency and intensity in Africa. 

Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas said there were 700 major disasters on the continent last year. He said more than half have been flooding events, and one-sixth have been storming and drought events, respectively. 

“We have seen almost 100 million people who have suffered of food insecurity, and they needed humanitarian assistance … and the combined events of conflicts, climate hazards, and especially this COVID-19, they have been contributing to the increase of 40% of food insecurity,” Taalas said

This multi-agency report, entitled State of the Climate in Africa 2020, was coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, with the help of the African Union Commission and various U.N. agencies.

The report finds the warming trend over the last three decades in all African subregions was stronger than in the previous 30 years. During this period, it said Africa has warmed faster than the global average temperature over land and ocean combined. 

It said higher-than-normal precipitation and flooding predominated in places such as the Sahel, the Rift Valley, and the Kalahari basin. At the same time, dry conditions prevailed in the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea and other locations, while drought in Madagascar triggered a humanitarian crisis. 

Taalas said sea-level rise is threatening many coastal cities in Africa, like Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub and a major financial center in Africa. He said climate change also is having a devastating impact on the last remaining glaciers in East Africa. 

“The three African glaciers, Mount Kenya, the Rwenzori, and Kilimanjaro —and you can see that there has been a major loss of the sea ice area and also sea ice mass,” Taalas said. “And if the current trends continue, we will not see any glaciers in Africa in the 2040s.”

The African Union Commission reports adaptation costs in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated at $30 billion to $50 billion, equivalent to two to three percent of regional gross domestic product each year over the next decade. 

However, it notes the cost of doing nothing will be much higher. By 2030, it said up to 118 million extremely poor people will be subject to devastating impacts of drought and intense heat. It adds subsequent displacement and migration consequently will lead to a further 3% decrease in GDP by 2050. 
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The Israeli Antiquities Authority said Tuesday that a diver swimming in the Mediterranean Sea has recovered a large sword that experts believe to be about 900 years old, dating back to the Crusades.

The antiquities authority’s Director of Marine Archaeology, Kobi Sharvit, said the amateur diver was swimming about 150 meters offshore near the Israeli port of Haifa a few days ago when he spotted the sword lying on the ocean floor, four to five meters below the surface.

Sharvit said the diver recovered the sword and immediately took it to the antiquities authority. Sharvit said the sword — encrusted with marine organisms when discovered –is the most complete and well preserved he has seen in 31 years. He described the sword as large, heavy and made of iron.  

He added that the one-meter-long blade, hilt and handle were distinctive and highly noticeable after undercurrents apparently shifted sands that had concealed it.

Sharvit said because the sword was found in a cove, not far from the Crusader castle of Atlit on the northern coast of Israel, it is being assumed the sword belonged to a solder in the Crusades.

The Crusades were a series of medieval European Christian-led military expeditions to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. 

Sharvit said that from an historical perspective, the handle of the sword may be the most important part of the weapon as that is where decorations, and perhaps, even names or initials are often found that will help identify the sword.

He said once it cleaned, examined, and restored, the antiquities authority will put the sword on display.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said final congressional passage of the Biden administration’s major infrastructure plan comes down to “a fundamental issue” of the lack of water brought on by climate change.    

Harris made the comments Monday during a visit to Lake Mead, a man-made reservoir near the gambling and tourist destination city of Las Vegas, Nevada, which provides drinking water and electricity for more than 40 million people across seven western U.S. states and northern Mexico.  

The U.S. government in August declared the first-ever water shortage at Lake Mead, which has fallen to record lows amid a two decade-long drought in the Western United States. The shortage has forced officials to impose water rationing next year for Nevada, the neighboring state of Arizona and Mexico.

During the visit, the vice president promoted a $550 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, an agreement reached earlier this year between President Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of senators. The investment includes tens of billions of dollars to shore up the nation’s water infrastructure and protect communities against the impact of climate change, including lingering heat waves and droughts, along with investments in water recycling and technology to convert sea water into usable drinking water.   

“This is about thinking ahead, recognizing where we are and where we’re headed — if we don’t address these issues with a sense of urgency, understanding this is literally about life,” Harris said.   

The infrastructure plan has been approved by the U.S. Senate, but is stalled in the House over intense and increasingly bitter negotiations over funding for the president’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan, which would provide a significant boost to the nation’s social safety net.   

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
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As a legal battle plays out in the courts, the Biden administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Texas law that bans most abortions in the state.

The Justice Department asked the high court Monday to reverse a decision by an appeals court that allows the law to remain in effect while litigation over the policy continues. 

The Republican-backed law bans abortions once cardiac activity has been detected in an embryo, which typically occurs at six weeks, a point when some women are not aware they are pregnant.

The law also allows members of the public to sue people who may have facilitated an abortion after six weeks. 

The Supreme Court has already ruled on the issue once before in a lawsuit filed by abortion providers. In a 5-4 vote last month, the court allowed the law to remain in effect as the legal battle over it continues.

The Supreme Court, however, has not yet ruled on the constitutionally of the Texas law. 

The high court became more conservative under former President Donald Trump, who appointed three justices to the nine-seat bench. Conservatives now hold a 6-3 majority.

The court’s handling of the abortion issue is being closely watched since it allowed the restrictive Texas law to take effect last month. Later in September, the court announced it would hear arguments in December in a case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade, the decades-old ruling that gives women the right to an abortion.

The court scheduled oral arguments for December 1 to hear a case concerning a Mississippi state law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The case asks justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that allows women to have abortions in most circumstances. Roe v. Wade establishes a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion before a fetus is viable, typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The court’s latest actions have fueled speculation that a majority of the justices could be inclined to formally curtail abortion rights.

A poll released by Monmouth University last month found that 62% of Americans believe abortion should either always be legal or be legal with some limitations. Twenty-four percent said it should be illegal except in rare circumstances such as rape, while 11% said it should always be illegal. 

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

 
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The United Nations announced Monday that a nationwide house-to-house polio vaccination campaign in conflict-torn Afghanistan will recommence next month and hailed the new Taliban government for agreeing to lift a ban on such drives.

Afghanistan is one of two countries in the world, along with neighboring Pakistan, where the highly infectious and incurable disease continues to cripple children.  

Officials on both sides documented only one infection each so far in 2021 of the wild poliovirus Type 1 (WPV1), the lowest-ever transmission seen at the same time in Pakistan and Afghanistan, compared to 84 and 56 cases respectively last year.  

The house-to-house Afghan anti-polio campaign due to start November 8 is aimed at reaching around 10 million children under the age of 5 across the country, including more than 3 million in remote and previously inaccessible areas, according to the World Health Organization and U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

The Taliban, who regained power in August, banned door-to-door vaccinations in April 2018 in areas under their control as they waged insurgent attacks against the ousted Western-backed Afghan government and international forces.

“Over this 3-and-a-half-year period, there were approximately 3.3 million children, some of whom could never be reached — or some of them inconsistently reached — with vaccination because of this ban,” Dr. Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, told VOA.

He explained that the Taliban had seen polio teams’ house-to-house movement as a security risk for their fighters in the wake of the nature of the conflict at the time.  

“They have now the controlling authority across the country, and there is not much active conflict right now. So, they (Taliban) have decided to continue their support for polio eradication and specially vaccination through house-to-house vaccination,” the WHO official said.

Jafari recalled the polio eradication program started in Afghanistan in the 1990s when the Taliban were in government and hailed the Islamist group for being supportive of the anti-polio efforts from the outset.  

He stressed the need for aggressively implementing the anti-polio campaign, saying the low number of cases offer a “truly unique opportunity” to eradicate the virus from Afghanistan.

Jafari underlined the economic importance of the house-to-house campaign, saying it will be the first major mobilization of Afghan health workers for delivery of a nationwide vaccination service since the Taliban takeover of the country.

“In the current situation of real economic challenges, where many workers and people have not been paid their salaries, this campaign will be one activity in which a large number of the workforce will actually participate in vaccine delivery and will get paid for it,” he said.  

WHO officials said a second campaign in Afghanistan, due to begin in coordination with a campaign in Pakistan in December, has also been agreed to.

Jafari cautioned that it is too early for both countries to celebrate that they are nearing polio eradication. He noted there are still several million children in Afghanistan who have not been administered polio drops in recent years, and there are areas in Pakistan where children still need to be inoculated against the virus.

“We have an unprecedented epidemiological opportunity right now to succeed in final polio eradication in both countries. The progress is encouraging, but it is very fragile, and both countries still have to work very hard. This is not a time to be complacent,” Jafari said.

 
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