YCLOAK

U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday he will continue “this encounter with China” to attempt to stem the flow of deadly drugs being smuggled into the United States via Mexico.Biden, during an appearance on a CNN “town hall”-style program from Cincinnati, said his administration is “dealing with the whole opioid issue” by significantly increasing the number of people in the Justice Department working on it.Fentanyl is considered 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. The health crisis in America caused by synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, was frequently raised by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.The former president repeatedly criticized China, the primary exporter of fentanyl or its precursor chemicals to Mexico, where cartels smuggle it into the United States, for not cracking down on the drug trafficking.A 1,500-word background memo issued ahead of Biden’s third visit to Ohio during his 6-month-old presidency, covered key concerns in the state ranging from repairing highway bridges to combating childhood obesity. It did not mention the opioid crisis, although Ohio has one of the highest per capita rates of overdose deaths, which have been the leading cause of fatal injuries in the state for more than a decade.Asked by VOA on the Air Force One flight Wednesday to the event whether — in view of this — the issue remains a priority for the Biden administration, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded: “Absolutely, it’s a top priority, and there’s no question it is an issue that has impacted people across Ohio and continues to. Any health expert will tell you that the most important thing we could do is make sure people have access to health care coverage. ”Some U.S. objectives set during the Trump administration with respect to China remain unmet.China has not taken action to control additional fentanyl precursors, following Beijing’s crackdown on two such substance in 2018.Chinese traffickers shifted to sending not yet controlled chemicals to Mexico and Chinese nationals indicted in the United States on fentanyl trafficking charges remain at large, noted a January report from the Congressional Research Service.“I don’t believe there’s much we can do to slow these countries’ export of these drugs,” said Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic.“All we can do is implement harm reduction measures at home, like supervised injection facilities, while also providing greater access to fentanyl testing strips, medication assisted treatment, and needle exchange programs,” he said.Westhoff, described himself as an advocate for harm reduction, the philosophy that accepts people cannot be stopped from using drugs and that instead users should be taught about their dangers and helped to use them more safely.“In this framework, the Biden administration has been only marginally better than Trump’s. Mostly they have simply maintained the status quo,” Westhoff told VOA. “In the midst of the worst drug crisis in American history, we need much bolder action.”Projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Ohio last year likely saw its largest-ever number of drug overdoses — more than 14 per day for a total of 5,215, breaking the recorded high from 2017.That puts the midwestern state with the fourth-largest total among the 50 U.S. states.Overall, there was a dramatic spike in U.S. drug deaths, up about 27% in the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic.A total of 88,000 Americans died in the 12-month period ending in August 2020, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.”Illicitly manufactured fentanyl and synthetic opioids are the primary drivers of this increase,” with people between the age of 35 and 44 most at risk, the acting head of the office, Regina LaBelle, told reporters in early April.“The Biden administration is not doing enough to address this issue with either China or Mexico,” according to Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.Larkin said the question for the president is how many people must die from smuggled fentanyl before he closes the southwest border to drug smugglers.“Hundreds of people are dying every day in this country while we wait for the answer to that question,” Larkin told VOA.Tom Synan, police chief of the village of Newton, in Hamilton County, Ohio, who testified before the U.S. Senate in 2017 about the fentanyl crisis, said most of the emergency calls his officers respond to are drug-related, be they overdoses or gun crimes.Throughout Hamilton County there are 50 to 70 overdoses each week and more than 400 people dying every year.While the numbers have stabilized in the county, Synan told VOA those statistics are “a person, a mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter, I just had a mother reach out today asking for help. Every single day we’re dealing with an addiction epidemic.”Synan said he wrote Trump asking whether 70,000 to 100,000 Americans needed to die before action is taken.“I thought I was being overdramatic. But now I realize that not only was I not dramatic, but the number was pretty close,” said the police chief, adding he has a similar question for Biden.“I wholeheartedly believe that when a president of the United States stands up and says that we as Americans need to change the way we view and deal with addiction. It’ll shift the stigma. It’ll shift funding research out of the criminal justice system and into the mental medical health care system. And that would be my question to him — is what will it take for us to shift?” said Synan.The White House, nearly four months ago, after the start of the Biden administration, introduced a seven-part plan intended to decrease the number of deaths. It is to be implemented over the next year.One goal is to shift the government response from a focus on arrests toward treatment.“What really is the biggest enabler of addiction is our own ideologies and policies that hold us back from changing addiction from being punished to actually treating it as the mental medical health condition it is,” said the Newtown police chief.Biden has expressed understanding of that approach.“We shouldn’t be sending people to jail for [drug] use. We should be sending them to mandatory rehabilitation,” the president said on Wednesday night’s television program. 
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The U.S. has averaged more than 26,000 new COVID-19 cases per day over the past week — more than double the number it was a month ago — with the more contagious delta variant making up over 80% of cases. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara looks at the Biden administration’s strategy for dealing with the surge, as misinformation continues to drive anti-vaccination sentiments in certain groups.
Producer: Kimberlyn Weeks
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Pfizer and BioNTech have reached an agreement with a South African company to produce their COVID-19 vaccine for distribution in Africa, the biotechnology companies said Wednesday.The Biovac Institute in Cape Town will manufacture 100 million doses of the vaccine annually starting in 2022. The company will mix vaccine ingredients it receives from Europe, place them in vials and package them for distribution to the 54 countries in Africa.The agreement may eventually help alleviate vaccine shortages on a continent where the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says less than 2% of its population of 1.3 billion has received at least one dose. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company’s goal is to provide people throughout Africa with the vaccine, a departure from previous bilateral agreements that saw most doses being sold to wealthy countries.The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is already being manufactured in South Africa in a similar “fill and finish” process that has the capacity to produce more than 200 million doses annually. The vaccines are also being distributed across the African continent.
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Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has moved away from her predecessor’s pandemic denial to urge social distancing, handwashing and mask-wearing.  But as the third wave of coronavirus sweeps across Africa, it seems the measures are being ignored by most of the public. Charles Kombe reports from Dar es Salaam.Camera: Rajabu Hassan    
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A finger-sized fossil from 308 million years ago unearthed in the United States gives tantalizing clues to the habits of tiny dinosaurlike creatures that may be the forerunners of reptiles, researchers revealed Wednesday. The new species is a microsaur — small lizardlike animals that roamed the Earth well before proper dinosaurs made their appearance.The find sheds important light on the evolution of different animal groups, including amphibians and reptiles, scientists wrote in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Microsaurs lived during the Carboniferous period, when the forebears of modern mammals and reptiles, called amniotes, first appeared.”Many details of that transition aren’t well known,” study co-author Arjan Mann, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, told AFP.”Microsaurs have recently become important in understanding the origins of amniotes,” he said. “A lot of these microsaurs have been thought to be either ancestors of amphibians or ancestors of reptiles.”Encased in a bog in what is today the central United States, the specimen’s serpentlike body measures about 5 centimeters (2 inches). The animals had four short, plump legs.In deference to its tiny size, researchers dubbed the new species Joermungandr bolti, after a giant sea serpent from Norse mythology who did battle with Thor.Scientists were astonished to discover the fossil also contained the animal’s skin.”Areas of the skin had only been known from fragmentary fossils before,” Mann said.”This microsaur is the whole shebang. … That’s very rare for these fossils. It’s very rare for anything 300 million years old to have skin with it!”Contrary to previous ideas about microsaurs, which had been classed as amphibians, Mann and his team discovered that Joermungandr had scales.”Modern amphibians … are soft and slimy things, this was not a soft and slimy thing,” said Mann. “This animal really had a reptilelike look to it.” Mann said the research suggests not only that microsaurs might be early relatives of reptiles but also that the ability to burrow may have played a bigger role in the origin of amniotes than originally thought.The researchers used a highly sensitive imaging technique called scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to get an up-close look at the nearly perfect fossil.They discovered a pattern of ridges similar to those found on the scales of modern reptiles that dig into the ground.Along with other features such as a robust skull and elongated body, the scale shape led researchers to hypothesize that Joermungandr burrowed as well.”It would probably have been a head-first burrower, using its head to smack itself into the soil,” said Mann.”Its limbs were probably not very functional. It may have used them to stabilize itself as it was wobbling around. But its primary mode of movement would have been side winding like a snake.”The SEM imaging technique is now being applied to many other ancient fossils, Mann said.”We plan to do a lot of SEM and also 3D printing the scales at larger sizes,” he added. “And some biomechanics to see how they interacted with things like dirt and water.”
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A study suggests Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine may be less effective against the emerging variants of the coronavirus.Researchers at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine reached the conclusion after conducting laboratory testing of blood samples from volunteers.Nathaniel Landau, the lead researcher, said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine does not provide the same protection against the variants as either the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which were developed differently, using the messenger RNA method.The study, posted online Tuesday, has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal, and does not reflect the real-world effects of the vaccine. But the findings are similar to other studies that show single-dose vaccines such as Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca do not produce enough antibodies to fight the delta and lambda coronavirus variants.The delta variant, which was first detected in India, reportedly spreads more easily than other iterations of the virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said delta now accounts for 83% of new cases in the nation.Johnson & Johnson recently published a study that shows a single dose of its vaccine is effective against the delta variant for up to eight months.But Landau says the results of the NYU study bolster the growing theory that a follow-up shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is necessary.The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been plagued with problems since it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The vaccine has been linked to a rare but serious blood-clotting disorder, plus a rare neurological condition. Millions of doses were ruined earlier this year when a Baltimore-based manufacturing plant mixed the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with ingredients from the AstraZeneca vaccine.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported that there are 191.4 million total confirmed COVID-19 infections in the world, including 4.1 million global fatalities as of Wednesday.South Korean health officials reported a new single-day record of 1,784 new COVID-19 infections Wednesday as the country struggles to contain a wave of infections linked to the delta variant, with more than 1,000 new cases recorded each day for the past two weeks.The surge has been centered mainly in the capital, Seoul, which has been put under a variety of restrictions and more cases have been reported outside the city.South Korea has recorded 182,265 total coronavirus cases, including 2,060 deaths.  Only 32% of the country’s 52 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, with 6.6 million fully vaccinated.Health officials are also dealing with an outbreak on a naval warship that has been patrolling the waters off the coast of Africa that has sickened at least 270 crewmen.(Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.)
 
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At least 12 people are dead in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou after massive floods triggered by several days of heavy rains. The rains washed out streets throughout the capital of Henan province, forcing stranded motorists to wade through waist-deep waters that submerged cars and even sent them floating away. The floods also washed out Zhengzhou’s subway system, with riders posting videos on social media awaiting rescue in waist-high muddy waters. A passenger named Xiaopei posted on Weibo that “the water in the carriage has reached (their) chest.”   Dozens of reservoirs and dams have reached critical levels, with local authorities warning that the Yihetan dam in the nearby city of Luoyang had sustained a 20-meter breach and was on the verge of imminent collapse. Authorities have evacuated 100,000 residents to safe zones.  Henan province, home to about 94 million people, has experienced severe rains through the past week. Forecasters say Zhengzhou received as much rainfall in three days as it normally gets in a year.  A representative of the city of Xu Liyi, a member of the Standing Committee of Henan Provincial Party Committee, and secretary of the Zhengzhou Municipal Party Committee said the high levels of rainfall were unusual. Extreme weather events have surged this summer in China, with recent flooding in Sichuan province killing hundreds of citizens and forcing thousands to evacuate the area. Officials of Greenpeace International, an environmental group, warn that China’s rapid urbanization will increase the frequency of climate disasters.  Speaking to the Chinese media, Liu Junyan of Greenpeace said, “because of the highly concentrated population, infrastructure and economic activity, the exposure and vulnerability of climate hazards are higher in urban areas.” This report contains information from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Space company Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rocketed to space Tuesday, with the world’s oldest and youngest people to ever fly in space in tow.  Bezos’ flight follows last week’s suborbital jaunt by Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson. The two billionaires are further ushering in an era of space tourism and exploration. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.
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Ecologists in a vast region of wetlands and forest in remote Oregon have spent the past decade thinning young trees and using planned fires to try to restore the thick stands of ponderosa to a less fire-prone state. This week, the nation’s biggest burning wildfire provided them with an unexpected, real-world experiment. As the massive inferno half the size of Rhode Island roared into the Sycan Marsh Preserve, firefighters said the flames jumped less from treetop to treetop and instead returned to the ground, where they were easier to fight, moved more slowly and did less damage to the overall forest. The initial assessment suggests that the many years of forest treatments worked, said Pete Caligiuri, Oregon forest program director for The Nature Conservancy, which runs the research at the preserve. “Generally speaking, what firefighters were reporting on the ground is that when the fire came into those areas that had been thinned … it had significantly less impact.” FILE – The Bootleg Fire burns at night near Highway 34 in southern Oregon, July 15, 2021, in this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command.The reports were bittersweet for researchers, who still saw nearly 51.7 square kilometers of the preserve burn, but the findings add to a growing body of research about how to make wildfires less explosive by thinning undergrowth and allowing forests to burn periodically — as they naturally would do — instead of snuffing out every flame. The Bootleg Fire, now 1,569 square kilometers in size, has ravaged southern Oregon and is the fourth-largest fire in the state’s modern history. It’s been expanding by up to 6 kilometers a day, pushed by gusting winds and critically dry weather that’s turned trees and undergrowth into a tinderbox. Fire crews have had to retreat from the flames for 10 consecutive days as fireballs jump from treetop to treetop, trees explode, embers fly ahead of the fire to start new blazes, and in some cases, the inferno’s heat creates its own weather of shifting winds and dry lightning. Monstrous clouds of smoke and ash have risen up to 9.6 kilometers into the sky and are visible for more than 185.2 kilometers. The fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest merged with a smaller nearby blaze Tuesday, and it has repeatedly breached a perimeter of treeless dirt and fire retardant meant to stop its advance.  More evacuations were ordered Monday night, and a red flag weather warning signifying dangerous fire conditions was in effect through Tuesday. The fire is 30% contained. “We’re in this for as long as it takes to safely confine this monster,” Incident Commander Rob Allen said Tuesday. At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames. Thick smoke chokes the area where residents and wildlife alike have already been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died. FILE – The Bootleg Fire is seen smoldering in southern Oregon, July 17, 2021, in this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command.The Bootleg Fire was one of many fires burning in a dozen states, most of them in the West. Sixteen large uncontained fires burned in Oregon and Washington state alone on Monday. Historically, wildfires in Oregon and elsewhere in the U.S. West burned an area as big or bigger than the current blaze more frequently but much less explosively. Periodic, naturally occurring fire cleared out the undergrowth and smaller trees that cause today’s fires to burn so dangerously. Those fires have not been allowed to burn for the past 120 years, said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires. The area on the northeastern flank of the Bootleg Fire is in the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribes, which have used intentional, managed fire to keep the fuel load low and prevent such explosive blazes. Scientists at the Sycan Marsh research station now work with the tribe and draw on that knowledge. Climate change is the catalyst for the worsening wildfire seasons in the West, Johnston said, but poor forest management and a policy of decades of fire suppression have made a bad situation even worse. “My colleagues and I have been predicting a massive fire in that area for years. It’s an area that’s exceptionally prone to catastrophic fire,” said Johnston, who is not affiliated with Sycan Marsh. “It’s dry. It’s fire-prone and always has been. But what’s changed over the past 100 years is an extraordinary amount of fuel buildup.” Other firesElsewhere, fire crews were engaged in other daunting battles. In Northern California, authorities expanded evacuations for the Tamarack Fire in Alpine County in the Sierra Nevada to include the mountain town of Mesa Vista late Monday. That fire, which exploded over the weekend was 158 square kilometers with no containment. On the western side of the Sierra, the Dixie Fire has scorched 163 square kilometers, threatening tiny communities in the Feather River Valley region. Meteorologist Julia Ruthford told a briefing that a surge of monsoonal moisture from the Southwest increased atmospheric instability Sunday and Monday, creating plumes topping 9.6 kilometers — so big that the fire generated a thunderstorm over itself, hurling lightning bolts and whipping up gusty winds. For the past two days in Oregon, the fire has danced around Sycan Marsh, where researchers raced to protect buildings with sprinklers and fire lines. The 121.7 square kilometer habitat attracts migrating and nesting birds and offers a unique location to research forest and fire ecology. The nonprofit operates its own fire engines and maintains federal firefighting certification. It now has three of its own engines and seven firefighters on the blaze, and more people are arriving from North Carolina and Florida to try to save the preserve. “It’s an amazing place,” Caligiuri said. “It’s very hard to watch it all happening, and seeing all of that work being threatened by this fire is a lot to process.” 
 
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The yearslong effort by state and local governments in the U.S. to force the pharmaceutical industry to help pay to fix a nationwide opioid addiction and overdose crisis took a major step forward Tuesday when lawyers for local governments announced they were on the verge of a $26 billion settlement with the nation’s three biggest drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson. Under the deal, Johnson & Johnson would not produce any opioids for at least a decade. And AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson share prescribing information under a new system intended to stop the avalanches of pills that arrived in some regions about a decade ago. FILE – A Johnson & Johnson logo appears on the exterior of a first aid kit in Walpole, Mass., Feb. 24, 2021.Lawyers for local governments said full details could be shared within days. That would not be the end of the deal though; each state would have 30 days to decide whether to join. And local governments will have five months after that to decide. If governments don’t opt in, the settlement total would go down. “This is a nationwide crisis, and it could have been and should have been addressed perhaps by other branches of government,” Paul Geller, one of the lead lawyers representing local governments across the U.S., said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “But this really is an example of the use of litigation for fixing a national problem.” If approved, the settlement will likely be the biggest of many settlements to opioid litigation. While it means billions for lawyers who worked the cases, it is expected to bring more than $23 billion to abatement and mitigation efforts to help get treatment for people who are addicted along with other programs to address the crisis. The money would come in 18 annual payments, with the biggest amounts in the next several years. The deal echoes one the companies have been pushing, sometimes in public, for two years. Johnson & Johnson reiterated in a statement that it’s prepared to contribute up to $5 billion to the national settlement. “There continues to be progress toward finalizing this agreement and we remain committed to providing certainty for involved parties and critical assistance for families and communities in need,” the company said. “The settlement is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing, and the Company will continue to defend against any litigation that the final agreement does not resolve.” FILE – A sign is displayed at the Cardinal Health, Inc. corporate office in Dublin, Ohio, Oct. 16, 2019.But Cardinal Health declined to comment early Tuesday, and the other distribution companies did not respond to requests for comment. An Associated Press tally finds there have been at least $40 billion in completed or proposed settlements, penalties and fines between governments and the toll of opioids since 2007, not including one between the federal government and OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma in which most of the $8.3 billion would be waived. Purdue is trying to reach a deal through bankruptcy court that could be worth $10 billion over time; a hearing on that plan is scheduled for August. Other deals are possible. While a growing number of companies in the industry have struck deals, some manufacturers have not — and no pharmacy companies have struck nationwide settlements. But the total amount in the settlements is far below estimates of the financial costs of the epidemic. The Society of Actuaries found that the cost of the crisis in the U.S. was $630 billion from 2015 through 2018, with most of the costs borne by the private sector. And the White House Council of Economic Advisers, when considering the economic impact of people who fatally overdosed, put the one-year cost at about $500 billion nationally. Unlike with the tobacco settlements reached in the 1990s, governments have agreed to spend money they bring in from opioid-related settlements to deal with the opioid crisis. In a joint statement, the attorneys general for Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee said the settlement talks with the four companies are “potentially nearing their completion,” and that, “we look forward to bringing much-needed dollars home to our states to help people recover from opioid addiction and to fundamentally change the opioid manufacturing and distributing industries so this never happens again.” But they still have choices ahead on exactly how they do it. “Is it a nice chunk of change?” asked Ryan Hampton, who is in recovery from an opioid addiction and is a Las Vegas-based advocate for policy to address the overdose crisis. “Sure it is. Will it go to where it needs to go? The jury’s still out on that.” FILE – A pedestrian passes a McKesson sign on an office building in San Francisco, July 17, 2019.Even before the settlement plan was unveiled Tuesday, a group of public health advocates and experts began calling for any settlement money to be spent to address the opioid crisis. “It’s money that can do a lot of good if it’s used well,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is spearheading the effort. “It’s really important to use it well to save lives because it’s coming at the peak of the overdose epidemic.” Private lawyers on the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee representing local governments in opioid lawsuits across the country announced some details of the settlement Tuesday even before it was completed. The decision to do so was partly because the state of New York reached a settlement Tuesday with the three big distribution companies amid a trial playing out in a state court on Long Island. New York’s deal, worth more than $1 billion, represents the share of the national deal it will receive from distributors if the national deal is finalized. New York also reached a similar deal last month with Johnson & Johnson worth $230 million. “Today, we’re holding them accountable delivering more than $1 billion more into New York communities ravaged by opioids for treatment, recovery, and prevention efforts,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Tuesday. FILE – An AmerisourceBergen Corp. office building is seen in Conshohocken, Pa., Oct. 16, 2019.The trial is expected to continue, but the settlement leaves only three drug manufacturers as defendants. Other manufacturers, regional distribution companies and pharmacies will remain in the New York and other cases for now. Closing arguments in a West Virginia trial against the distributors are expected to proceed as scheduled next week. The attorney general there, Patrick Morrisey, said the state would probably not agree to the terms. “I will keep fighting to protect West Virginia and will not allow larger states to dictate how we hold defendants accountable for their actions,” he said in a statement Tuesday. The state and local governments say distribution companies did not have proper controls to flag or halt shipments to pharmacies that received outsized shares of powerful and addictive prescription painkillers. The companies have maintained they were filling orders of legal drugs placed by doctors — so they should not shoulder blame for the nation’s addiction and overdose crisis. An Associated Press analysis of federal distribution data found that enough prescription opioids were shipped in 2012 for every person in the U.S. to have a 20-day supply. And opioids — including both prescription drugs and illegal ones like heroin and illicitly produced fentanyl — have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000. The number of cases reached a record high in 2020. 
 
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The U.S. State Department is urging Americans not to travel to Britain because of the rising levels of new COVID-19 cases in the country.  The State Department raised its travel advisory for Britain to its highest level on Monday, following a similar action taken by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier in the day.   A Yeoman Warder, Barney Chandler gestures as he leads the first ‘Beefeater’ tour of the Tower of London in 16 months, at the Tower of London, July 19, 2021.Both agencies said if people must travel to Britain to make sure they are fully vaccinated before their journey.   The revised advisories were issued as the British people celebrated “Freedom Day,” the official end of nearly all coronavirus lockdown restrictions, including mandatory mask wearing and social distancing. FILE – People drink shortly after the reopening at The Piano Works in Farringdon, in London, July 19, 20.But Prime Minister Boris Johnson likely cast a pall over the celebration when he announced that proof of vaccination will be required to enter nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather beginning at the end of September.  Johnson spent Freedom Day in quarantine after Britain’s health minister Sajid Javid tested positive for COVID-19.  Cases in Britain topped 50,000 per day last week for the first time since January. The surge is largely driven by the delta variant of the virus, first identified in India.  US-Canada borderOn the other side of the Atlantic, the Canadian government announced Monday that it would reopen its border to U.S. citizens and permanent residents living in the United States beginning August 9, as long as they show proof they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and tested negative for the virus within 72 hours of arrival.  Officials also said it will allow fully vaccinated visitors from other countries beginning September 7.   FILE – Two closed Canadian border checkpoints are seen at the US-Canada border crossing at the Thousand Islands Bridge in Lansdowne, Canada, March 19, 2020.Canada and the United States had agreed to ban all nonessential travel across their border in March 2020, with both nations extending the ban on a month-to-month basis.  A growing number of U.S. lawmakers and business groups have been calling on Ottawa to lift the ban, which they say has hurt tourism and negatively impacted families with relatives living on either side of the border.   Lockdown in AustraliaMeanwhile, more than half of Australia’s 25 million citizens are under coronavirus lockdown measures Tuesday after South Australia state Premier Steven Marshall announced an immediate seven-day lockdown after five new cases were detected there. South Australia joins the neighboring states of Victoria and New South Wales to impose extended lockdowns since late June, when an airport limousine driver in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, tested positive for the highly contagious delta variant after transporting international air crews. People wait outside a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia, July 14, 2021.The new lockdown in South Australia came as Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews extended a five-day lockdown imposed just last Thursday for at least another seven days after reporting 13 new local infections.New South Wales, which is in the fourth week of an extended lockdown, reported 78 new cases Tuesday, driving its total number of cases over 1,400 since the outbreak began.   Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 through aggressive lockdown efforts, posting just 32,120 total confirmed cases and 915 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. But it has proved vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to a slow rollout of its vaccination campaign and confusing requirements involving the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is the dominant vaccine in its stockpile. Overall, Australia has administered over 10 million doses of vaccine to its population of more than 25 million people, or just over 11%, according to Johns Hopkins. And a new study released Tuesday by the U.S.-based Center for Global Development says India’s total death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic could be as much as 10 times higher than its official tally of 414,482 fatalities, likely making it the worst humanitarian disaster for the South Asian nation since gaining its independence from Britain in 1947. The study says as many as 3 million to 4.7 million people were killed by the virus between January 2020 and June of this year.  The world’s second-most populous nation, with an estimated 1.3 billion people, is emerging from a devastating surge between April and May that was partly fueled by the delta variant.   
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Billionaire Jeff Bezos was back on earth safely Tuesday after a 10-minute suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft.“Best day ever,” Bezos said after the capsule touched down near Van Horn, Texas.   The spacecraft is named after Alan Shepard, the first American launched into space.The world’s richest man blasted off Tuesday from a remote desert launch site in Texas, as he became the second billionaire to self-fund a trip to space this month. This photo provided by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin, exits the Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule after it parachuted safely down near Van Horn, Texas, July 20, 2021.The fully automated rocket reached an altitude of about 106 kilometers after reaching Mach 3. Once at altitude, the booster separated from the capsule and returned to earth landing upright near the launch site. The crew was able to experience weightlessness for 3 to 4 minutes before a parachute landing back on earthThe altitude surpassed the 85-kilometer mark reached by British billionaire Richard Branson on July 11 when he and five crewmates flew aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket-powered space plane.    The 57-year-old founder of e-commerce giant Amazon founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of creating permanent space colonies where people will live and work.   This undated family photo shows Oliver Daemen. Blue Origin announced July 15, 2021, that the Dutch teen would be traveling on its July 20 space launch in west Texas.Bezos was joined by his brother, Mark, plus 82-year-old aviation pioneer Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, making them the oldest and youngest persons to fly into space.   Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13, group of women who were part of a privately funded program to train women for space travel. None of them traveled to space.The Dutch-born Daemen was a last-minute addition to the crew after the anonymous winner of a $28 million auction for a seat on New Shepard dropped out, citing a scheduling conflict. Daemen’s father was a runner-up in the auction, which makes the young astronaut Blue Origin’s first paying customer.  Bezos, a fervent space enthusiast since watching the Apollo lunar missions in his youth, made his trip on the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing.    During a television interview Monday, Bezos insisted that his goal was not about competition with Branson, but “about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space.”  Blue Origin’s first manned mission comes after 15 test flights of the New Shepard vehicle. Bob Smith, the company’s chief executive officer, says two more manned missions aboard New Shepard are planned by the end of this year.The company is also building a larger rocket, New Glenn — named after John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth — that will send both manned and unmanned vehicles into space. Some information in this report comes from AP.
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