YCLOAK

Children in Bangladesh flooded back into classrooms on Sunday as schools reopened after 18 months, one of the world’s longest coronavirus shutdowns.The resumption came after UNICEF warned that prolonged school closures during the COVID-19 crisis were worsening inequities for millions of children across South Asia.In the capital Dhaka, students at one school were welcomed with flowers and sweets, and told to wear masks and sanitize their hands. Some hugged each other in excitement.”We are really excited to be back at school,” 15-year-old Muntasir Ahmed told AFP as he entered the campus.”I am hoping to physically see all of my friends and teachers, not through a laptop window today.”At the gate, school officials checked the body temperatures of students before allowing them to enter.The school’s vice principal, Dewan Tamziduzzaman, said he “didn’t expect such a big number to be turning up on the first day.”Only 41% of Bangladesh’s 169 million population have smartphones, according to the country’s telecom operators’ association, which means millions of children cannot access online classes.Even with smartphones, students in many of Bangladesh’s rural districts do not have the high-speed internet access usually required for e-learning.’Enormous setbacks’UNICEF warned in a report released Thursday that the pandemic has accentuated “alarming inequities” for more than 430 million children in the region.”School closures in South Asia have forced hundreds of millions of children and their teachers to transition to remote learning in a region with low connectivity and device affordability,” UNICEF’s regional director, George Laryea-Adjei, said in a statement.”As a result, children have suffered enormous setbacks in their learning journey.”In India, 80% of children aged 14-18 years said they learnt less than when they were in a physical classroom, according to UNICEF.Among children aged between six and 13 years, 42% said they had no access to remote learning.”Their future is at stake,” Deepu Singh, a farmer in India’s Jharkhand state, said last week of his children ages 9 and 10.The pair have not been to school in a year and have no internet access at home, Singh told AFP, adding: “I do not know English. I cannot help him (my son), even if I want to.”Students in the rest of the region were similarly impacted, UNICEF reported.In Pakistan, 23% of young children had no access to any device for remote learning.Some towns in Nepal have been broadcasting radio lessons due to the lack of internet access.”We are (in) a dangerous situation,” Nepalese schoolteacher Rajani K.C. told AFP last week.”If the pandemic continues and the academic sector loses more years, what kind of human resource will the country have in the future?” 
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Chilean scientists have announced the discovery of the first-ever southern hemisphere remains of a type of Jurassic-era “winged lizard” known as a pterosaur.Fossils of the dinosaur which lived some 160 million years ago in what is today the Atacama desert, were unearthed in 2009.They have now been confirmed to be of a rhamphorhynchine pterosaur — the first such creature to be found in Gondwana, the prehistoric supercontinent that later formed the southern hemisphere landmasses.Researcher Jhonatan Alarcon of the University of Chile said the creatures had a wingspan of up to 2 meters, a long tail, and pointed snout.”We show that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than known to date,” he added.The discovery was also “the oldest known pterosaur found in Chile,” the scientists reported in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.      
 
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Several hundred people line up every morning, starting before dawn, on a grassy area outside Nairobi’s largest hospital hoping to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Sometimes the line moves smoothly, while on other days, the staff tells them there’s nothing available and they should come back tomorrow.Halfway around the world, at a church in Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia, two workers with plenty of vaccine doses waited hours Wednesday for anyone to show up, whiling away the time by listening to music from a laptop. In six hours, one person came through the door.The dramatic contrast highlights the vast disparity around the world. In richer countries, people can often pick and choose from multiple available vaccines, walk into a site near their homes and get a shot in minutes. Pop-up clinics, such as the one in Atlanta, bring vaccines into rural areas and urban neighborhoods, but it is common for them to get very few takers.In the developing world, supply is limited and uncertain. Just more than 3% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated, and health officials and citizens often have little idea what will be available from one day to the next. More vaccines have been flowing in recent weeks, but the World Health Organization’s director in Africa said Thursday that the continent will get 25% fewer doses than anticipated by the end of the year, in part because of the rollout of booster shots in wealthier counties such as the United States.Bidian Okoth said he spent more than three hours in line at a Nairobi hospital, only to be told to go home because there weren’t enough doses. But a friend who traveled to the U.S. got a shot almost immediately after his arrival there with a vaccine of his choice, “like candy,” he said.”We’re struggling with what time in the morning we need to wake up to get the first shot. Then you hear people choosing their vaccines. That’s super, super excessive,” he said.Okoth said his uncle died from COVID-19 in June and had given up twice on getting vaccinated because of the length of the lines, even though he was eligible because of his age. The death jolted Okoth, a health advocate, into seeking a dose for himself.He stopped at one hospital so often on his way to work that a doctor “got tired of seeing me” and told Okoth he would call him when doses were available. Late last month, after a new donation of vaccines arrived from Britain, he got his shot.The disparity comes as the U.S. is moving closer to offering booster shots to large segments of the population even as it struggles to persuade Americans to get vaccinated in the first place. President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans, including private-sector employees, as the country faces the surging COVID-19 delta variant.Riley Erickson poses for a photo at Springfield Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sept. 8, 2021, where the disaster relief group CORE was offering COVID-19 vaccinations. The one person who showed up was a college student.About 53% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging about 145,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, along with about 1,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Africa has had more than 7.9 million confirmed cases, including more than 200,000 deaths, and the highly infectious delta variant recently drove a surge in new cases as well.John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Thursday that “we have not seen enough science” to drive decisions on when to administer booster shots.”Without that, we are gambling,” he said, and urged countries to send doses to countries facing “vaccine famine” instead.In the U.S., vaccines are easy to find, but some people are hesitant to get them.At the church in northwest Atlanta, a nonprofit group offered the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines for free without an appointment from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But site manager Riley Erickson spent much of the day waiting in an air-conditioned room full of empty chairs, though the group had reached out to neighbors and the church had advertised the location to its large congregation.Erickson, with the disaster relief organization CORE, said the vaccination rate in the area was low and he wasn’t surprised by the small turnout. The one person who showed up was a college student.FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2021, photo, medical workers prepare to remove the body of a coronavirus victim in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Machakos, Kenya.”When you put the effort into going into areas where there’s less interest, that’s kind of the result,” he said. His takeaway, however, was that CORE needed to spend more time in the community.Margaret Herro, CORE’s Georgia director, said the group has seen an uptick in vaccinations at its pop-up sites in recent weeks amid a COVID-19 surge fueled by the delta variant and the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine. It also has gone to meatpacking plants and other work locations, where turnout is better, and it plans to focus more on those places, Herro said.In Nairobi, Okoth believes there should be a global commitment to equity in the administration of vaccines so everyone has a basic level of immunity as quickly as possible.”If everyone at least gets a first shot, I don’t think anyone will care if others get even six booster shots,” he said.
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At a taxi stand by a bustling market in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, traders simply cross a road or two, get a shot in the arm and rush back to their work.Until this week, vaccination centers were based mostly in hospitals in this East African country that faced a brutal COVID-19 surge earlier this year.Now, more than a dozen tented sites have been set up in busy areas to make it easier to get inoculated in Kampala as health authorities team up with the Red Cross to administer more than 120,000 doses that will expire at the end of September.“All of this we could have done earlier, but we were not assured of availability of vaccines,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, who leads a team of scientists advising authorities on the pandemic response, speaking of vaccination spots in downtown areas. “Right now, we are receiving more vaccines and we have to deploy them as much as possible.”In addition to the 128,000 AstraZeneca doses donated by Norway at the end of August, the United Kingdom last month donated nearly 300,000 doses. China recently donated 300,000 doses of its Sinovac vaccine, and on Monday a batch of 647,000 Moderna doses donated by the United States arrived in Uganda.Suddenly Uganda must accelerate its vaccination drive. The country has sometimes struggled with hesitancy as some question the safety of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is no longer in use in Norway because of concerns over unusual blood clots in a small number of people who received it.Africa has fully vaccinated just 3.1% of its 1.3 billion people, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health officials across Africa have complained loudly of vaccine inequality and what they see as hoarding in some rich countries. Soon hundreds of millions of vaccine doses will be delivered to Africa through donations of excess doses by wealthy nations or purchases by the African Union.Africa is aiming to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by the end of 2022, a steep target given the global demand for doses. The African Union, representing the continent’s 54 countries, has ordered 400 million Johnson & Johnson doses, but the distribution of those doses will be spread out over 12 months because there simply isn’t enough supply.A nurse administers a coronavirus vaccination at Kisenyi Health Center in downtown Kampala, Uganda, Sept. 8, 2021.COVAX, the U.N.-backed program which aims to get vaccines to the neediest people in the world, said this week that its efforts continue “to be hampered by export bans, the prioritization of bilateral deals by manufacturers and countries, ongoing challenges in scaling up production by some key producers, and delays in filing for regulatory approval.”Uganda, a country of more than 44 million people, has recorded more than 120,000 cases of COVID-19, including just over 3,000 deaths, according to official figures. The country has given 1.65 million shots, but only about 400,000 people have received two doses, according to Wayengera. Uganda’s target is to fully vaccinate up to 5 million of the most vulnerable, including nurses and teachers, as soon as possible.At the Red Cross tent in downtown Kampala, demand for the jabs was high. By late afternoon only 30 of 150 doses remained, and some who arrived later were told to come back the next day.“I came here on a sure deal, but it hasn’t happened,” said trader Sulaiman Mivule after a nurse told him he was too late for a shot that day. “I will come back tomorrow. It’s easy for me here because I work in this area.”Asked why he was so eager to get his first shot, he said, “They are telling us that there could be a third wave. If it comes when we are very vaccinated, maybe it will not hurt us so much. Prevention is better than cure.”Mivule and others who spoke to the AP said they didn’t want to go to vaccination sites at hospitals because of they expected to find crowds there.Bernard Ssembatya said he had been driving by when he spotted the Red Cross’s white tent and went in for a jab on the spur of the moment. Afterward, he texted his friends about the opportunity.“I was getting demoralized by going to health centers,” he said. “You see a lot of people there and you don’t even want to try to enter.”Yet, despite enthusiasm among many, some still walked away without getting a shot when they were told their preferred vaccine was not yet available.The one-shot J&J vaccine, still unavailable in Uganda, is frequently asked for, said Jacinta Twinomujuni, a nurse with the Kampala Capital City Authority who monitored the scene.“I tell them, of course, that we don’t have it,” she said. “And they say, ‘OK, let’s wait for it.’” 
 
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The World Health Organization says low-income countries still do not have enough COVID-19 vaccines and is urging wealthier nations to deliver more doses. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has this report.
Producer: Kim Weeks
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Every year close to 200,000 people die from burns, according to World Health Organization data. The WHO says most of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Since the United States entered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, US military burn specialists have changed the way serious burns are treated. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Just over two months ago, on Independence Day, President Joe Biden declared that the United States was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” Vaccines had driven down the average daily death toll from COVID-19 from more than 3,400 at the start of the year to around 400 in early July.  It didn’t last.  On Thursday, with about 1,500 Americans dying of COVID-19 each day, according to ourworldindata.org, Biden announced new measures aimed at beating back the virus again.  Public health experts applaud the stepped-up efforts, including new vaccine mandates and increased access to testing. But some say they do not go far enough. And they note that the Biden administration’s mixed messaging deserves some of the blame for the current situation.  ‘Pandemic of the unvaccinated’ Despite vaccines that are safe, effective, free and widely available, one-quarter of the adult population has not yet taken its first shot.  The highly contagious delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus has ripped through this unprotected population like California wildfire, overwhelming hospitals in parts of the country and dampening the economic recovery that was starting to take hold.  FILE – In this Aug. 26, 2021 file photo, a syringe is prepared with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccine clinic in Santa Ana, Calif.The United States has the highest death rate and the second-lowest vaccination rate among major industrialized nations, according to ourworldindata.org. “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Biden said. The United States is also unusual among industrialized nations for the level of political division over pandemic measures.  Resistance to COVID-19 restrictions that started among conservatives during the Trump administration has persisted under Biden. Republican elected officials have pushed back against mask and vaccine mandates as unconstitutional infringements of personal liberty. The Republican governors of Texas and Florida have barred local school districts from requiring masks in classrooms.  Biden’s new plan will require teachers and federal employees to be vaccinated. It mandates that private businesses with more than 100 employees must require their workers to get the shots or be tested weekly.  Biden took aim in his speech Thursday at “elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.”  Those officials shot back. “See you in court,”  Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem wrote on Twitter. South Dakota will stand up to defend freedom. FILE – In this Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, file photo, students, some wearing protective masks, arrive for the first day of school at Sessums Elementary School in Riverview, Fla.‘Not safe’ Overall, public health officials said the Biden administration is doing the right thing. The administration is mandating vaccines under its purview to make workplaces safe.  “It is not safe at this moment to return to a workspace where there are large numbers of unvaccinated people. It is just not,” said Brown University School of Public Health Dean Ashish Jha at a news briefing. “While I appreciate the rights of people who choose not to be vaccinated, people also have a right to be able to go to work and not get infected, not get sick and not die.” Jha said the administration also should have required vaccination at colleges and universities and for interstate travel, areas where the federal government has jurisdiction.  “These things largely work,” he said. “People don’t love them, but they work.” 
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Denmark Friday dropped proof-of-vaccination — or vaccine passports — requirements at nightclubs, the last of the European nation’s COVID-19 restrictions, after a successful vaccination program led to almost 87% of all adults being fully vaccinated.
The European Center for Disease Control says as of Friday, nearly 90% of adults in Denmark have at least one dose and nearly 70% of its entire population. 
 
Officials have been gradually lifting restrictions as vaccination levels increased, lifting mask requirements on public transportation August 14, and reopening nightclubs, lifting limits on public gatherings, and use of the vaccine passports at restaurants, sporting events and other venues September 1.  
Denmark’s health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said last month the epidemic appears to be under control but warned the government will act as needed if the situation deteriorates.
Face masks or shields are still mandatory at airports and people are advised to wear one when at the doctor’s, test centers or hospitals.
Distancing is still recommended, and strict entry restrictions still apply for non-citizens at the borders.
The outbreak is still considered “an ordinary dangerous illness” in Denmark.
 Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and AFP.
 
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The U.S. space agency on Friday will brief the media on the initial analysis of the first sample of a Martian rock collected by its Perseverance rover earlier this week. NASA confirmed the rover had collected the rock, releasing a picture of the sample inside a collection tube. The rover made a first attempt to collect a sample in early August, but the rock crumbled during the drilling and coring process. The rover moved to a different location earlier this month where the team selected a rock that held up better. Over the past week, scientists have been using Perseverance’s instruments to analyze the sample and they are expected to reveal what they have discovered at Friday’s briefing.  Former NASA research director Scott Hubbard — now a professor at Stanford University — told the Associated Press the collection “is a huge step forward in what the science community has wanted for more than 50 years, which is to bring samples back from the Red Planet.”  He said the sample appears to be one that could be dated, a main goal of collecting such rocks, along with looking for evidence of past or present biological life. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The plan is for subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, to send spacecraft to Mars to collect Perseverance’s sealed samples from the surface and bring them to Earth for in-depth analysis. Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater February 18, and the rover team kicked off the science phase of its mission June 1. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
 
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With no masks in sight, buzzing offices and concerts drawing tens of thousands, Denmark on Friday ditches vaccine passports in nightclubs, ending its last COVID-19 curb.The vaccine passports were introduced in March 2021 when Copenhagen slowly started easing restrictions.They were abolished at all venues on Sept. 1, except in nightclubs, where they will be no longer necessary from Friday.”We are definitely at the forefront in Denmark as we have no restrictions, and we are now on the other side of the pandemic thanks to the vaccination rollout,” Ulrik Orum-Petersen, a promoter at event organizer Live Nation, told AFP.On Saturday, a sold-out concert in Copenhagen will welcome 50,000 people, a first in Europe.Already on Sept. 4, Live Nation organized a first open-air festival, aptly named “Back to Live,” which gathered 15,000 people in Copenhagen.”Being in the crowd, singing like before, it almost made me forget COVID and everything we’ve been through these past months,” said Emilie Bendix, 26, a concertgoer.Denmark’s vaccination campaign has gone swiftly, with 73% of the 5.8 million population fully vaccinated, and 96% of those 65 and older.’Aiming for free movement'”We’re aiming for free movement… What will happen now is that the virus will circulate, and it will find the ones who are not vaccinated,” epidemiologist Lone Simonsen told AFP.”Now the virus is no longer a societal threat, thanks to the vaccine,” said Simonsen, who works at the University of Roskilde.According to the World Health Organization, the Scandinavian country has benefitted from public compliance with government guidelines and the COVID-19 strategy adopted.”Like many countries, Denmark has, throughout the pandemic, implemented public health and social measures to reduce transmission. But at the same time it has greatly relied on individuals and communities to comply voluntarily,” said Catherine Smallwood, WHO Europe’s emergency officer.With around 500 daily COVID-19 cases and a reproduction rate of 0.7, Danish authorities say they have the virus under control.Health Minister Magnus Heunicke has however vowed that the government would not hesitate to swiftly reimpose restrictions if necessary.Authorities insist that the return to normal life must be coupled with strict hygiene measures and the isolation of sick people.The WHO still considers the global situation critical and has urged caution.”Every country needs to remain vigilant as and when the epidemiological situation changes,” Smallwood said.Denmark has said it will keep a close eye on the number of hospitalizations — just under 130 at the moment — and conduct meticulous sequencing to follow the virus.A third dose has also been available to risk groups since Thursday.Simonsen said the vaccines have so far provided immunity from variants “but if escape variants (resistant to the vaccine) were to appear, we will have to rethink our strategy.”Christian Nedergaard, who owns several restaurants and wine bars in Copenhagen, said that while everyone is happy about the return to normal life, “the situation is still complicated.””The memory of coronavirus will fade very quickly from some people’s minds but not for everyone, and for restaurants this period has for sure been a game-changer,” he said.”The industry needs to think about how to become more resilient.”Travelers entering Denmark must still present either a vaccine passport or a negative PCR test, and masks are mandatory in airports. 
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As the United States continues to deal with the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant, President Joe Biden announced new sweeping vaccine mandates as part of a multipronged push to end the pandemic. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
Producer: Mary Cieslak 
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Africa is slated to receive 25% fewer COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year than it was expecting, the director of the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa said Thursday.The African continent, already struggling with a thin supply of vaccines while many wealthy nations initiate booster shot programs, has fully vaccinated just more than 3% of its residents.The global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX announced Wednesday that it expects to receive about 1.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, as opposed to the projection of 1.9 billion doses it received in June.”Yesterday, #COVAX shipment forecasts for the rest of the year were revised downwards by 25%, in part because of the prioritization of bilateral deals over international solidarity.” – Dr @MoetiTshidi— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) September 9, 2021Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director, said during a press conference Thursday that the United States has thrown away three times as many vaccine doses as COVAX has delivered to African countries since March.COVAX delivered more than 5 million doses to Africa in the past week, but the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention said that as of September 1, U.S. pharmacies have thrown away more than 15 million doses since March.The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday implored wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that poorer countries have more access to the vaccine. Tedros had previously asked rich countries not to provide boosters until September.Also on Thursday, Turkey’s health minister said the country is soon likely to approve a locally made vaccine, which began late-stage trials in June, for emergency use. Ankara expects it will start mass producing “Turkovac” this October.Italy sent teams to the island of Lampedusa to inoculate newly arrived immigrants. Lampedusa is one of the main arrival points for African migrants from Libya and Tunisia. Roughly 40,000 migrants from North Africa have arrived in Italy so far this year, twice as many as in 2020.In Los AngelesMeanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education approved a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years and older. Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.The measure also requires students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October. The district will allow medical or religious exemptions.Los Angeles is the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest, with just more than 600,000 students.In JapanSeparately, Japan announced Thursday that it would extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until Sept. 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated.Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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A series of spacewalks is underway outside the International Space Station. Plus, a fire scare occurs in the Russian section of the ISS, and amateur stargazers have set up camp at an ancient Mesopotamian site in modern-day Iraq. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.
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The U.S. government sued the southwestern state of Texas on Thursday to try to block its new law that bans abortions in the state after about six weeks of pregnancy, the most restrictive anti-abortion statute in the country. Attorney General Merrick Garland, at a Washington news conference, said the Texas law “is clearly unconstitutional under long-term Supreme Court precedents” granting women in the U.S. the constitutional right to have an abortion. He said the Department of Justice, in bringing the lawsuit against the country’s second-largest state, “has a duty to uphold the rule of law.” He said “all provisions” of the law concerned him.  The U.S. Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote last week, allowed the law to take effect, a decision praised by anti-abortion advocates looking to eventually overturn the court’s landmark 1973 decision declaring that women in the U.S. hold a constitutional right to have an abortion. Those supporting U.S. abortion rights, including President Joe Biden, derided the court’s late-night decision, which has stopped most abortions in the state. Biden warned that the law would cause “unconstitutional chaos” because it gives private citizens, rather than government officials, the right to enforce it by filing civil lawsuits against people who help a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks, whether it be a doctor who performs the procedure or someone who drives a woman to a clinic. The law allows people winning such lawsuits to collect at least $10,000 and makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. FILE – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks in the House Chamber in Austin, Texas, Feb. 5, 2019.Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said this week that the state would strive to “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas” by arresting and prosecuting them. He defended the law, saying women who were raped would still have six weeks to end their pregnancy. Many women do not realize they are pregnant at six weeks. Those supporting abortion rights in the U.S. fear the high court’s ruling allowing the Texas law to take effect presages an erosion or reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing abortion rights. In its new term starting next month, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that the southern state of Mississippi adopted. 
 
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday is planning to order 2.5 million federal workers and contractors to get vaccinated against the coronavirus as part of a new effort to control the infectious disease. 
 
The new order, which eliminates an option he previously gave the workers to get regularly tested for the virus in lieu of being inoculated, is part of a six-point plan Biden is laying out in a White House address to combat the surge in recent weeks of delta variant coronavirus cases and deaths. 
 
Aides said the U.S. leader will spell out new efforts to convince the unvaccinated to get inoculated, protecting those already vaccinated with booster shots in coming weeks, keeping schools open, increasing testing and requiring face masks in some situations, advancing the economic recovery and improving care for those who have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. 
 
With the mandate for federal worker vaccinations, the White House is hoping businesses across the U.S. will follow suit. Some major companies are already requiring their workers to get vaccinated or be fired. 
 
It was not immediately clear if Biden’s order covering federal workers and contractors would allow for exceptions for those seeking religious or medical exemptions from vaccination. 
 
The latest surge in U.S. coronavirus cases and deaths is mostly among the unvaccinated, although there have been some breakthrough infections among those who were vaccinated months ago. FILE – In this Aug. 17, 2021, photo, an ICU nurse moves electrical cords for medical machines outside the room of a COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit at the Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport, La. 
More than 177 million people out of the country’s population of 332 million have been vaccinated, but vaccines have yet to be approved by federal health regulators for children under 12 years old.  
 
More than 62% of the population 12 and older has been vaccinated, but about 150,000 new cases are being recorded each day in recent weeks and about 1,000 people a day are dying.  
 
For a variety of reasons — such as a belief they won’t catch the virus or a contention that no one should be able to demand they get inoculated — millions of Americans remain unvaccinated. 
 
Some state governors, mostly conservative Republicans, have urged their citizens to get vaccinated, but they balked at mandating the inoculations or requiring face masks in schools or at workplaces. That has led to numerous political and legal disputes, with some courts siding with local officials wanting to impose coronavirus rules opposed by governors in their states. Nicole Tschabourian, 8, (L) and Leah Yousefi, 8, arrive with printed barcodes for the first day of school and return to full-time in-person learning after the COVID-19 break in Glendale, Los Angeles, California, Aug. 18, 2021. 
The spike in Americans who have not been vaccinated includes an increasing number of young children who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine.   
 
The American Academy of Pediatrics said cases among children soared to 750,000 between August 5 and September 2.  
 
The latest surge has pushed hospitals and health care workers across the U.S. to a breaking point, with some intensive care units filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients.  
The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, has advanced sharply since the worst of the pandemic 18 months ago, but the number of new jobs in the country slowed markedly in August, which Biden blamed on the surge in new coronavirus cases. 
 Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.  
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U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to call for a summit on boosting the global supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, according to U.S. news outlets. The summit will be held during the United Nations General Assembly later this month.  The Washington Post reports the topics will include coordination among world leaders to collectively tackle the health crisis and address inequities, including the slow rate of vaccinations in the developing world.The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. FILE – Workers unload 1.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine donated by the U.S. through the COVAX program, at the Armando Escalon aerial base, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, June 27, 2021, in this handout picture released by the Honduran presidency.Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education is expected to approve a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years old and older.  Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.  The measure would also require students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October.  If the measure passes, Los Angeles would be the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest with just over 600,000 students. Separately, Japan announced Thursday that it will extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until September 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.  Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden will unveil a new strategy to combat the dramatic surge of COVID-19 cases across the nation during a major White House speech Thursday afternoon.White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday that Biden will spell out six methods designed to encourage more Americans to get inoculated against the virus, including involvement of the private sector.Biden’s speech comes as the U.S. is experiencing a growing number of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths sparked by the highly contagious delta variant, which has completely upended the administration’s aggressive vaccination efforts during its first months in office.The majority of new infections have been among Americans who have not been vaccinated, including a spike in the number of young children who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine.The American Academy of Pediatrics said cases among children soared to 750,000 between Aug. 5 and Sept. 2.The latest surge has pushed hospitals and health care workers across the U.S. to a breaking point, with intensive care units filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients, and stalled the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic, a key goal of Biden’s first year in office.
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It’s been 20 years since terrorists rammed passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. The wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq were wars in which medical advances saved more lives than in any other war. VOA’s Carol Pearson tells us about one of those advances.
Camera: Mike Burke
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The Texas anti-abortion law, which was allowed to go into effect last week despite being in clear conflict with decades-old precedents set by the United States Supreme Court in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, is a complex piece of legal engineering. It was intentionally built to avoid initial judicial review and structured to compel people to comply with it, even if they believe it violates their constitutional rights, through fear of being bombarded with excessive legal fees that could bankrupt them. Attorney General Merrick Garland this week ordered the Justice Department to explore “all options” to challenge Texas’s highly restrictive abortion law and to protect abortion clinics that are under attack. Many Democrats and abortion rights proponents caution, however, that while they believe the law is unconstitutional, it was crafted in a way that makes legal challenges difficult.  FILE – U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, June 25, 2021.Senate Bill 8, as the legislation is called, makes it illegal in Texas for a doctor to perform an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy — before most women are even aware that they are pregnant. Crucially, however, the law explicitly bans state officials from acting to enforce the law, delegating that responsibility instead to private citizens, who are eligible to recover a $10,000 judgment, plus attorney’s fees, from anyone who they can prove aided or abetted a woman seeking an abortion. The law casts a broad net, meaning that not only doctors, but clinicians and clinic workers, and even relatives who help pay for an abortion are liable. However, the plain language of the law states that only people who “knowingly” assist someone seeking an abortion are liable, meaning that the commonly cited example of an Uber driver being exposed to a lawsuit under the bill is incorrect, experts say. The Supreme Court last week, in a 5-4 decision, declined to block the law from coming into effect on procedural grounds, arguing that because there is no specific individual charged with enforcing the law, there is nobody who can be sued over it, and therefore, nobody the court can enjoin from enforcing it.  President Joe Biden sharply criticized the Supreme Court ruling and instructed Garland to explore ways to challenge the Texas law.Thus far, abortion clinics in Texas have been careful to observe the new law — which makes no exceptions for rape or incest — and avoid drawing fire from self-appointed citizens or groups claiming violations of the new abortion restrictions. However, it is likely that eventually someone will defy the six-week limit on pregnancies before a procedure, leading to a constitutional test case. Opponents furious FILE – Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks in Lubbock, Texas, March 2, 2021.Opponents of the legislation have been scathing in their criticism of the Texas legislature and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott who signed the legislation. “Texas politicians have succeeded for the moment in making a mockery of the rule of law, upending abortion care in Texas, and forcing patients to leave the state — if they have the means — to get constitutionally protected health care,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “This should send chills down the spine of everyone in this country who cares about the Constitution. We will keep fighting this ban until abortion access is restored in Texas.” Others aimed their anger at the Supreme Court for choosing not to block enforcement of the statute. “The Supreme Court has ignored 50 years of precedent and set back the hands of time, essentially allowing Texas to be a pre-Roe [v. Wade] state,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “This is a travesty for the nearly seven million women of reproductive age, and everyone who supports access to safe, legal abortion.” FILE – Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, center, speaks against a bill that would ban abortions as early as six weeks and allow private citizens to enforce it through civil lawsuits, in the House Chamber in Austin, Texas, May 5, 2021.Supporters claim victory Supporters of the law, however, see it as a victory over a court system that they believe is rigged against them. The anti-abortion movement had two main goals in advancing the legislation, said John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, a group closely involved in drafting the legislation.  “The first one was, how do we have a pro-life policy actually be enforced, when we have lawless district attorneys who are not enforcing pro-life laws,” Seago said. “The second one is these activist federal judges — how do you get around them? [They are] looking for excuses to hold up laws, even though we can win ultimately.” Genesis of the law The roots of S.B. 8 can be traced back to an article by a former solicitor general of the state of Texas, Jonathan F. Mitchell, which was published in the Virginia Law Review in 2018. Called The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, the article argued that when federal courts block enforcement of state laws, those laws are not, as popularly believed, “struck down.” Rather, they remain on the books and are simply not enforced.  That leaves room for future, and even retroactive, enforcement, if a later Supreme Court overrules a previous opinion enjoining enforcement. And, critically for this case, Mitchell theorized that a bill that provided a private cause of action in state court could continue to be enforced by private citizens, even if a federal court has enjoined state officials from enforcing it. That would remain the case unless a person sued under the law pursued an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. “Unless and until the Supreme Court of the United States declares a statute unconstitutional, the States remain free to authorize and entertain private enforcement actions in their own courts — even after a federal district or circuit court has disapproved the statute and enjoined the State’s executive from enforcing it,” Mitchell wrote. Mitchell was closely involved in the drafting of S.B. 8. Private cause of action It may not be clear to a layperson how a private individual with no connection to a person who gets an abortion — and no way to show that they have suffered personal harm because of it — can have the standing to sue in the first place.  If this were a federal law, that objection would have force. But under state law in Texas, the legislature is allowed to specifically confer standing on private individuals in certain kinds of cases if it chooses to do so. In S.B. 8, that is precisely what state legislators did.  Most states have similar rules allowing the legislature to confer standing on private citizens, which is one reason why governors and legislators in at least seven states across the country have said that they are preparing legislation similar to S.B. 8 in their states. FILE – A security guard opens the door to the Whole Women’s Health Clinic in Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 1, 2021.Fear of legal fees The law is structured to compel compliance — even if a defendant in a potential case believes that their rights are being violated and that they would be vindicated in court — through fear of legal bills.The law itself does not allow someone sued under it to recover legal fees from their accuser, even if they are able to demonstrate their innocence. However, it does allow the accuser to recover legal fees from the defendant in the case of a guilty verdict.  But the burden of legal fees is potentially even heavier than it seems. If Mitchell’s theory is correct, and enforcement of the law could only ever be truly blocked by a Supreme Court ruling that it is unconstitutional, that means someone who wants to challenge it is going to face years of lawsuits involving huge legal fees. But in the United States, a defendant in a federal lawsuit who is asserting his or her constitutional rights are being violated is generally not eligible to recover legal fees.  In the law review article, Mitchell lays out the implications plainly.”Of course, the defendants in these private enforcement actions can reassert the constitutional objections to the statute — and perhaps they will persuade the court to follow the reasoning of the courts that have disapproved the statute,” he wrote. “But a defendant has no entitlement to attorneys’ fees when he asserts his constitutional rights defensively in a private enforcement action, and the need to foot one’s own legal bills may induce statutory compliance even for those who expect to prevail on their constitutional objections.” Boomerang effect There has been much speculation that the unique legal structure of the Texas law might just as easily be applied to other areas in which lawmakers want to curtail specific rights that have been guaranteed by court rulings.  For example, some have suggested that states where a majority of residents disagree with the Supreme Court’s rulings on handgun bans might create a private right of action against gun dealers who sell them. The point would not be to win an argument over the constitutionality of the statute, but to compel compliance with it anyway. Seago, of Texas Right to Life, said that the “narrow focus” of his organization is such that the broader implications of the use of this novel legal structure are not a great concern, but that the group welcomes the opportunity to resolve any issues in court.  “The question kind of assumes you are headed towards a collision in our federalist principles. But that’s an important legal question that should be answered, not avoided just because it’s a new question,” he said. 
 
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