Month: April 2021

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that fully vaccinated people can safely travel within the United States without getting tested before or after their journeys.CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced the new guidelines during the White House COVID-19 response team briefing and was quick to add the CDC still does not recommend nonessential travel for people who are not fully vaccinated.FILE - Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 18, 2021.The CDC also recommends fully vaccinated travelers continue to wear masks, maintain 2 meters of social distance and wash their hands regularly.Walensky was asked if the new guidelines suggest she does not still feel the sense of “impending doom” she described earlier this week…

A handful of coins unearthed from a pick-your-own-fruit orchard in rural Rhode Island and other random corners of New England may help solve one of the planet's oldest cold cases.The villain in this tale: a murderous English pirate who became the world's most-wanted criminal after plundering a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims home to India from Mecca, then eluded capture by posing as a slave trader."It's a new history of a nearly perfect crime," said Jim Bailey, an amateur historian and metal detectorist who found the first intact 17th-century Arabian coin in a meadow in Middletown.That ancient pocket change — among the oldest ever found in North America — could explain how pirate Capt. Henry Every vanished into the wind.On Sept. 7, 1695, the pirate ship Fancy, commanded by Every, ambushed…

Japanese Nobel laureate Isamu Akasaki, who won the physics prize for pioneering energy-efficient LED lighting -- a weapon against global warming and poverty -- has died aged 92, his university said Friday.   Akasaki won the 2014 prize with two other scientists, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura. Together they developed the blue light-emitting diode, described as a "revolutionary" invention by the Nobel jury.   He died of pneumonia on Thursday morning at a hospital in the city of Nagoya, according to a statement on the website of Meijo University, where Akasaki had been a professor.   LED lamps last for tens of thousands of hours and use just a fraction of energy compared with the incandescent lightbulb pioneered by Thomas Edison in the 19th century.   Red and green diodes…

ABOARD THE MSC GRANDIOSA — Italy may be in a strict coronavirus lockdown this Easter with travel restricted between regions and new quarantines imposed. But a few miles offshore, guests aboard the MSC Grandiosa cruise ship are shimmying to Latin music on deck and sipping cocktails by the pool.In one of the anomalies of lockdowns that have shuttered hotels and resorts around the world, the Grandiosa has been plying the Mediterranean Sea this winter with seven-night cruises, a lonely flag-bearer of the global cruise industry.After cruise ships were early sources of highly publicized coronavirus outbreaks, the Grandiosa has tried to chart a course through the pandemic with strict anti-virus protocols approved by Italian authorities that seek to create a "health bubble" on board.Passengers and crew are tested before and during…

Percentagewise, Lebanon is home to the largest Christian population in the Middle East. As the country struggles in the face of multiple deep crises with no sign of respite, Easter this year offers little to celebrate. Jacob Russell has this report from Beirut. Camera: Jacob Russell, Agency Archive        Producer: Jason Godman ...

After spending much of the past year in lockdown, Tel Aviv makeup artist Artyom Kavnatsky was ready to get back to work. But when he showed up for a recent photo shoot, his employer turned him away. The reason? He had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus.“He didn’t take me because I didn’t get vaccinated,” Kavnatsky said. “It’s discrimination, and it’s not all right.”The breakneck pace of Israel’s vaccination drive has made it one of the few countries able to return to much of its pre-pandemic routine. Bars and businesses, hotels and health clubs have all sprung back to life in Israel, where some 80% of the adult population is fully vaccinated and new infections and COVID-19 deaths have plummeted.While Israel provides a glimpse of what may be possible with…

India’s health ministry Friday reported 81,466 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period. The new tally is the South Asian country’s highest daily count in six months. The western state of Maharashtra has more than half of the new cases with 43,183.India has 12.3 million COVID infections. Only the U.S and Brazil have more cases, with 30.5 million and 12.8 million respectively, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Hopkins reports there are more than 129.6 million global infections.In Brazil’s largest city, gravediggers are exhuming bodies from old graves to make way for the latest victims of the coronavirus. Gravediggers in hazmat suits are working diligently in Sao Paulo’s Vila Nova Cachoeirinha cemetery to accommodate the growing number of bodies.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that vaccine…

A California community that has been a bellwether of the coronavirus pandemic's rampage across the United States warned on Thursday that the number of cases of more contagious COVID-19 variants is increasing to worrisome levels."The region's progress in curbing the pandemic remains precarious," the health department in Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, said."County residents are therefore urged to avoid travel, quarantine if travelling, and consistently use face coverings."The situation in Santa Clara, which was home to an early surge of coronavirus in California last year and the nation's first death from COVID-19, offers a window into the pandemic's progress across the wider United States.Several states, including Florida and Michigan, are struggling to contain a resurgence of the virus linked to new highly contagious variants.The seven-day daily average of…

SpaceX had another rough day but still names the members of its all-civilian crew. Plus, a new study examines the effects of long-term space travel on the human body. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has The Week in Space.Producer: Arash Arabasadi.    ...

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, Thursday stressed the need for Germany to stock up on COVID-19 vaccine for possible repeat shots next year, and said the nation should do so with or without the rest of the European Union.Spahn made the remarks during a Berlin virtual news briefing on the countries COVID-19 vaccination program and to mark the opening of BioNTech's plant in Marburg, Germany. He said the new plant provides Germany with an opportunity to plan for the possible need for additional doses of vaccine. Germany’s Merkel Says Europe Needs More Vaccine Independence Chancellor tells German lawmakers Europe must have enough COVID-19 vaccine for Europeans Spahn said at this point no one has been vaccinated for longer than a few months and no one knows how long protection will last,…

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, Thursday stressed the need for Germany to stock up on COVID-19 vaccine for possible repeat shots next year, and said the nation should do so with or without the rest of the European Union.Spahn made the remarks during a Berlin virtual news briefing on the countries COVID-19 vaccination program and to mark the opening of BioNTech's plant in Marburg, Germany. He said the new plant provides Germany with an opportunity to plan for the possible need for additional doses of vaccine. Germany’s Merkel Says Europe Needs More Vaccine Independence Chancellor tells German lawmakers Europe must have enough COVID-19 vaccine for Europeans Spahn said at this point no one has been vaccinated for longer than a few months and no one knows how long protection will last,…

The World Health Organization says Europe’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts are  “unacceptably slow” in the face of a new surge of the virus and new, more contagious variants.  Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO’s European director, issued a statement Thursday urging the continent’s leaders to “speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines, and using every single vial we have in stock, now.”The number of new infections across Europe had fallen below 1 million just five weeks ago, but the global health agency says those numbers have since surged to 1.6 million new cases, with nearly 24,000 deaths. Dr. Kluge said barely 10% of people across Europe have received at least one dose of a vaccine, with just 4% fully vaccinated.EU Tightens Vaccine Exports to Ensure Supply for EuropeOfficials say…

A man in Africa who developed Ebola despite receiving a vaccine recovered but suffered a relapse nearly six months later that led to 91 new cases before he died. The report adds to evidence that the deadly virus can lurk in the body long after symptoms end, and that survivors need monitoring for their own welfare and to prevent spread.Relapses like this one from the 2018-20 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo are thought to be rare. This is the first one clearly shown to have spawned a large cluster of new cases. The New England Journal of Medicine published details on Wednesday.Earlier this month, scientists said a separate outbreak that's going on now in Guinea seems related to one in West Africa that ended five years ago. A…

A joint report by the World Health Organization and China this week concluded it is “extremely unlikely” that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory, despite the theory receiving renewed attention following the comments of a former top U.S. health official.The long-awaited WHO report released Tuesday said the lab leak theory was the least likely of four scenarios considered by a team of international experts who traveled to Wuhan, China earlier this year to investigate the origin of the coronavirus. The researchers determined that the virus most likely jumped from bats to humans, probably via a third animal that remains unidentified.That conclusion stands in contrast to the comments of Robert Redfield, who headed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump. Redfield told CNN last week he…

President Emmanuel Macron ordered France into its third national lockdown Wednesday in an effort to slow a third wave of COVID-19 infecting his country.Among the lockdown measures, Macron closed all schools for three weeks beginning next Monday.Macron had hoped to avoid a lockdown and the effect it would have on the economy. However, the country’s death toll is nearing 100,000 and it has struggled with a vaccine rollout that has been slower than hoped for. A rise in cases is crippling intensive care units in areas hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic."We will lose control if we do not move now," he said in a televised address to the nation.He also announced movement restrictions, beginning Saturday, for the whole country for at least a month.In the U.S., the Centers for…

The famous pink cherry blossoms of Kyoto reached full bloom this year on March 26, the earliest date in the 12 centuries since records began, according to a Japanese university.The earlier flowering indicates climate change, said Yasuyuki Aono, a professor of environmental science at Osaka Prefectural University, who has compiled a database of records of the full blooms over the centuries.Global temperatures in 2020 were among the highest on record and rivaled 2016 as the hottest year ever, according to international data compiled by the World Meteorological Organization and released in January this year."As the temperatures rise, the onset of flowering is earlier," Aono told Reuters in a Zoom interview.Osaka University records include court documents from Imperial Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, as well as medieval diaries.Cherry blossoms have…

A team of nine South African students and young professionals won a Cape Town competition to create a zero-carbon home, just ahead of Earth Day on April 22.Experts say the house design, which incorporates solar power, passive cooling, rainwater harvesting and a food garden, could help reduce the nation's carbon footprint.The first My Clean Green Home — a local building and design competition — challenged designers to build a house that produces no carbon emissions, with a budget of $12,000.Sharne Bloem is the architect for the winning team, Mahali, which means "place" in Swahili."It's a good way to bring what we believe, what we studied, to the general public," Bloem said. "And actually, to share this with the city of Cape Town and the festival and to educate people more about net-zero carbon buildings."  The team built the house from recycled…