Category: All

Another commercial spaceflight company launches into the space tourism business. Plus, more spacewalks outside the International Space Station, and beauty tips from astronauts on board. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space. ...

The first all-civilian crew of astronauts is now orbiting the Earth after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched them into space in spectacular fashion late Wednesday. Video from the launch showed the initial fireball light up the night sky as the rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:02 p.m. local time. The capsule could be seen streaking across the sky as it gained altitude. About 12 minutes into the flight, a bright plume of light appeared as the Dragon capsule separated from the rocket's second stage and the crew entered orbit, while the reusable first stage made its way back to Earth for a vertical landing on a sea barge.  The team of four amateur astronauts is led by billionaire e-commerce executive Jared Isaacman, 38,…

Scientists from multiple organizations that monitor and assess the state of the Earth's climate system warn the world is not on track to meet the target of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. The United in Science 2021 report warns greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are continuing at record levels, committing the planet to dangerous future warming. It notes the last five-year period has been the warmest since record-keeping began in 1850.  Scientists say rising temperatures due to human activity are causing higher than average temperatures in the Arctic, Europe and Asia. That is increasing the frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, and other extreme weather events throughout the world.  Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Petteri Taalas says weather…

A review issued Wednesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says a third dose of Pfizer’s two-dose COVID-19 vaccine boosts a person’s immunity against the virus, but said the current regimen still provides enough protection against severe illness. The FDA is considering Pfizer’s request to offer a third shot of its vaccine, which the drugmaker says is needed as its effectiveness wears off between six to eight months after the second dose. Pfizer submitted a preliminary study to the FDA that suggested a third dose of the vaccine given to more than 300 people boosted their immunity levels three to five times higher than after the earlier shots. Pfizer also cited a study from Israel, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, that showed infection rates were…

China tightened lockdowns and increased orders for mass testing in cities along its coast Wednesday amid the latest surge in COVID-19 cases. Checks have been set up in toll stations around the city of Putian in Fujian province, with a dozen of them closed entirely. The nearby cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou have also restricted travel as the delta variant spreads through the region. The National Health Commission on Wednesday said an additional 50 cases had been diagnosed in various parts of Fujian, most of them in the Putian region. Since the start of the pandemic, first detected in late 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, China has imposed strict testing, lockdowns, quarantines and mask-wearing requirements. Fujian has seen at least 152 new cases in recent days, prompting…

India’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved an incentive plan for the automobile sector aimed at boosting production of electric and hydrogen fuel-powered vehicles and promoting the manufacture of drones. The government will give about $3.5 billion in incentives to auto companies and drone manufacturers over a five-year period, Anurag Thakur, minister of information and broadcasting, told reporters. “The incentive scheme has been designed to help India become a global player in the automobile sector,” Thakur said, adding it would also boost local manufacturing. The proposal comes at a time when annual car sales in India have fallen to their lowest in a decade due to the pandemic, which followed an economic slowdown in 2019. Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) make up a fraction of the total. Several years ago, India was…

The latest in a recent line of billionaire space enthusiasts prepared for liftoff Wednesday along with three other private citizens aboard a SpaceX rocket ship, aiming to become the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth’s orbit.The quartet of amateur space travelers, led by Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, were due for blastoff as early as 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.The flight, with no professional astronauts accompanying SpaceX's paying customers, is expected to last about three days from liftoff to splashdown in the Atlantic."Everything is go for launch," SpaceX principal integration engineer John Insprucker declared about 3½ hours before launch time in a SpaceX webcast of pre-liftoff activities.Trip from hangarA short time earlier, Isaacman, 38, and…

One of California's most famous groves of giant sequoias is threatened by a small but intense wildfire burning in Sequoia National Park, officials said Wednesday. The roughly 7,000-acre KNP fire complex is burning about a mile away from the Giant Forest, home to the largest tree on earth by volume, dubbed General Sherman, said Rebecca Paterson, a public information officer for the National Park Service in Three Rivers, near where the fire is burning. About 115 employees have been evacuated from the park, along with residents of the eastern part of the town, Paterson said. The park was closed Tuesday as the fire began to threaten the Giant Forest, one of about 30 such groves and most visited, she said. FILE - A tourist stands next to the General Sherman giant sequoia at…

Iceland is now the home of the world's largest direct air capture and storage plant of carbon dioxide. The plant aims to remove 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide - one of the main contributors to global warming - from the air each year, as VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.Producer: Rob Raffaele. ...

The European Union is pledging to donate 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries by mid-2022. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the pledge Wednesday in Strasbourg, France during her annual State of the European Union speech before the European Parliament. Von der Leyen said the 200 million doses the EU plans to contribute is in addition to an earlier promise of 250 million doses, which she described as “an investment in solidarity, and it is an investment in global health.” Von der Leyen said “the scale of injustice and the level of urgency is obvious” with less than 1% of all global doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in low- and middle-income countries.  “Let’s do everything possible so that it does not turn into a pandemic of the…

High-level African officials met virtually this week to discuss the challenges Africa faces in trying to manage a growing population amid climate change. The conference was aimed at identifying ways African governments can manage these pressures to minimize or avoid conflict.Africa generates about 3% percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the lowest of any continent. But it’s more vulnerable than any other region in the world, since Africans depend so heavily on their natural environment for food, water and medicine.Speaking at a virtual conference Tuesday on climate, conflict and demographics in Africa, Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said African governments need to keep the climate in mind as they try to boost their economies.“Our first obligation for us and for African countries must always be to ensure the well-being of…

U.S. President Joe Biden says extreme weather caused by climate change is putting America in a “code red” situation. He’s pushing two massive bills in Congress, totaling in the trillions of dollars, to reverse the damage. From Washington, VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell looks at what’s at stake.  Produced by: Jesusemen Oni  ...

President Joe Biden tried to advance his domestic spending plans in Colorado on Tuesday by warning about the dangers of climate change while highlighting how his clean-energy proposals would also create well-paying jobs.The trip to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Flatirons Campus outside Denver capped the president's two-day swing to the West, and it offered Biden the chance to continue linking the need to pass his spending package to the urgent threat posed by climate change."Here's the good news: Something that is caused by humans can be solved by humans," Biden said. He deemed the need for a clean-energy future an "economic imperative and a national security imperative" and said that there was no time to waste as the impact of climate change seems to grow more severe by the…

Researchers in Australia have developed new microscopic lasers that have a range of potential medical, surgical, industrial and military uses.   Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) say "nanolasers" promise to be even more powerful than conventional technology. The technology uses laser light instead of electronics and is an approach called photonics. Nanolasers, they say, need only a small amount of energy to start shining. Instead of using mirrors that reflect light, the team has created a device that traps energy and prevents it from escaping. That power is harnessed and builds into a “strong, well-shaped” beam. Researchers say this overcomes a well-known challenge of nanolasers — “energy leakage.”   The project is a collaboration with academics at Korea University, and is published in the journal Nature Communications. The lead researcher is professor Yuri Kivshar,…

Britain’s chief medical officer (CMO), Professor Chris Whitty, recommended Monday that children between the ages of 12 and 15 be offered the COVID-19 vaccine, saying they would benefit from reduced disruption to their education. More than a week ago, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, the panel that advises British health departments on immunization policies, issued a statement saying the "margin of benefit” to inoculating children of those ages was too small for them to recommend the government do so. Britain's Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty attends a remote press conference to update the nation on the COVID-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on June 10, 2020.But Monday, Whitty, along with his counterparts from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, told reporters they are recommending to their…

A World Bank report released Monday suggests climate change could force 216 million people across six regions to migrate within their countries in the next 30 years, with “hotspots” emerging within the next nine years unless urgent steps are taken.  The “Groundswell Part 2” report examines how climate change is a powerful driver of migration within a nation because of its impact on people’s livelihoods through droughts, rising sea levels, crop failures and other climate-related conditions.   The original Groundswell climate report was published in 2018 and detailed projections and analysis for three world regions: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. “Groundswell 2” conducted similar studies on East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and eastern Europe and Central Asia.  Both studies established different scenarios to explore potential future…

New Zealand’s prime minister has announced Monday that the country’s largest city, with a population of 1.7 million, will remain in a strict lockdown in an effort to curb small outbreaks of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus.“It’s clear there is no widespread transmission of the virus in Auckland,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, “but so long as we have new cases emerging, there are risks,” she added speaking at a news conference.Auckland’s lockdown has been extended to September 21, with 33 new cases recorded Monday, following weekend reports of 23 and 20 cases.New Zealand went into a countrywide snap lockdown on August 17. Some restrictions, allowing people to go back to offices and schools, were lifted elsewhere in New Zealand last week.Israel was warned that Israeli travelers…

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…

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…

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.…

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…