The Biden administration has released a screening tool to help identify disadvantaged communities long plagued by environmental hazards, but it won’t include race as a factor in deciding where to devote resources.

Administration officials told reporters Friday that excluding race will make projects less likely to draw legal challenges and will be easier to defend, even as they acknowledged that race has been a major factor in terms of who experiences environmental injustice.

The decision was harshly challenged by members of the environmental justice community.

“It’s a major disappointment and it’s a major flaw in trying to identify those communities that have been hit hardest by pollution,” said Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

President Joe Biden has made combating climate change a priority of his administration and pledged in a sweeping executive order to “deliver environmental justice in communities all across America.” The order, signed his first week in office, sets a goal that the 40% of overall benefits from climate and environment investments would go to disadvantaged communities. The tool is a key component for carrying out that so-called Justice40 Initiative.

Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, said the tool will help direct federal investments in climate, clean energy and environmental improvements to communities “that have been left out and left behind for far too long.”

Catherine Coleman Flowers, a member of the advisory council who served on a working group that gave the Biden administration recommendations for the tool, said she agrees with the move to exclude race as an indicator.

She said that this tool is a good start that hopefully will improve with time and that it’s better than creating a tool that includes race as a factor and then gets struck down by the Supreme Court. She said, “race is a factor, but race isn’t the only factor.”

“Being marginalized in other ways is a factor,” she said.

The screening tool uses 21 factors, including air pollution, health outcomes and economic status, to identify communities that are most vulnerable to environmental and economic injustice.

But the omission of race as a factor goes against a deep body of scientific research showing that race is the greatest determinant of who experiences environmental harm, environmental justice experts pointed out.

“This was a political decision,” said Sacoby Wilson, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. “This was not a scientific decision or a data-driven decision.” Wilson has studied the distribution of environmental pollutants and helped develop mapping tools like the one the Council on Environmental Quality released Friday.

This isn’t the first such tool to exist in the United States, or even in the federal government. California, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey have had tools like this for years. And the Environmental Protection Agency has a similar tool, EJ Screen. Many of those screening tools include some information about the racial makeup of communities along with environmental and health data.

The public has 60 days to use the tool and provide feedback on it. The Council on Environmental Quality also announced Friday that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are working on launching a study of existing tools. 
…

 Sparked by global warming and other forms of climate change, tropical butterflies are starting to arrive in Hong Kong and Taiwan in greater numbers, while temperate-zone species like the monarch appear to be dwindling in the region, conservationists told RFA.

“Seven new butterfly species were discovered in Hong Kong in 2021, including swallowtails, gray butterflies, and nymphs; most of them were tropical species,” Gary Chan, project officer at Hong Kong’s Fengyuan Butterfly Reserve, told RFA.

“Breeding records were found in Hong Kong for several of these species, which indicates that these weren’t just strays arriving in Hong Kong with horticultural imports or the monsoon,” Chan said.

According to Chan, Neptis cartica and Ancema blanka were both found in Hong Kong for the first time in 2021, along with Zeltus amasa, which is usually native to Malaysia, Thailand, India, Myanmar, Borneo and other points south of Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, tropical migrants are also being spotted in Taiwan, according to Hsu Yu-feng, a butterfly expert at Taiwan National Normal University.

Between 1985 and 2008, at least seven new species of tropical butterfly were found to have settled on the island, including Appias olfern peducaea, which traveled north from the Philippines to settle in the southern port city of Kaohsiung in 2000.

Even butterflies once found only in southern Taiwan are now found across the island, Hsu told RFA.

“When I was an undergraduate student in the 1980s, I went to Kenting [on the southern coast] to see Graphium agamemnon,” Hsu recalled. “Then, I saw it for the first time on this university college campus last year, and it was breeding here.”

Southeast Asia warming faster

Troides aeacus kaguya is another example of a butterfly that once only lived in southern Taiwan, and can now be found all over the island, he said.

The changes come as temperatures in East and Southeast Asia have risen more rapidly than the global average in recent decades, Chan said.

“There are many more places where tropical butterflies and other insects can breed, so that’s why we’re seeing this northward migration, or dispersal behavior,” he said.

Hsu said the butterflies didn’t actually migrate, however; rather, their habitats are expanding due to rising temperatures.

“Once upon a time, the more northerly areas were colder, and not suitable for them to settle in, but they are suitable now, because temperatures have risen,” Hsu said.

“The north is warming at a higher rate than the south, meaning the difference in temperatures between north and south has been reduced,” he said. “That’s why southern butterflies are now living in the north.”

But the changes are forcing out butterflies that need a temperate climate to breed in, experts said.

Few monarchs now

The Siu Lang Shui conservation site in Hong Kong’s Tuen Mun district once saw tens of thousands of monarch butterflies spending the winter, as recently as 2013 and 2014, Chan said.

But numbers have fallen sharply in recent years, he said.

In Taiwan, the purple variegated butterflies that once overwintered in their millions in the Maolin valley outside Kaohsiung have also been dwindling in recent years, preferring to move north to seek out colder temperatures earlier in the year.

The warming environment is also becoming more hostile to temperate tree species some butterflies call home, Hsu told RFA.

“The Taiwan-endemic butterfly Sibataniozephyrus kuafui uses the Taiwan beech as a host plant … so in contrast to the expansion of tropical butterflies, temperate species are being threatened,” he said.

The changes in East Asia come after a study published in the journal Science in 2021 found that populations of most butterfly species in western North America have declined by nearly 50% over the past 40 years.

“California is the place with the most endemic species of butterflies in western North America,” Hsu said. “California butterflies are most vulnerable to drought, because this is a Mediterranean climate zone, with dry summers and rainy winters.”

“If climate change causes droughts in winter, plants will grow poorly, and the larvae of butterflies will have nothing to eat,” he said.
…

It’s a question many have been asking for almost two years: when will the coronavirus pandemic end?

“Epidemiologically speaking, we don’t know. Perhaps in another month or two — if there’s no other variants of concern that pop up, at least here in United States,” says J. Alexander Navarro, assistant director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.

“Socially, I think we’re kind of already at the point where the pandemic has ended. Many states are removing the vestiges of their mask mandates. We see people essentially moving on with their lives.”

As of February 16, 2022, about 78 million people in the United States have contracted COVID-19 and 923,067 of them have died. Seventy-six percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Sara Sawyer, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, agrees the end might finally be in sight, in part thanks to Omicron, a COVID-19 variant that emerged in November 2021.

“It is essentially vaccinating many people who were resistant to getting vaccinated because a lot of those people got infected in this wave,” Sawyer says. “And so, that’s just going to make it really hard for viruses to spread through in these giant waves like Omicron anymore because we have so many people with resistance that they’ve acquired through previous infection or a vaccine.”

Experts predict that more than 70% of people in the United States are now either vaccinated or have recovered from a coronavirus infection, Sawyer says. She adds that an extra bonus for those who get an actual infection is that they develop much more sophisticated systems of immunity against that virus.

A pandemic is generally considered “over” when a virus becomes endemic.

“When viruses become predictable — in their patterns, in their seasonality and in the number of people that they might infect and the number of deaths that they might cause — we say that a virus has become endemic,” Sawyer says. “That means it has settled down into a long-term existence with the human population.”

And while COVID-19 might never completely go away, future variants are not expected to be as severe as past ones.

“If you were infected with one variant, and I was infected with another variant, and I ended up in the emergency room the next day, and you had just a tickle in your throat and went to your son’s baseball game, in the grocery store and to a birthday party, whose variant is going to spread better?” Sawyer says. “Your variant is going to spread better. We know from the history of viral evolution, viruses are snaking their way toward being less deadly and more transmissible. … Viruses become more transmissible when they don’t make people as sick.”

But the danger of calling the pandemic over before it’s really over remains.

“I think, socially, most people are leaning toward this pandemic being over when, epidemiologically, it’s not,” Navarro says. “There is essentially no going back. And the fear that I have today is that if we have another variant of concern that pops up, I don’t know if we’re going to get people to go back to masking, if we’re going to be able to implement any sort of structured closure orders if we need to.”

During the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people worldwide, Americans got tired of being constrained and prematurely gave up on flu prevention measures. Two more waves of the flu pandemic hit the United States, resulting in more deaths.

While some parallels can be drawn between COVID-19 and the 1918 flu pandemic, looking to the past isn’t always a good barometer for when this pandemic might end because of the advanced knowledge and technology that exists today.

“We know exactly what we’re supposed to do, and this is an advantage that people of the past did not necessarily have,” says Nükhet Varlik, associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark. “We have the vaccines. We have the public health regulations in place. We have the medical expertise, so we actually know what to do. So we’re actually at an unprecedented advantage when we compare ourselves to past societies. We can actually do the right things. Whether we do the right things, that’s another question.”

Varlik says asking when the pandemic might end is misleading, fueling false hopes rather than focusing on trying to control and mitigate the pandemic.

“It will become endemic, but that doesn’t mean that it cannot become pandemic again. So, it’s kind of like a dance … it can be pandemic or epidemic or endemic, and it can change over time,” Varlik says. “I am pretty confident that COVID will continue to be epidemic in one part of the world for the foreseeable future … and, of course, with travel and other means, it can spill over to other places, to other countries. Until it’s eliminated in the entire world, there is really no way of feeling safe from this disease.”

When epidemiologists will declare the pandemic over has a lot to do with how much disease a society is willing to accept and put up with, Navarro says. COVID-19 could become like the flu, killing tens of thousands of Americans every year, predominantly those in vulnerable medical categories.

“At some point, you just have to say to yourself, ‘You know, I live in the world. There are dangers in my world, infectious disease, car accidents.’ But you can’t let that cripple you. Those things have always been there,” biology professor Sawyer says. “I certainly would never want to send a message that this is now yet another thing that people need to worry and have anxiety about once this becomes endemic. Instead, get your vaccine, get your flu vaccine, protect yourself and then go on with your life.”
…

Canadian police on Saturday worked to restore normality to the capital after trucks and demonstrators occupied the downtown core of Ottawa for more than three weeks to protest against pandemic restrictions.

The push to clear the city began Friday and continued into the night.

Four of the main organizers have already been taken into custody and more than 100 protesters have been arrested as hundreds of officers, including some on horseback, formed lines and slowly pushed them away from their vehicles.

There were many tense moments on Friday. Some protesters were dragged from their vehicles, and others who resisted the police advance were thrown to the ground and had their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

The protesters showed “assaultive behavior,” forcing mounted police to move in “to create critical space” in the late afternoon, according to a police statement. As this happened, police said, one person threw a bicycle at a horse and was arrested for harming a police service animal.

The protesters initially wanted an end to cross-border COVID-19 vaccine mandates for truck drivers, but the blockade has gradually turned into an anti-government and anti-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demonstration.

“Our demands aren’t ridiculous. We want mandates and lockdowns dropped,” said Gord from Manitoba, a truck driver who said he cannot work anymore because of cross-border vaccine mandates. On Friday, he vowed to stay parked in front of parliament and said he was waiting to be arrested.

Trudeau on Monday invoked emergency powers to give his government wider authority to stop the protests. Legislators had been due to debate those temporary powers on Friday but the House of Commons suspended its session, citing police activity.

After the protest crowds swelled on the three previous weekend, police set up 100 road blocks around the downtown core on Friday to deny people access and prevent food and fuel from getting in. Police said they had towed 21 vehicles on Friday.

As police cleared protesters from the streets, at least a dozen tow trucks came in to remove trucks and other protest vehicles still parked downtown. 
…

Hong Kong health experts on Friday said the city needs to change its pandemic strategies to cope with the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 cases. 

In recent weeks Hong Kong has been hit hard by a fifth wave of cases caused by the omicron variant, which is increasing pressure on the city’s already overburdened health system. 

Since the pandemic began, the Hong Kong government has remained defiant, directing all positive cases to hospitals regardless of symptomatic severity. Omicron’s sharp rise in recent weeks, however, has triggered a deluge of cases, flooding the city’s hospitals. 

Some health experts say a new direction is needed. 

“We need to immediately pivot to a strategy that promotes home isolation for mild and asymptomatic cases,” said Dr. Karen Grepin, associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health. “The strategy should be risk-based to determine who is and who is not a good candidate for home isolation.”   

But determining who can safely choose to do home isolation with mild symptoms must include careful vetting, Grepin told VOA.  

“It will need to be accompanied by dedicated facilities for people who are not good candidates or who are unable to isolate at home,” she said.   

Data show the omicron variant has an incubation period of about five days, is highly transmissible and causes less severe symptoms than some other coronavirus variants. But Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with a population of 7.5 million, adding to concerns about how quickly it can spread. 

“Most people who catch COVID in the next few weeks will likely catch it at home, but this is mainly because this is where they spend most of the time,” Grepin said. “We may not be able to prevent all of it, but there is a lot we can do to reduce it, including mask-wearing at home, increasing ventilation, isolation of infected patients in rooms,” Grepin added. 

Hong Kong is seeing daily COVID-19 records, with 6,116 cases on Thursday, surpassing the city’s previous high of 4,285 on Wednesday.  

Friday saw 3,629 new infections, with 7,600 preliminary positive cases, and 10 new deaths.  

The city’s current quarantine facilities are full and over 95% of hospital beds are occupied. But the government announced on Friday it has identified 20,000 new quarantine beds, Reuters reported.

In worrying scenes, hundreds of sick patients, including some elderly, were lying in beds outside Hong Kong’s hospitals in recent days, waiting to be admitted for treatment. 

One health worker at Hong Kong’s Ruttonjee Hospital, who chose to remain anonymous, told VOA that the hospital is very busy but says there aren’t that many severe cases of COVID-19. 

“I think there is [less than] 10 people who need to receive incubation care unit,” said the healthcare provider. “But not much confirmed cases are in respiratory distress. Most of them have light symptoms.” 

In efforts to free up space, authorities say hospitalized patients may now leave quarantine and isolate at home seven days after a positive test if they test negative on a rapid antigen test.  

David Chan, chairman of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, criticized health officials for inadequate planning.  

“The hospital authority doesn’t have a precautionary plan to handle such a large amount of patients,” he told Bloomberg. “With all their time, they didn’t come up with a comprehensive plan, didn’t communicate other government departments to come up with a plan for us to follow.”   

Hong Kong’s hospital authority is a statutory body managing all government hospitals and health institutes in the city. 

‘Zero Covid’ 

Up until January, everyday life in Hong Kong was relatively normal, with the city recording a low number of cases. 

Hong Kong’s “zero-COVID” strategy, which is aligned with Beijing’s effort to control the pandemic across China, has seen authorities quickly clamp down on rare outbreaks in the city, with methods including contact tracing, social restrictions, mass testing and quarantine. The policy has had some success, while other parts of the world move toward ways of living with the virus.   

But amid the omicron surge, Hong Kong has seen nearly 17,000 cases since the beginning of 2022, greater than the total number of infections in 2020 and 2021 combined. 

New Measures 

The escalating crisis has even seen a rare call from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has ordered the city’s authorities to take control of the situation. 

 Earlier this week, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam ruled out a citywide lockdown but did unveil new measures. Residents must have proof of a COVID-19 vaccination to enter various premises starting from next week, mask wearing is a requirement in public, and fines for breaking social distancing regulations have doubled to $1,283. 

But health experts say authorities must continue to focus on boosting the city’s unvaccinated groups. According to government data, the number of vaccinated residents age 80 and older stands at just 41.16%, while those from 70-79 is 70% 

“It is never too late to vaccinate high priority groups to reduce mortality,” Dr. Grepin told VOA. 

Dr. David Owens, an honorary assistant clinical professor at the University of Hong Kong, previously told VOA that vaccinating high priority groups should be the “primary focus.” 

Owens also argued that implementing a rapid testing strategy would also help break transmission cycles. 

“When people get symptoms, they would be encouraged to test themselves. They could isolate at home for a minimum of five days or until they had a negative test, whichever was the latest,” he said.

Lam, Hong Kong’s top administrator, recently vowed to procure millions of rapid antigen testing kits to improve detection, providing each resident one test kit. 

The Hong Kong leader announced on Friday the upcoming chief executive elections will be postponed until May, citing the health crisis in the city. The elections were scheduled to be held in March. 
…

Health authorities in Malawi say a 3-year-old girl is paralyzed after contracting polio, the first known case in Africa in more than five years and the first in Malawi in three decades. Authorities say the child was infected by a strain of poliovirus that matches a strain found in Pakistan.

Until this week, Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The southern African country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the whole continent achieved the same status.

Dr. Charles Mwansambo, secretary for health in Malawi, told local radio Friday that the poliovirus strain detected in Malawi came from abroad.

“This patient is Malawian but the strain of poliovirus she has is not Malawian. It was first identified in Pakistan. So, this is an imported strain.”

So far, the girl, who lives in the capital, Lilongwe, is the only identified case of polio in the country. Mwansambo said all those who came into contact with the girl have tested negative for the poliovirus.

However, the Ministry of Health said in a statement Thursday evening that it has intensified surveillance for the disease, especially among children up to fifteen years of age. President Lazarus Chakwera has declared a national health emergency.

Polio is a contagious and life-threatening disease. The poliovirus can infect a person’s spinal cord, leaving them partially or fully paralyzed.

Dr. Janet Kayita, the country representative for the World Health Organization in Malawi, says the alarm is justified.

“Because as long as there is polio in Lilongwe, it is a threat not just in Malawi, it’s a threat in the region and it’s a public health event of international concern.”

She says the WHO is deploying a team to Malawi to enhance disease surveillance, detect and identify cases and strengthen routine immunization.

“The nature of having identified a child with polio, highlights the need to make sure that vaccination campaign is mounted, making that every last child under five years of age is reached with polio vaccine,”  Kavita said.

Malawi health expert Maziko Matemba says the government should consider increasing budget allocations of the health sector.

“So that some of these shocks are minimized or they are contained before they occur because they also have an effect on the economy of the country, as we have seen with COVID,” Matemba said.

President Chakwera said in a statement Thursday that after experiencing various natural disasters like Cyclone Idai, COVID-19 and Tropical Storm Ana early this year, a polio outbreak is the last thing any Malawian would want to hit the country.
…

Lam Foon, 98, sits propped up and swaddled in soggy woolen blankets in a hospital bed just outside the entrance to Hong Kong’s Caritas Medical Centre, waiting for tests to confirm her preliminary positive result for COVID-19.

“I don’t feel so good,” she told Reuters through a surgical mask, next to a similarly wrapped patient wearing a mask and face shield.

Lam was one of dozens of patients lying in the parking lot of Caritas on Thursday, after there was no more room inside the hospital that serves 400,000 people in the working-class district of Cheung Sha Wan on the Kowloon peninsula.

Temperatures dipped to 15 degrees Celsius amid some rain.

Medical staff were unable to say how long Lam would have to wait. People who test preliminarily positive for COVID have to take further tests before treatment.

This and similar scenes across the global financial hub are signs of a public healthcare system under severe strain as COVID-19 cases surge, with more than 95% of all hospital beds full.

Once largely insulated from the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong is facing a citywide outbreak, with businesses buckling and some losing patience with the government’s “zero COVID” policies.

In the cluster of working-class districts in nearby Sham Shui Po, some residential blocks and public housing estates have been sealed off, crowds in malls and street markets have thinned, and once teeming diners known as dai pai dongs and stalls selling knickknacks are quieter after dark.

Trevor Chung, 29, a medic at Caritas, blamed the government in part for inadequate planning, a shortage of beds and other medical equipment, and chronic manpower shortages.

“The government underestimated the situation,” said Chung, clad in a full-face visor and blue hazmat suit. “I expect things to get a lot worse … There are many elderly people in this district, and many aren’t vaccinated.”

Hong Kong authorities on Thursday apologized for the dire situation at hospitals serving the city of 7.4 million.

The city’s zero-COVID policy has meant even asymptomatic people and those with mild conditions have been sent to hospitals or quarantine centers, although the government is now adjusting its strategy as the health care system is overwhelmed.

Lam under pressure

The outbreak has piled further pressure on Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, whose five-year term is due to end in June.

While Lam says surrendering to the virus “is not an option” and Chinese President Xi Jinping has said the “overriding mission” for Hong Kong is to rein in the virus, some are skeptical.

“You can see I’m wearing two masks. I need to protect myself because the government won’t protect me,” said Lo Kai-wai, a 59-year-old logistics worker queuing at a mobile testing center that had already reached its daily quota of 3,000 people.

“I don’t want to see her (Lam) get a second term.”

Some business owners impacted by government-imposed restrictions also question the sustainability of current policies.

“The government needs to find a better balance to both control the virus, but also to allow people to better get on with their lives,” said Timothy Poon, 23, the manager of a café close to the hospital, whose business has dropped by up to 60% amid the outbreak.

“The zero-COVID policy is a mission impossible.”

Others, however, are more upbeat.

“If everyone is willing to get vaccinated, the situation will improve,” said Lung Mei-chu, 78, at a testing center in another district.

 
…

A Chinese rocket, according to astronomers, is expected to crash into the moon on March 4. It is the latest example of China’s presence in space. News of the predicted crash comes after Beijing released a development blueprint for satellite improvements, deep-space exploration and putting more people in orbit.

Analysts expect Beijing to reach many of the goals outlined in its five-year plan for the development of outer space despite the odd mishap, according to experts.

China’s space program stands to rival those of Russia and the United States, especially in terms of commercializing space technology, they add.

“China is something to look at seriously in terms of increasing competitiveness,” said Marco Caceres, director of space studies at the Teal Group market analysis firm. “Part of that is that the U.S. was ahead by so much that countries like China, where their economies are growing faster, they’re simply catching up.”

Past meets future

China launched its first satellite in 1970 and put its first human in space in 2003, becoming the world’s third nation, after Russia and the United States, to reach that milestone. In 2019, China’s spacecraft made a historic landing on the far side of the moon. Beijing is in the process of adding onto its Tiangong space station later this year.

China is excluded from the International Space Station, a cooperative operation among Europe, the United States, Russia, Canada and Japan, due to U.S. national security concerns.

Over the next five years, Beijing’s space program will place people in space on “long-term assignments” for scientific research, complete findings on Mars and explore the Jupiter system, according to China’s Space Program: A 2021 Perspective.

The coming half-decade will see improvements as well in the capacity of space transport systems, and China will “continue to improve its space infrastructure” through integration of remote sensing, communications, navigation and satellite positioning technologies, the document says.

China will probably realize its five-year goals because it has been working on them for a decade or more, with plenty of government funding, analysts say.

The January report effectively “bundles” together what’s already taking shape, said Richard Bitzinger, defense analyst with the Defense Budget Project, a research nonprofit in Washington. It’s technically possible that China could mine ore on an asteroid, Bitzinger said, though the job would require complex anchoring and drilling work.

A lot of the blueprint goals are meant to exude peaceful intent and a positive international image, he added. “Most manned space programs are symbolic,” Bitzinger said. “From an economic sense, they’re a loss leader, but from a sense of demonstrating power, they’re perfect for that.”

The blueprint says future Chinese space missions will remain “peaceful,” despite suspicion in Washington that the Chinese space program will be directed toward military purposes.

Commercial momentum

Progress in the Chinese space program has allowed China to become what Caceres describes as more “aggressive” than the United States in marketing satellites and modern launch services. Its budget probably grows faster than NASA’s, he added. Chinese space-related gear can be found in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the analyst said.

Countries such as Australia and Japan already use Chinese space-based remote sensing data after natural disasters. Russia and China tentatively agreed in September to open a joint lunar research base.

“China calls on all countries to work together to build a global community of (a) shared future and carry out in-depth exchanges and cooperation in outer space on the basis of equality, mutual benefit, peaceful utilization, and inclusive development,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington told VOA on Wednesday.

Some of the countries closest to China geographically may still hold out for U.S. space technology despite China’s willingness to engage, said Alan Chong, associate professor at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

The government of Myanmar, for example, resents China over infrastructure debt and projects that people see as irrelevant to their lives, the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies has found.

“I think the situation is fluid, and I wouldn’t say that Southeast Asia will be comfortably in the Chinese orbit yet,” Chong said. “It has of course never been friendlier with China, over the past 15 years or so, but I think the game is not over for the United States.”
…

Hundreds of truckers clogging Canada’s capital stood their ground and defiantly blasted their horns Thursday, even as police arrested two protest leaders and threatened to break up the nearly three-week protest against the country’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Busloads of police arrived near Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, and workers put up extra fences around government buildings. Police also essentially began sealing off much of the downtown area to outsiders to prevent them from coming to the aid of the protesters.

“The action is imminent,” said interim Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell. “We absolutely are committed to end this unlawful demonstration.”

Police arrested organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber around Parliament Hill, but officers were not moving in force on the demonstrators. Police took Lich into custody late Thursday.

Police continued negotiating with the protesters and trying to persuade them to go home, Bell said. “We want this demonstration to end peacefully,” he said, but added: “If they do not peacefully leave, we have plans.”

Many of the truckers in the self-styled Freedom Convoy appeared unmoved by days of warnings from police and the government that they were risking arrest and could see their rigs seized and bank accounts frozen.

“I’m prepared to sit on my ass and watch them hit me with pepper spray,” said one of their leaders, Pat King. As for the trucks parked bumper-to-bumper, he said: “There’s no tow trucks in Canada that will touch them.”

King later told truckers to lock their doors.

Amid the rising tensions, truckers outside Parliament blared their horns in defiance of a court injunction against honking, issued for the benefit of neighborhood residents.

Ottawa represented the movement’s last stronghold after weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shut down border crossings into the U.S., inflicted economic damage on both countries and created a political crisis for Trudeau.

The protests have shaken Canada’s reputation for civility and rule-following and inspired similar convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

“It’s high time that these illegal and dangerous activities stop,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared in Parliament, not far from where the more than 300 trucks were parked.

“They are a threat to our economy and our relationship with trading partners,” he said. “They are a threat to public safety.”

Ottawa police began locking down a wide swath of the downtown area, allowing in only those who live or work there after they pass through one of more than 100 checkpoints, the interim chief said.

Police were especially worried about the children among the protesters. Bell said police were working with child-welfare agencies to determine how to safely remove the youngsters before authorities move in.

Early this week, the prime minister invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act, empowering law enforcement authorities to declare the blockades illegal, tow away trucks, arrest the drivers, suspend their licenses and take other measures.

On Thursday, Trudeau and some of his top ministers took turns warning the protesters to leave, in an apparent move by the government to avert a clash, or at least show it had gone the extra mile to avoid one.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government began freezing truckers’ accounts as threatened. “It is happening. I do have the numbers in front of me,” she said.

Ottawa police likewise handed out leaflets for the second straight day demanding the truckers end the siege, and also helpfully placed notices on vehicles informing owners how and where to pick up their trucks if they are towed.

The occupation has infuriated many Ottawa residents.

“We’ve seen people intimidated, harassed and threatened. We’ve seen apartment buildings that have been chained up. We have seen fires set in the corridors. Residents are terrorized,” said Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.

The protests by demonstrators in trucks, tractors and motor homes initially focused on Canada’s vaccine requirement for truckers entering the country but soon morphed into a broader attack on COVID-19 precautions and Trudeau’s government.

The biggest, most damaging of the blockades at the border took place at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. Before authorities arrested dozens of protesters last weekend and lifted the siege, it disrupted the flow of auto parts between the two countries and forced the industry to curtail production.

The final blockade, in Manitoba, ended peacefully Wednesday.

The movement has drawn support from right-wing extremists and veterans, some of them armed — one reason authorities have hesitated to move against them.

Fox News personalities and U.S. conservatives such as Donald Trump have egged on the protests. Trudeau complained on Thursday that “roughly half of the funding to the barricaders here is coming from the United States.”

Some security experts said that dispersing the protest in Ottawa could be tricky and dangerous, with the potential for violence, and that a heavy-handed law enforcement response could be used as propaganda by antigovernment extremists.

Trucks were parked shoulder-to-shoulder downtown, some with tires removed to hamper towing.

“There is not really a playbook,” said David Carter, a professor at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice and a former police officer. “I know there are police chiefs in the U.S. looking at this and developing strategic plans and partnerships to manage a protest like this if it should occur in their cities.”

The presence of children also complicated the planning. As a showdown seemed to draw near, Canadian Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said: “To those who have children with them, this is no place for children. Take them home immediately.” 
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California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced the first shift by a state to an endemic approach to the coronavirus pandemic. He said it emphasizes prevention and quick reactions to outbreaks over mandates, a milestone nearly two years in the making that harkens to a return to a more normal existence. 

Newsom said the approach, which includes pushing back against false claims and other misinformation, means maintaining a wary watchfulness attuned to warning signs of the next deadly new surge or variant. 

“This disease is not going away,” he told The Associated Press in advance of his formal announcement. “It’s not the end of the ‘war.’ ” 

A disease reaches the endemic stage when the virus still exists in a community but becomes manageable as immunity builds. But there will be no definitive turn of the switch, the Democratic governor said, unlike the case with Wednesday’s lifting of the state’s indoor masking requirements or an announcement coming February 28 of when the school mask-wearing mandate will end. 

And there will be no immediate lifting of the dozens of remaining executive emergency orders that have helped run the state since Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide stay-home order in March 2020. 

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and with omicron fading in many parts of the world some countries have begun planning for the endemic stage.

Newsom’s administration came up with a shorthand acronym to capsulize key elements of its new approach: SMARTER. The letters stand for Shots, Masks, Awareness, Readiness, Testing, Education and Rx, a common abbreviation for prescriptions and a reference to improving treatments for COVID-19.

Greater watchfulness 

Living with COVID-19 under Newsom’s plan means boosting the state’s surveillance, including increased monitoring of virus remnants in wastewater to watch for the first signs of a surge. Masks won’t be required but will be encouraged in many settings. 

If a higher level of the virus is detected, health officials will analyze its genotype to determine if it is a new variant. If so, state and federal officials have a goal to determine within 30 days if it responds to existing tests, treatments, and immunities from vaccines or prior infections. 

Testing and staffing in the affected area will be increased, including temporary medical workers to assist strained hospitals. 

The plan sets specific goals, such as stockpiling 75 million masks, ramping up to delivering 200,000 vaccinations and 500,000 tests a day, and adding 3,000 medical workers within three weeks in surge areas through ongoing contracts with national registry companies. 

Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious-disease control expert at the University of California-San Francisco, has urged a cautious approach to lifting mandates. He saw drafts of Newsom’s plan and likes it. 

“They have a long-term plan that’s trying to capture these events as they occur and has the supply chain stuff you need to have pre-positioned so that we can move forward in a thoughtful but rapid way to control new outbreaks,” he said. 

Avoiding business closures

California’s health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said one of the goals is to avoid business closures and other far-reaching mandates. However, he said, the state’s requirement that schoolchildren be vaccinated against coronavirus by fall remains in effect. 

The plan calls for a continued emphasis on efforts in vulnerable and underserved populations that have experienced disproportionately high death rates. And it includes new education, including “myth-buster videos” to fight misinformation and disinformation and help interpret ever-evolving precautions for a confused public whiplashed by safeguards that seemingly shift by the day and vary across county lines. 

It relies on continued testing sites including in schools; more over-the-counter virus tests; and building and tracking strategic stockpiles of testing kits, surgical and K95 masks, hospital gowns and gloves, and ventilators. In coordination with the federal government, it calls for a first-in-the-nation study of the pandemic’s direct and indirect long-term impacts on both people and communities. 

Newsom and Ghaly said constant monitoring will be useful in spotting other similar respiratory airborne diseases, while leading to improvements in California’s overall public health system. 

All this will cost billions, much of it already outlined in the $3.2 billion pandemic response package Newsom sought as part of his budget last month. That includes $1.9 million that lawmakers already approved to boost staffing at hospitals and increase coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution, as well as existing money and anticipated federal funds. 

His proposed budget also includes $1.7 billion to beef up the state’s health care workforce, with more investment in increased laboratory testing capacity, data collection and outbreak investigation. 

Emergency orders

Newsom defended keeping in place some of his executive emergency orders, which he said most recently have allowed the state to quickly bring in temporary medical workers and to quickly distribute more than 13 million home test kits to schools. 

The omicron surge is ebbing as quickly as it spiked in December, with new cases falling back to near pre-surge levels. Hospitalizations and intensive care cases were also falling, and the state’s forecasting models predict a continued gradual easing over the next month.
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Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates met with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday in Pakistan to acknowledge the country’s progress against polio.

During the trip, his first to Pakistan, Gates also stressed the need to curb virus transmissions in neighboring Afghanistan and preserve global gains.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where wild polio virus continues to paralyze children, although not a single infection has been reported in Pakistan for more than a year.

Gates told reporters in Islamabad at the end of his visit that the South Asian nation, where the disease crippled approximately 20,000 Pakistani children a year in the early 1990s, has an opportunity to eliminate polio.

“We’re not done, but we’re certainly in by far the best situation we have ever been in. We’ve never had a year without zero cases,” he said.

But Gates cautioned that the polio virus was detected as recently as December in sewage samples in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, stressing the need for Pakistan to keep up the momentum and stay vigilant.

“I think that the steps taken in Pakistan during 2022 will probably set us up to finish polio eradication,” Gates said while speaking alongside Faisal Sultan, the special assistant to Khan on health affairs.

Gates co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative project between governments and international organizations.

In a televised ceremony, Pakistani President Arif Alvi conferred the Hilal-e-Pakistan, the country’s second-highest civilian award, on Gates for his work to fight poverty and diseases, including polio.

Gates and Sultan said polio transmissions in Afghanistan continue to pose a challenge to Pakistan’s eradication program and global gains against the disease. Gates noted, however, that Afghan vaccination rates have gone up in recent months after dropping off for more than three years.

“There is more vaccination taking place in Afghanistan now than for the last three years. … But it’s still not as high as it should be, and so there’s work to be done in terms of understanding how we support them,” Gates said when asked for his comments on the eradication efforts since the Taliban takeover of the country in August.

The United Nations says that in November and December 2021, health workers were able to deliver polio vaccinations to 2.6 million Afghan children who had been inaccessible since 2018 because of the conflict.

Sultan said Pakistan was closely working with Taliban authorities to stem polio transmissions through a joint effort on both sides of their common border.

Afghan authorities reported four cases of wild polio in 2021, down from 56 cases a year before.

“We have directly engaged with them and have ongoing conversations to make sure that a synchronized campaign for eradication of polio can continue because we look at our two countries adjacent to each other as, epidemiologically speaking, tightly linked to the eradication of polio,” Sultan explained.
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NASA celebrates an anniversary on the Martian surface while a space-travel startup tumbles back to Earth. Russia helps refuel the International Space Station, and how a recent volcanic eruption could lead to faster tsunami warnings in the future. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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