Older Americans and people with weak immune systems can get an extra COVID-19 booster dose this spring.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday signed off on a more flexible booster schedule for people who remain at the highest risk from COVID-19 — giving them the choice of a second “bivalent” Pfizer or Moderna booster, the most up-to-date formula.

“Many in the population are experiencing vaccine fatigue but there is a subset who are eager to receive additional doses,” CDC’s Dr. Sara Oliver told an agency advisory panel that expressed support for the change.

The move came a day after the Food and Drug Administration took steps to make coronavirus vaccinations simpler for everyone. From now on, anyone getting a Pfizer or Moderna dose — whether it’s a booster or their first-ever vaccination — will get an updated version rather than the outdated original shots.

Here are some things to know:

Who needs a booster?

Anyone who’s gotten their original vaccinations but hasn’t had an updated booster yet can still get one. Only 42% of Americans 65 and older — and just 20% of all adults — have gotten one of those updated boosters since September.

Who can get a second updated booster?

People 65 or older who already had one Pfizer or Moderna updated booster can roll up their sleeves again, as long as it’s been at least four months since that last shot.

The schedule is a little different for people with weak immune systems. Most can choose a second Pfizer or Moderna updated booster at least two months after their first. Under the latest FDA and CDC guidelines, they also could get additional doses if and when their physician decides they need one.

Why the extra leeway?

Older adults continue to have the highest rates of hospitalization from COVID-19, even as cases have declined. But a frail 85-year-old may want another booster right away, while a robust 65-year-old may not see the need — or might instead time another shot for peak protection ahead of a summer vacation or other special event.

CDC officials stressed there’s even more variety among immune-compromised patients, from people with only mild impairment to those trying to replenish immunity that grueling cancer treatment knocked out.

The changes put the U.S. in line with Britain and Canada, which also are offering certain vulnerable populations a spring shot. It’s a reasonable choice, Dr. Matthew Laurens, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said before the announcement.

“We do have vaccines that are available to protect against these severe consequences, so why not use them?” he said. “They don’t do any good just sitting on a shelf.”

Will younger, healthier people get a fall dose?

Stay tuned. The FDA will hold a public meeting in June to consider if the vaccine recipe needs more adjusting to better match the latest coronavirus strains — just like it adjusts flu vaccines every year. And part of that discussion will be whether younger, healthier people also need a booster.

The updated Pfizer and Moderna shots being used now target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron versions, which have been replaced by an ever-changing list of omicron descendants. Still, while protection against mild infections is short-lived, those updated doses continue to do a good job fighting severe disease and death even against the newest variants.

Tots are least likely to be vaccinated yet

CDC’s advisers were dismayed at how few of the youngest children are vaccinated. Just 6% of 2- to 4-year-olds have gotten their initial COVID-19 shots and 4.5% of those younger than 2. Far fewer got an updated booster.

The FDA’s new rules mean tots under 5 who’ve never been vaccinated can get the most up-to-date formula — two Moderna shots or three of the Pfizer-BioNTech version. Unvaccinated 5-year-olds can get two Moderna doses or a single Pfizer shot. And tots already fully or partially vaccinated may get a bivalent shot or two depending on their vaccination history.

What about the Novavax vaccine?

Novavax makes a more traditional type of COVID-19 vaccine, and its original formula remains available for people who don’t want the Pfizer or Moderna option. Novavax also is getting ready in case FDA urges a fall update, by manufacturing several additional formulas.
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The Supreme Court is deciding whether women will face restrictions in getting a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, while a lawsuit continues.

The justices are expected to issue an order on Wednesday in a fast-moving case from Texas in which abortion opponents are seeking to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone.

The drug first won FDA approval in 2000, and conditions on its use have been loosened in recent years, including making it available by mail in states that allow access.

The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the drug, want the nation’s highest court to reject limits on mifepristone’s use imposed by lower courts, at least as long as the legal case makes it way through the courts. They say women who want the drug and providers who dispense it will face chaos if limits on the drug take effect. Depending on what the justices decide, that could include requiring women to take a higher dosage of the drug than the FDA says is necessary.

Alliance Defending Freedom, representing anti-abortion doctors and medical groups in a challenge to the drug, is defending the rulings in calling on the Supreme Court to let the restrictions take effect now.

The legal fight over abortion comes less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

Even as the abortion landscape changed dramatically in several states, abortion opponents set their sights on medication abortions, which make up more than half of all abortions in the United States.

The abortion opponents filed suit in November in Amarillo, Texas. The legal challenge quickly reached the Supreme Court after a federal judge issued a ruling on April 7 that would revoke FDA approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions.

Less than a week later, a federal appeals court modified the ruling so that mifepristone would remain available while the case continues, but with limits. The appeals court said that the drug can’t be mailed or dispensed as a generic and that patients who seek it need to make three in-person visits with a doctor, among other things.

The generic version of mifepristone makes up two-thirds of the supply in the United States, its manufacturer, Las Vegas-based GenBioPro Inc., wrote in a court filing that underscored the perils of allowing the restrictions to be put into effect.

The court also said the drug should only be approved through seven weeks of pregnancy for now, even though the FDA since 2016 has endorsed its use through 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Complicating the situation, a federal judge in Washington has ordered the FDA to preserve access to mifepristone under the current rules in 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia that filed a separate lawsuit.

The Biden administration has said the rulings conflict and create an untenable situation for the FDA.

In an order issued last Friday by Justice Samuel Alito, the court put the restrictions on hold through Wednesday to give the court time to consider the emergency appeal.

If the justices aren’t inclined to block the ruling from taking effect for now, the Democratic administration and Danco have a fallback argument, asking the court to take up the challenge to mifepristone, hear arguments and decide the case by early summer.

The court only rarely takes such a step before at least one appeals court has thoroughly examined the legal issues involved.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans already has ordered an accelerated schedule for hearing the case, with arguments set for May 17.

Mifepristone has been available for use in medication abortions in the United States since the FDA granted approval in 2000. Since then, more than 5 million women have used it, along with another drug, misoprostol, to induce abortions.
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A group of American plastic surgeons has been working in  Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, helping  wounded soldiers and civilians recover from war injuries. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. Camera: Yuriy Dankevych    
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Virtual medicine, or medical extended reality, uses virtual reality headsets and imaging software to supplement conventional medical treatments. Practitioners from around the world shared best practices at a recent conference in Los Angeles. Mike O’Sullivan reports.
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Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, announced a provisional approval of the R21 vaccine during a media briefing on Monday.

The regulatory agency’s consent came days after Ghana approved the vaccine.

NAFDAC said the vaccine is 70 to 80 percent efficient in preventing the mosquito-borne disease and could protect millions of children.

The agency’s director general, Mojisola Adeyeye, spoke to journalists in Abuja.

“The vaccine is indicated for prevention of clinical malaria on children from five months to 36 months of age,” Adeyeye said.

NAFDAC did not say when the vaccine will be rolled out, but Adeyeye said Nigeria will conduct in-country clinical trials and pharmacovigilance study.

The WHO says some 600,000 people die of malaria every year, most of them in Africa, many of them young children.

Nigeria accounts for the highest numbers of cases and deaths from malaria globally. Health experts say the vaccine could be a game changer.

Kunle Olobayo is a lead researcher at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development.

“A proactive, preemptive intervention will definitely be most useful especially in countries like Nigeria,” said Olobayo. “Many interventions and steps that have been taken to reduce transmission have not been very successful because of our level of development, poverty. So, it will definitely change the dynamics.

The WHO has yet to approve the vaccine. The WHO Nigeria malaria program head, Lynda Ozor, said authorities are still reviewing the vaccine’s safety and efficacy.

“The WHO is reviewing the R21 data, and it’s being supported by an independent global advisory group on immunization and malaria experts.,” said Ozor. “This group will advise the WHO on whether to recommend the R21 vaccines for use. It has to be approved by the WHO to compliment the rollout of the first vaccine.”

Last year, the WHO consented to the world’s first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix.

Olobayo said that, without donor support, African countries could struggle to acquire the vaccines.

“Vaccines in Nigeria historically tend to be dependent on donor funding,” said Olobayo. “I have a feeling there might be some substantial international funding to get these products widely used.”

Oxford University is working with the Serum Institute of India to produce up to 200 million doses of R21 every year.
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Nearly 300 Tyrannosaurus rex bones that were dug up from three sites in the United States and assembled into a single skeleton sold at Tuesday at a Switzerland auction for 4.8 million francs ($5.3 million), below the expected price.

Crafted into an open-mouth pose, the T. rex skeleton measuring 11.6 meters long (38 feet long) and 3.9 meters high (12.8 feet) high came in under the anticipated range of 5 million to 8 million francs when it went under the hammer at the Koller auction house in Zurich.

Koller had said Tuesday’s sale would be the first time such a T. rex skeleton would go up for auction in Europe. The composite skeleton was a showpiece of an auction that featured some 70 lots, and the skull was set up next to the auctioneer’s podium throughout.

“It could be that it was a composite — that could be why the purists didn’t go for it,” Karl Green, the auction house’s marketing director, said by phone. “It’s a fair price for the dino. I hope it’s going to be shown somewhere in public.”

Green did not immediately identify the buyer. Including the “buyer’s premium” and fees, the sale came to 5.5 million Swiss francs (about $6.1 million), Koller said.

Promoters said the composite T. rex, dubbed “Trinity,” was built from specimens retrieved from three sites in the Hell Creek and Lance Creek formations of Montana and Wyoming between 2008 and 2013.

Koller said “original bone material” comprised more than half of the restored skeleton. The auction house said the skull was particularly rare and also remarkably well-preserved.

“When dinosaurs died in the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods, they often lost their heads during deposition ]of the remains into rocks]. In fact, most dinosaurs are found without their skulls,” Nils Knoetschke, a scientific adviser who was quoted in the auction catalog. “But here we have truly original Tyrannosaurus skull bones that all originate from the same specimen.”

T. rex roamed the Earth between 65 million and 67 million years ago. A study published two years ago in the journal Science estimated that about 2.5 billion of the dinosaurs had lived.

Hollywood movies such as the blockbuster “Jurassic Park” franchise have added to the public fascination with the carnivorous creature.

The two areas the bones for Trinity came from were also the source of other T. rex skeletons that were auctioned off, according to Koller: Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History bought “Sue” for $8.4 million over a quarter-century ago, and “Stan” sold for nearly $32 million three years ago.

Two years ago, a triceratops skeleton that the Guinness World Records declared as the world’s biggest, known as “Big John,” was sold for 6.6 million euros ($7.2 million) to a private collector at a Paris auction.
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Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he will launch an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that he calls “TruthGPT” to challenge the offerings from Microsoft and Google.

He criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the firm behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, of “training the AI to lie” and said OpenAI has now become a “closed source,” “for-profit” organization “closely allied with Microsoft.”

He also accused Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously.

“I’m going to start something which I call ‘TruthGPT’, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson aired on Monday.

He said TruthGPT “might be the best path to safety” that would be “unlikely to annihilate humans.”

“It’s simply starting late. But I will try to create a third option,” Musk said.

Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft and Page did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Musk has been poaching AI researchers from Alphabet Inc’s Google to launch a startup to rival OpenAI, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Musk last month registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. The firm listed Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary.

‘Civilizational destruction’

The move came even after Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.

Musk also reiterated his warnings about AI during the interview with Carlson, saying “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production” according to the excerpts.

“It has the potential of civilizational destruction,” he said.

He said, for example, that a super intelligent AI can write incredibly well and potentially manipulate public opinions.

He tweeted over the weekend that he had met with former U.S. President Barack Obama when he was president and told him that Washington needed to “encourage AI regulation.”

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but he stepped down from the company’s board in 2018. In 2019, he tweeted that he left OpenAI because he had to focus on Tesla and SpaceX.

He also tweeted at that time that other reasons for his departure from OpenAI were, “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”

Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has also become CEO of Twitter, a social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

In the interview with Fox News, Musk said he recently valued Twitter at “less than half” of the acquisition price.

In January, Microsoft Corp announced a further multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, intensifying competition with rival Google and fueling the race to attract AI funding in Silicon Valley.
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Kenya is using the launch of its first operational observation satellite to promote space education and science through space clubs in schools. Kenya launched an operational 3U nanosatellite April 15 aboard the SpaceX Falcon Force base in the U.S. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo
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Scientists found coastal species of shellfish and anemones living and breeding on floating islands of garbage in the Pacific thousands of miles from home, a study revealed Monday. 

Environmentalists have for years been eyeing what they call the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” — masses of plastic rubbish combining bottles, fishing nets and much more.

U.S. researchers who sampled rubbish from the northeastern Pacific between California and Hawaii said they found 37 kinds of invertebrates that originated from coastal areas, mostly from countries such as Japan on the other side of the ocean.

“The high seas are colonized by a diverse array of coastal species, which survive and reproduce in the open ocean,” they wrote in the study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

“Coastal species persist now in the open ocean as a substantial component of a neopelagic [new, sea-dwelling] community sustained by the vast and expanding sea of plastic debris,” the study said.

More than two-thirds of the items examined had coastal species on them, including crustaceans, sea anemones and moss-like creatures called bryozoans.

Scientists had not often tracked creatures surviving dispersal across entire oceans. The researchers noted that in one rare event in 2012, debris from the previous year’s tsunami in Japan washed ashore in North America bearing living species.

Creatures can spread quickly by feeding on the layers of slime formed on floating plastics by bacteria and algae, the study said. Scientists must now investigate how these coastal colonists will fit into the ocean food chain.

“We found that coastal species are commonly observed on the same plastics as the native pelagic species [dwelling far out at sea], suggesting that these two communities are interacting with one another,” the study’s lead author Linsey Haram told AFP.

“These interactions could include competition for food and space as well as predation. More research is needed to understand whether the implications are positive or negative.” 

In a 2021 article, members of the same research team warned that the influx of invasive coastal species “might portend significant ecological shifts in the marine environment.”  

A study published in 2017 in the journal Science Advances calculated that if current production and waste-management trends continued, there would be 12 billion tons of plastic waste in landfills or the natural environment by 2050.

G-7 energy and environment ministers declared at the end of talks in Japan on Sunday their “ambition to reduce additional plastic pollution to zero by 2040.”

They said they hoped to draw up an “international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution” by the end of 2024. 
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Two years ago, Paul’s teacher noticed that the 10-year-old boy could no longer see anything on the board at the front of the class.

An ophthalmologist confirmed that Paul was one of the soaring number of children worldwide with myopia, also known as nearsightedness, an eye condition projected to affect half of the world’s population by 2050.

But the ophthalmologist in the western French city of Nantes had some good news: specially designed glasses had just become available that could slow down the progression of Paul’s myopia.

“After a year, the results were quite positive because his eyesight seemed to have stabilized,” Paul’s mother Caroline Boudet told AFP.

Previous research has suggested that myopia progresses 60% slower in children wearing the “Miyosmart” glasses compared to normal prescription glasses.

A six-year clinical study also found that the disorder did not start speeding up again if the children stopped using the glasses.

Developed by Japan’s Hoya Corporation, the Miyosmart lenses, which also function as normal glasses to help the children see clearly, have been available in numerous European countries including France and the U.K. for around two years.

Eyewear firm EssilorLuxottica claims its own Stellest lenses reduce myopia’s progression by 67% when worn at least 12 hours a day.

The Italian French firm said the glasses could save more than one dioptre — the unit of measurement for optical power — over three years.

Myopia occurs when there is too much distance between the cornea and retina, making far-off objects appear blurry.

Both Miyosmart and Stellest glasses deploy hundreds of tiny lenses to counteract peripheral hyperopic defocus in which light falls behind the retina, causing the eyeball to get longer and making myopia worse.

The Miyosmart glasses are not available in the United States, however contact lenses that work on a similar principle from the California firm CooperVision have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Research has suggested that the percentage of people affected by myopia worldwide could surge from 27% in 2010 to 52% by 2050.

Children with at least one nearsighted parent are more likely to develop the condition — however no one in Paul’s family is myopic.

Environmental rather than genetic causes are believed to be behind the explosion of cases.

Children spending more time indoors, being exposed to less natural light, and looking at nearby objects such as screens has likely brought about what has been dubbed “the myopia generation,” according to researchers.

Claude Speeg-Schatz, head of the French Society of Ophthalmology, said she was “quite amazed” by the new glasses slowing myopia’s progression.

“We have tried many things to avoid myopia, but this is the first time that we have a system which really works,” she said.

For recently diagnosed children, she first prescribes normal corrective glasses.

“If the myopia increases, then I automatically prescribe” the myopia control glasses, she said.

French ophthalmologist Jimmy Chammas said the glasses were “a real gain for children.”

“The myopia of those who wear these glasses deteriorates half as much as we would have expected — if at all,” he said.

One obstacle is that the glasses cost more for parents, with prices depending on the country.

Jean-Michel Lambert, head of Hoya Vision Care France, called for the glasses to be reimbursed by French health services.

“Each dioptre lost considerably increases the risk of future pathologies,” he said, adding that “if we slow down myopia, it will be one less cost for society.

If a prescription reads -2, that indicates two dioptres of nearsightedness.

Nearsightedness of -6 dioptres or more is called high myopia, which can increase the risk of serious eye damage such as retinal detachment, glaucoma or early onset cataracts.
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The Group of Seven rich nations on Sunday set big new collective targets for solar power and offshore wind capacity, agreeing to speed up renewable energy development and move toward a quicker phase-out of fossil fuels.

But they stopped short of endorsing a 2030 deadline for phasing out coal that Canada and other members had pushed for, and left the door open for continued investment in gas, saying that sector could help address potential energy shortfalls.

“In the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis, it’s important to come up with measures to tackle climate change and promote energy security at the same time,” Japanese industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference.

“While acknowledging that there are diverse pathways to achieve carbon neutral, we agreed on the importance of aiming for a common goal toward 2050,” he said.

G7 ministers finish two days of meetings on climate, energy and environmental policy in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo on Sunday. Renewable fuel sources and energy security have taken on a new urgency following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Initially people thought that climate action and action on energy security potentially were in conflict. But discussions which we had and which are reflected in the communique are that they actually work together,” said Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s minister of natural resources.

In their communique, the members pledged to collectively increase offshore wind capacity by 150 gigawatts by 2030 and solar capacity to more than 1 terawatt.

They agreed to accelerate “the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels” – the burning of fossil fuels without using technology to capture the resulting C02 emissions – to achieve net zero in energy systems by 2050 at the latest.

On coal, the countries agreed to prioritize “concrete and timely steps” towards accelerating the phase-out of “domestic, unabated coal power generation”, as a part of a commitment last year to achieve at least a “predominantly” decarbonized power sector by 2035.

Canada was clear that unabated coal-fired power should be phased out by 2030, and Ottawa, Britain and some other G7 members committed to that date, Canada’s Wilkinson told Reuters.

“Others are still trying to figure out how they could get there within their relevant timeframe,” Wilkinson said.
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