Author: Web Desk

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch, the jury said.

"The groundbreaking discoveries... by this year's Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world," the Nobel jury said.

"In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year's Nobel Prize laureates."

Julius, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros).

Last year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

While the 2020 award was handed out as the pandemic raged, this is the first time the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19.

Nominations close each year at the end of January, and at that time last year the novel coronavirus was still largely confined to China.

The Nobel season continues on Tuesday with the award for physics and Wednesday with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday, October 11.

Source: Voice of America

Actor William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of space explorer Captain James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” television series, announced he will travel to space later this month.

Shatner, 90, will blast off October 12 aboard a Blue Origin rocket. Blue Origin is the space travel company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

If successful, Shatner would be the oldest person ever to travel to space. He will be joined by three other passengers on Blue Origin’s second space venture.

Bezos was among the first Blue Origin passengers in July.

The flight is expected to last about 10 minutes and reach an altitude of 106 kilometers.

"I've heard about space for a long time now. I'm taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle," Shatner said in a statement.

In a tweet, the actor wrote, “So now I can say something. Yes, it’s true; I’m going to be a ‘rocket man!’ a referral to his spoken-word cover version of singer-songwriter Elton John’s famous song.

Source: Voice of America

“The pandemic has destabilized societies, economies, and governments. It has shown that there is no global security without global health security,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a recent address to ambassadors and representatives to the European Union’s political and security committee.

“The fastest and best way to end this pandemic is with genuine global cooperation on vaccine supply and access,” Tedros said. “The longer vaccine inequity persists, the longer the social and economic turmoil will continue, and the more opportunity the virus has to circulate and change into more dangerous variants. We need a global realization that no country can vaccinate its way out of this pandemic in isolation from the rest of the world.”

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported Sunday it had recorded 234.6 million global COVID infections and nearly 5 million deaths.

Thousands marched Saturday in Bucharest, Romania, to protest restrictions that begin Sunday to combat a jump in coronavirus infections.

The European nation of 19 million is seeing a shocking rise in the daily number of coronavirus cases. A month ago, the number was about 1,000 new cases a day. On Saturday, Romania reported more than 12,500 new cases, its highest number since the pandemic began in March of last year.

Protesters, mostly maskless, gathered outside government offices, shouting "Freedom, freedom without certificates," and "Down with the government," according to Reuters. One sign read: "Green certificates = dictatorship," The Associated Press reported.

The demonstration was organized by Romania's far-right AUR party, the AP said.

The rising cases have strained the nation’s hospitals — intensive care beds are nearly full — and the protests angered some medical workers.

"The situation in hospitals is serious," Beatrice Mahler, hospital manager of Bucharest's Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology, told The Associated Press. "We have patients hospitalized in beds in the hallway — all with extremely severe forms of COVID-19."

The restrictions scheduled to take effect Sunday include requiring masks be worn in public, and that shops close at 10 p.m. local time.

Public spaces such as restaurants, theaters and gyms, can remain open — some at only partial capacity — for customers who have COVID-19 passes, meaning they are fully vaccinated, or show proof they have had the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Romania has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the European Union, 33.5% of all adults are fully vaccinated, second only to Bulgaria.

There is a weekend curfew in effect for unvaccinated Romanians, and there are plans to make vaccinations mandatory for health care workers, Reuters said.

Since the pandemic began, Romania has recorded nearly 1.25 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 37,000 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Russia’s vaccine

Russia’s health minister, Mikhail Murashko, said Saturday that just some paperwork needs to be finished before its Sputnik V vaccine can be registered with the World Health Organization.

The shot has been approved in more than 70 countries and is used widely in Russia. If it wins approval from the WHO and the European Medicines Agency, that could make it available to other markets, Reuters said.

The WHO could not be immediately reached for comment, Reuters added.

Nicaragua shots

Nicaragua has OK’d two Cuban-made vaccines for use in the Central American nation, the Cuban manufacturer, BioCubaFarma, said Saturday.

Cuba developed three coronavirus vaccines, all of which are awaiting official recognition by the WHO, Reuters reported. Nicaragua authorized Abdala and Soberana for emergency use.

Iran, Vietnam and Venezuela have also OK’d the Cuban vaccines for emergency use in their countries.

Source: Voice of America

A British company says it has developed an easy-to-administer, saliva-based test that can detect whether a person is infectious enough to pass along the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The company, Vatic, said in a statement that its test is “extremely accurate” and has not returned a single false positive result in its test group. “This is so important for getting life back to normal,” the company said.

Vatic said its “mission was to design a test that people won’t mind using multiple times a week.”

Tests results are available in 15 minutes, the company said.

The test is not available to the public yet as it undergoes more trials but Vatic is seeking approval for its sale directly to the public.

A report in The Economist says COVID in 2020 has brought an abrupt halt to the steady rise of the rate of lIfe expectancy.

Impact on life expectancy

Researchers in Britain, Denmark and Germany said that between 2019 and 2020 life expectancy dropped in all but two of the 28 countries surveyed.

Life expectancy rose in Denmark and Norway and for women in Finland. Meanwhile, male life expectancy fell by more than a year in Italy, Poland and Spain and fell by more than two years in the United States.

Another report in The Economist says that the death rate from COVID in the U.S. “is about eight times higher in America than in the rest of the rich world” due to vaccine hesitancy and other factors.

The report said, “America’s antipathy to vaccines and continued resistance to other interventions, particularly among Republicans, is worrying. YouGov’s poll indicates that, among those who voted for [former U.S. President] Donald Trump in 2020, 31% say they will not get vaccinated, 71% strongly disapprove of President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate and nearly 40% never wear a face mask. That remains a deadly combination.”

“The pandemic has destabilized societies, economies, and governments. It has shown that there is no global security without global health security,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said about COVID-19 in a recent address to ambassadors and representatives to the European Union’s political and security committee.

“The fastest and best way to end this pandemic is with genuine global cooperation on vaccine supply and access,” Tedros said. “The longer vaccine inequity persists, the longer the social and economic turmoil will continue, and the more opportunity the virus has to circulate and change into more dangerous variants. We need a global realization that no country can vaccinate its way out of this pandemic in isolation from the rest of the world.”

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported Sunday it had recorded 234.6 million global COVID infections and nearly 5 million deaths.

Protests in Romania

Thousands marched Saturday in Bucharest, Romania, to protest restrictions that begin Sunday to combat a jump in coronavirus infections.

The European nation of 19 million is seeing a shocking rise in the daily number of coronavirus cases. A month ago, the number was about 1,000 new cases a day. On Saturday, Romania reported more than 12,500 new cases, its highest number since the pandemic began in March of last year.

Protesters, mostly maskless, gathered outside government offices, shouting "Freedom, freedom without certificates," and "Down with the government," according to Reuters. One sign read: "Green certificates = dictatorship," The Associated Press reported.

The demonstration was organized by Romania's far-right AUR party, the AP said.

The rising cases have strained the nation’s hospitals — intensive care beds are nearly full — and the protests angered some medical workers.

"The situation in hospitals is serious," Beatrice Mahler, hospital manager of Bucharest's Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology, told The Associated Press. "We have patients hospitalized in beds in the hallway — all with extremely severe forms of COVID-19."

The restrictions scheduled to take effect Sunday include requiring masks be worn in public, and that shops close at 10 p.m. local time.

Public spaces such as restaurants, theaters and gyms, can remain open — some at only partial capacity — for customers who have COVID-19 passes, meaning they are fully vaccinated, or show proof they have had the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Romania has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the European Union, 33.5% of all adults are fully vaccinated, second only to Bulgaria.

There is a weekend curfew in effect for unvaccinated Romanians, and there are plans to make vaccinations mandatory for health care workers, Reuters said.

Since the pandemic began, Romania has recorded nearly 1.25 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 37,000 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Source: Voice of America

Carrying signs with slogans like "my body, my choice, my right," thousands of women rallied Saturday in Washington at the start of a day of nationwide protests aimed at countering a conservative drive to restrict access to abortions.

The perennial fight over the procedure in America has become even more intense since Texas adopted a law on September 1 banning almost all abortions, unleashing a fierce counterattack in the courts and in Congress, but with few public demonstrations until now.

Two days before the U.S. Supreme Court is due to reconvene and have the final say on the contentious issue, nearly 200 organizations have called on abortion rights defenders to make their voices heard from coast to coast.

The flagship event was in the nation's capital, Washington, where a crowd of all ages — mostly women but men too — rallied under sunny skies at a square near the White House, many wearing purple masks with the words "bans off my body."

Protesters danced to pop music blared from loudspeakers, as activists addressed the crowd in recorded interviews broadcast on large screens, and slogans like "abortion is healthcare" or "abort the Texas Taliban" were held aloft on signs, or daubed on protesters' bodies.

A handful of counter-protesters shouted "abortion is murder" but there was no violence.

Later the crowd was to march toward the Supreme Court, which nearly 50 years ago recognized the right of women to have an abortion in its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

Now the court, stacked by former President Donald Trump with conservative justices, seems ready to head in the opposite direction.

'Our own choice'

"Women are humans, we are full humans, and we need to be treated like full humans," said Laura Bushwitz, a 66-year-old retired teacher from Florida, wearing a dress with portraits of women politicians and activists, such as Michelle Obama.

"We should be able to have our own choice on what we want to do with our bodies. Period," she said. "Hear that, SCOTUS?" she asked, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court has already refused to block the Texas law and has agreed to review a restrictive Mississippi law that could provide an opportunity to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade precedent, which guaranteed the legal right to an abortion up until a fetus is viable outside the womb.

Rallies were planned in at least two conservative states' capitals, Austin and Jackson, as well as in more than 600 cities in all 50 states. According to the organizers, nearly a quarter of a million people are expected to turn out across the United States.

"Together, we are joining hands to advocate for a country where abortion isn't just legal — it's accessible, affordable and destigmatized," said the organizers of the Rally for Abortion Justice in a statement.

The group called on Congress to enshrine the right to abortion in federal law, to protect it from any possible reversal by the Supreme Court.

A bill to that effect was adopted a week ago in the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats, but has no chance of passing the Senate where Republicans have enough votes to block it.

'Patriarchal desire'

In 2017, a first "Women's March" was held the day after Trump's inauguration, rallying millions of opponents of the Republican billionaire who had been accused of sexism.

Since then, other demonstrations have failed to turn out such huge numbers, in part due to internal divisions over accusations of anti-Semitism leveled at one of the organizers.

But that page seems to have been turned.

Saturday's participants are a broad coalition including small feminist groups, community and local organizations as well as the giant of family planning, Planned Parenthood.

"We're taking to the streets once again, for the first time in the (Joe) Biden era," the statement said. "Because a change in the Oval Office hasn't stopped the politicized, perverse, and patriarchal desire to regulate our bodies. If anything, it's only gotten even more intense."

That escalation has been spurred on by Trump's appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, emboldening local conservative elected officials across to the country to embark on an anti-abortion offensive.

So far this year, 19 states have adopted 63 laws restricting access to abortions.

If the high court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, every state would be free to ban or allow abortions.

That would mean 36 million women in 26 states -- nearly half of American women of reproductive age -- would likely lose the legal right to an abortion, according to a Planned Parenthood report released Friday.

Source: Voice of America

Delegates heading to the COP26 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow agreed they must deliver on the $100 billion per year pledge to help most vulnerable nations tackle climate change, COP26 president Alok Sharma said on Saturday.

Speaking after days of meetings at the pre-COP26 climate event in Italy, Sharma said there was a consensus to do more to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius target within reach, adding more needed to be done collectively in terms of national climate plans.

The COP26 conference in Glasgow aims to secure more ambitious climate action from the nearly 200 countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius - and preferably to 1.5 degrees - above pre-industrial levels.

Source: Voice of America