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https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/international/40005736

In Japan, disability advocates hope the Paralympics will showcase the pawsomeness of service dogs

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TOKYO – On a winter day many years ago, Yoshitomo Kimura fell out of his wheelchair when he was trying to get into his car. He yelled for help, but no one was around – except Cynthia, his Labrador retriever service dog. Thanks to Cynthia, who fetched his cellphone, Kimura was able to call his neighbor.

“No one was coming, so I thought that I was going to freeze outside,” recalled Kimura, 61, who lives in Osaka. “She really saved my life and I am eternally grateful for that.”

Every day, Kimura relies on his service dog for opening doors, pushing his wheelchair up a sloped street, and a lot more. Yet life with a furry aide does not come seamlessly for hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who would qualify for canine assistance, because of barriers that have hindered service dogs’ widespread use and acceptance, said Kimura and other disability advocates.

Service dogs made headlines in Japan last month when they strutted alongside visually impaired athletes on the Israeli team, tails wagging, during the Tokyo Paralympics Opening Ceremonies. The images and videos were a hit on social media, where Japanese users gushed over the pups with surprise and admiration.

In Japan, disability advocates hope the Paralympics will showcase the pawsomeness of service dogs

For Japan’s disability advocates, the Tokyo Paralympics provides a global platform to raise awareness about the social stigma, barriers and discrimination they face, similar to how the 1964 Tokyo Paralympics – the first in Asia – helped the Japanese public understand the needs of people with disabilities.

Those who rely on four-legged partners say they hope the Games will lead to greater acceptance of service dogs and other forms of assistance that empower them to live independently and stay healthy.

“People don’t see service dogs accompanying disabled people as a necessity for them to actively participate in society, but more just as a well-trained dog … which is why people often face rejection,” said Tomoko Hashizume, head of the nonprofit Japan Service Dog Resource Center. “I hope people’s perceptions of disabled people change [from] watching the Paralympics, from people that can’t do anything by themselves that need help, to these people that are doing extraordinary things in all sorts of creative ways.”

Nearly two decades ago, the Japanese government passed the Assistance Dogs for Persons with Physical Disabilities Act of 2002 to certify service dogs and allow them to enter public facilities and transportation.

But the use of service dogs remains rare in Japan – unlike in the United States, where they are so common that some people try to pass off their pets as service dogs to gain entry to more places, or bring alligators, peacocks and ducks as emotional support animals on airplanes.

In general, dogs aren’t tolerated in public settings in Japan. It can be hard for dog owners to rent apartments in Tokyo, and few restaurants allow people to bring their dogs. Many owners carry cleaning spray bottles to wipe down the sidewalk of their dogs’ feces. At the same time, many people push small dogs around in strollers and pamper them with designer-brand clothing and accessories.

Uyanga Erdenebold, 38, lost her eyesight after being diagnosed with a congenital eye condition as a child. Her Labrador, Dunaway, helps her navigate life as she drops her son off at his school bus stop and goes to the grocery store or the gym.

She recalled waiting in line to enter a beer garden in Tokyo, where dogs on strollers were being let in. When she tried to enter with Dunaway, she was turned away.

“I’m blind. My guide dog is not a fashion statement. It’s a necessity,” she said. “Calling Dunaway my mobility aid is like calling my husband ‘the person I live with.’ They do so much more, and they mean so much more to us.”

About half of the people in Japan who use service dogs have had similar experiences being denied access to places such as hospitals, restaurants and other buildings, according to a 2019 survey by the National Federation of All Japan Guide Dog Training Institutions.

It wasn’t until Japan won the bid for the Paralympics in 2013 that many of the infrastructure and regulatory changes were made to make the country more accessible.

Still, those updates haven’t led to meaningful progress in cultural understanding, said Mark Bookman, an advocate for people with disabilities and a postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo College, who studies the history of disability policy and activism.

The cost of installing barrier-free features in existing buildings, for instance, has led developers to place them in hard-to-reach areas that make access more difficult for people with disabilities, Bookman said, such as elevators installed in areas where maintenance staff have to unlock entry.

Service dog users have also experienced those limitations. In 2019, a Tokyo subway line introduced its first bathroom for service dogs. Yet the facility requires extensive human mobility: The person needs to lay down a pee pad on a shower area, and place the dog to go to the bathroom there, before washing down the area with a shower head.

“It was great that lots of guidelines around service dogs were made in light of the Paralympic Games, but the problem in Japan is the operation,” said Yoshiko Park, director of the Japan Service Dog Association. “Because the number of service dogs is so little, it’s really difficult for attitudes to change to properly implement the guidelines.”

There are just under 1,000 active assistance dogs for people with disabilities, with a waiting list of about 3,000 people and a total of about 310,000 registered legally blind people in Japan, according to the National Committee of Welfare for the Blind in Japan. That does not include the elderly and others who would benefit from a service dog, such as those with hearing impairment, neurological diseases, and other disabilities or conditions.

These barriers have made it difficult to recruit and train more dogs to become service animals, which can be costly and labor intensive, experts say.

As the Paralympic Games come to a close this weekend, disability advocates are looking to the future: Where do we go from here? How can we make sure that the cosmetic accessibility upgrades and the global spotlight create lasting, cultural upgrades that make Japan more inclusive? How can we show that Japan, with a rapidly aging population, should prioritize those who need additional assistance?

Hashizume, of the Japan Service Dog Resource Center, said she hopes that the spotlight on people with disabilities will help break down barriers.

“I think in Japan, people’s understanding of disabilities is still very behind because people with disabilities weren’t able to actively participate in society historically. Therefore, many people in the government that are having discussions for disabled people, have never communicated or interacted with people with disabilities,” Hashizume said. “So I think the Paralympics has been a real learning opportunity for them.”

Published : September 05, 2021

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40005735

Gray greens joining climate fight in London

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LONDON – Arnold Pease isnt as nimble as some of the other climate protesters who have flooded the streets of Britains capital. At 93, he walks with the support of a stick and carries a foldable stool for when he needs to sit down. But hes just as determined.

“It’s desperately important to take serious action against climate change,” said the great-grandfather and retired engineer. Last week, he was arrested after refusing to budge from a road where fellow activists had glued themselves to a bamboo structure.

The climate activist movement tends to be associated with younger people. It was Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager, who prompted hundreds of thousands of students to skip school to demand action.

But there are indications that an increasing number of older people are getting exercised about what is happening to the planet. During protests in London over the past two weeks, there have been quite a few gray heads in the crowd – the “gray greens,” as one BBC presenter called them.

And many of those people said they were willing to go to jail for their beliefs.

Gray greens joining climate fight in London

Pease was among the nearly 500 people who were detained and subsequently released over the course of the demonstrations, which were organized by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion.

The older protesters who spoke with The Washington Post said they felt a sense of collective responsibility: It was their generation that drove gas guzzlers, thought nothing of flying abroad for a beach vacation in Spain, paid scant attention to deforestation in the Amazon. It was on their watch that carbon emissions climbed.

That sentiment is not exclusive to Europe. American climate activist Bill McKibben announced this past week that he is starting a new group called Third Act aimed at getting older people involved in climate activism.

“We’re going to try and organize ‘experienced Americans’ – i.e., people over 60 like me – around issues of climate justice, racial justice, economic justice,” he tweeted. “Our generations have done their share of damage; we’re on the verge of leaving the world a worse place than we found it.”

Gray greens joining climate fight in London

Many of the seniors protesting in London, calling on governments to divest from fossil fuels, said they were concerned for their grandchildren. Those that led a march on Thursday, snaking from the Tate Modern museum over the Millennium Bridge to the financial district, held aloft signs that read “I would be arrested for my grandchildren’s future” and “Grandparents against climate change.”

“I’d do anything to protect my grandchildren,” said Charmian Kenner, 67, a retired academic. “I won’t live long enough to know whether it worked or not for them, but I’m here, doing this.”

She said sometimes the older protesters get looks that say: “What are you doing here? You should be at home knitting.”

But she said older generations “should have acted earlier, so we need to be here, because in some way, whether we meant it or not, we are responsible for what happened.”

John Lynes, 93, a great-grandfather and retired engineer, said, “Full stop, we are responsible – no doubt about it.”

“Nowadays, increasingly, it’s older people taking part. That’s true of my experience,” he said. “If you have a job to lose, need to ask someone for a mortgage or are looking after children, it’s not that easy for you to be arrested. For me, what does it matter if I’m arrested?”

Sue Williamson, 68, a retired social worker and grandmother, was among the hundreds blocking traffic outside the Bank of England on Thursday. She said she was willing to be arrested by one of the dozens of officers looking on at the scene. “You got to make the most of the years you got left,” she said of her activism.

Those attending protests are a small subset of society. But a new poll this past week by Ipsos MORI suggests that the climate is becoming an important concern for older people in Britain more broadly. Given an open-ended prompt about major issues facing the country, 42% of those age 55 to 64 and 35% of those over 65 mentioned climate, compared with 24% of 18-to-34-year-olds.

The poll found that, while concern about the climate shot up between July and August – alongside the publication of a gloomy review by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and reports of fires and flooding around the world, including in London – the jump was especially pronounced among the elderly.

Stephen Fisher, a public opinion researcher at the University of Oxford, said the new survey stood in contrast with findings that younger people have tended to be more alarmed about climate change than their elders, which has been “pretty consistent in surveys internationally for decades.” (He added that, at the same time, older people tend to report higher levels of energy-saving behavior, “perhaps for cost reasons, rather than climate reasons.”)

Fisher helped with the biggest ever climate poll, published in January for the U.N. Development Program. It found an age divide in every one of the 50 countries surveyed, with young people more climate-conscious than seniors. That survey also found that public belief in a “global emergency” was highest in Britain, which Fisher said may have been influenced by the high-profile status of Extinction Rebellion.

The group, founded in the United Kingdom, isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. A YouGov poll released Friday showed Britons tended to have a negative view of Extinction Rebellion.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that he “passionately believes we face a climate emergency” and that the November U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, is “the last chance.” But he said some of tactics used by Extinction Rebellion may be “inadvertently driving people away” from the cause. Speaking to LBC radio, he urged protesters to “think carefully about your tactics.”

Over the course of the latest protests, which conclude Saturday, the group erected a 13-foot pink table in Central London, blocked London Bridge and Tower Bridge, and shut down streets in Central London and the financial district.

This was Extinction Rebellion’s fourth extended protest in London. Authorities have said that policing their previous protests, in April and October 2019 and September 2020, cost more than 50 million pounds, or $69 million.

Lissa Roy, 58, a grandmother who used to work in logistics for a tech company, said she had tried other tactics before joining Extinction Rebellion “and nothing worked.”

“I went on marches, signed petitions, wrote to my MP – it all gets ignored,” she said. “So I got to the point I had to do something.”

“It saddens me,” she said, “to see young people here, having to do this, risk arrest, knowing the impact that could have on their lives, because we didn’t do a good-enough job early on.”

She said her family appreciated her activism.

“My eldest grandson, he’s 11. He’s very proud, and climate-conscious. It amuses me when he tells his teacher, ‘My nana got arrested.’ I tell him, ‘I hope you explained to her why.’ “

Published : September 05, 2021

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40005734

China hedge funds pay $300,000 to beat Wall Street to best graduates

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When computing major Garen Zhou deferred his studies in the U.S. because of the pandemic, he applied for internships at Chinas biggest internet companies.

In the end, the Peking University graduate chose Ubiquant, a local hedge fund managing $8 billion of assets which is offering top college leavers like Ph.D.s annual salaries of as much as $300,000. After a year, Zhou became a permanent employee, giving up his enrollment at Johns Hopkins University.

“The benefits of staying in this job far outweigh those of studying in the U.S. both in terms of knowledge and financial return,” said 23-year-old Zhou.

For elite students in artificial intelligence and computer science, companies like Ubiquant offer triple the $100,000 sticker price for freshly minted college graduates on Wall Street, illustrating a shift in global financial hiring driven by the pandemic and rising emerging market wealth. Rather than aspire to an education in the U.S. that often leads to opportunities at global companies or even staying in America, some of the nation’s best and brightest are choosing to stay home.

Graduates are in particular demand at funds which use computer models to trade, which have been lifted by inflows from rich individuals in the world’s second-biggest economy. Assets at such funds in China have jumped tenfold compared with four years ago to exceed 1 trillion yuan ($155 billion), according to Citic Securities Co. estimates.

But quant funds are also competing for hires with internet titans from TikTok owner ByteDance to Alibaba Group Holding, and global hedge funds including Bridgewater Associates and Citadel. The battle for talent even transcends business as China and the U.S. make technological superiority important national objectives, channeling increasing amount of support toward research and innovation, as well as data security.

“It’s very important for us to identify talent early on, because once they go abroad to study, they’ll have more options and we’ll have to compete with global companies,” said Wang Chen, 39, founder of Beijing-based Ubiquant. “Their willingness to join has increased quite a lot compared with a few years ago.”

Seeking an elite education abroad is a well trodden path, and the number of Chinese students pursuing computer science degrees in the U.S. has steadily risen in the past decade. Now with more students deferring their studies as the global pandemic restricts travel, companies like Ubiquant have adjusted their hiring strategy by offering one-year internships.

So far that tactic is working. Ubiquant has seen an influx of talent, partly due to Covid-19 and also because a humbled tech industry in China is grappling with regulatory change. Applications have jumped six times this year to more than 300 compared with when the company was founded.

Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management is also capitalizing on the changing priorities of graduates. The country’s largest quant fund managing more than $10 billion hired about 10 researchers over the past year, many of whom gave up overseas studies amid the pandemic, according to Chief Executive Officer Simon Lu. Shanghai Minghong Investment Co., which manages $8.5 billion in China, hired more than 10 experts in artificial intelligence and natural language processing in recent years, according to founder Qiu Huiming.

And Lingjun Investment, which manages about $7.7 billion, plans to expand its investment and research team by as much as a third to 140 people by the end of the year, the firm said. It plans to boost spending in the area, including salaries, to about 1 billion yuan in the 15 months through March next year, up from an annual average of between 200 million yuan and 300 million yuan in the past three years.

China’s private quant funds have been facing a persistent shortage of new talent since 2018 amid the industry’s expansion, pushing up salaries, according to Eric Zhu, Shanghai-based head of financial services at recruiter Morgan McKinley.

The higher wages are in line with a broader global trend that goes beyond hedge funds, as business at financial firms is booming. In the span of a few months, entry-level salaries at top investment banks have quickly shot up into six figures, even before bonuses, as executives responded to a rebellion against the demands of Wall Street life sparked by a damning presentation from a group of first-year analysts at Goldman Sachs.

And while President Xi Jinping has stepped up rhetoric about “common prosperity” as the Communist Party takes aim at wealth extremes, higher salaries are helping China to hold on to graduates in priority areas like artificial intelligence.

High-Flyer’s investment and research team now numbers almost 160, Lu said. It already includes Olympiad gold medalists, experts from internet giants and senior researchers from global rivals. He expects the mix of young scientists and top talent from Wall Street to inspire each other.

Stationed near China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, Ubiquant tests people on everything from coding to statistics and examines their academic research papers, hiring about 10 fresh graduates last year.

Wang says he has offered more experienced hires salaries of $1 million a year. The company also gives extra incentives to top staff like one-time bonuses of 10 million yuan or profit sharing from breakout trading strategies, as he gets more comfortable poaching talent from global corporations.

“If we think someone is worth hiring, we will try to hire them, sparing no efforts,” said Wang.

Back at Ubiquant’s headquarters, Zhou and his colleague Nathan Lin, who both joined last year, focused on studying natural language processing and the firm’s existing research for the first four months of their internships.

“I like the fact that your code and work speaks for itself,” instead of having to socialize and meet clients, said 22-year-old Lin, adding that this combined with the better salary offer from Ubiquant was the reason he joined the company instead of ByteDance or a job in banking.

The work pace also appeals. Starting at 10 a.m. every day, they work for an hour and a half before heading for a lunch break and getting a quick nap at their desks. They resume at 1 p.m., writing codes and brainstorming strategies till about 7 p.m. or 9 p.m. before hitting the gym. Often they’ll play ping pong in the office with other colleagues.

“Working here matches the spirit of being a self-branded geek,” said Zhou. “As long I’m still learning, I’ll be staying on.”

Published : September 05, 2021

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/international/40005733

Weighing Fed nominees, Biden administration faces delicate political test

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WASHINGTON – A major decision for President Biden when it comes to the economy is whether to reappoint Jerome Powell to a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve Board. But that choice is increasingly fanning political flames and could depend on who else the White House assembles to round out the Fed roster.

Powell, a Republican, joined the Fed board under President Barack Obama. He was nominated by President Donald Trump to be chair in 2017, although Trump often lashed out against him for not doing enough to stimulate the economy. Powell’s term expires in February.

Going forward, Powell will perhaps be best known for steering the Federal Reserve through the coronavirus crisis as the central bank deployed an unprecedented effort to keep the economy afloat.

The White House must now decide whether to reappoint him to another term. And it’s a politically fraught decision.

Earlier this week, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y,, Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., all of whom sit on the House Financial Services Committee, called for Biden to appoint a new Fed chair. In a statement, which was first reported by Politico, the lawmakers said that under Powell, the Fed “has taken very little action to mitigate the risk climate change poses to our financial system.” They also said the Fed “has substantially weakened many of the reforms enacted in the wake of the Great Recession,” including those regulating the largest banks.

Meanwhile, some left-leaning economists and Fed watchers hope Biden keeps Powell, in large part because of Powell’s push for full employment and the benefits of a tight labor market. On Thursday, Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., chair of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement that Powell has had a “steady hand through a time of severe crisis” and that “a consistent and focused Federal Reserve is critical.”

The White House also faces a tricky political test when it comes a slew of other Fed decisions. In addition to chair, the administration can fill slots for the Fed’s vice chair, vice chair for supervision (essentially the Fed’s top banking cop) and a separate seat on the board of governors that’s already open.

In one scenario often discussed by economists, as well as those close to the Fed and Capitol Hill, Biden could reappoint Powell at the same time that he fills other openings on the Fed board with a slate of more liberal nominees. The idea behind a “package deal” would be to please as many factions within the Democratic Party as possible.

But that strategy has increasingly met pushback from some left-leaning groups that say they aren’t sold on that kind of trade-off. Their concern is whether Fed policies meaningfully shift – especially on banking regulation – if Powell stays in place.

“There was a sense among some in the administration that keeping Powell at the top and having the other vacancies [go to left-leaning candidates] gave them a relatively easy path to accomplish a broad range of things, from keeping markets from reacting in a negative way, to keeping both moderates and progressives happy,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University and the Brookings Institution. “And I think that is where things have become complicated.”

Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, said it makes sense for the administration to evaluate a group of nominees at once. But he said “that doesn’t mean starting with retaining Trump’s Fed chair.”

“The notion that we can balance out Powell, I think, runs into some very basic facts about the structure of the Federal Reserve,” Hauser said, adding that “there are limits to what a dream team can do.”

People close to the administration and the Hill emphasized that there has not been a groundswell of opposition to Powell, and that discussions over who should run the Fed are still fluid.

In a statement, the White House said, “The President will appoint the candidates who he thinks will be the most effective in implementing monetary policy.” Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told senior White House advisers that she supports reappointing Powell as chair.

The Fed stakes much of its authority and reputation on a separation from politics. Yet it can never truly unplug from Washington’s churn, especially when it comes to nominees. Biden’s decisions for the Fed have drawn attention given the politics – and the economic backdrop.

As inflation rises, Powell and the White House share the view that the price increases on a range of items, from groceries to rental cars, are a temporary problem for the economic recovery. As supply chains have time to clear their backlogs, and consumer demand settles down, they say inflation will ease back down, too. But only time will tell if they are right.

Republicans are likely to back Powell, despite their criticisms that he’s been too lax on rising inflation. Many Democrats, meanwhile, have embraced Powell’s views on full employment and the labor market and give Powell enormous credit for his leadership during the pandemic.

If Powell is not chosen as chair, the widespread expectation is that Biden would nominate Lael Brainard, the lone Democrat on the Fed board. Brainard has consistently voted against the Fed’s moves to soften banking regulation and warned of the dangers of less Wall Street oversight, even when the economy is healthy.

Brainard has also exerted her influence in other ways. Last year, Powell brought Brainard into the Fed’s close inner circle – a group traditionally confined to the Fed chair, vice chair and New York Fed president – that shapes the monetary policy agenda.

In gaming out Biden’s options, some people close to the Fed and the Hill think Biden could nominate Brainard to be the Fed’s vice chair, or vice chair for supervision, given her strong views on banking regulation.

But it’s unclear whether those would be attractive offers for Brainard. Plus, that hypothetical scenario has drawn little enthusiasm from Democrats who say stronger regulatory policies should also come from the top.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., praised Brainard’s “strong and powerful dissents,” adding that Brainard “makes a good case for why it is the job of the Federal Reserve to be that cop on that beat.” Warren said that Powell “has weakened a regulation here, he has led the Fed to ease up there.”

When asked during the interview whether it would work to have a chair who was “very strong” on monetary policy work alongside a top Fed official who was “stronger” on regulation, Warren sounded unconvinced.

“The problem is that it’s the chair of the Federal Reserve where the power is concentrated,” she said. “It is the chair who decides what policies go forward. It is the chair who decides when to call a vote.”

But not everyone believes Powell would dictate the Fed’s agenda if he got another term as chair.

Powell is known to value consensus. People close to the Fed also noted that the vice chair for supervision role was a job specifically created by Congress after the Great Recession to oversee the financial system. They said Powell respects the authority that comes with that job, and doesn’t see it as one that can or should be co-opted by the chair.

And a look back at his record shows Powell sided with Randal K. Quarles, the vice chair for supervision, about as much as he did with Daniel Tarullo, a Democrat who led the Fed’s moves to tighten Wall Street oversight when Yellen was chair.

“The notion of Powell overriding that person seems very out of step with how he has conducted himself as a Fed chair and Fed governor,” said Skanda Amarnath, executive director at Employ America, a left-leaning think tank that advocates for the Fed to let the economy run hot. “I think you get the picture of someone who is not putting his thumb aggressively on the scale.”

Published : September 05, 2021

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40005718

Asean figures improve as Vietnam sees sharp decrease in new Covid cases

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Southeast Asia saw a decrease in new Covid-19 cases and related deaths on Saturday, collated data showed.

Asean countries reported 76,029 infections and 1,781 deaths on Saturday, lower than 81,459 and 1,809 respectively on Friday.

Vietnam saw a sharp reduction in new cases, by 37 per cent, to 9,521 on Saturday from 14,922 on Friday. Deaths were also lower at 317 from 338 the previous day.

Philippine Airlines (PAL) is currently filing for bankruptcy in a US court to cut debt and restructure the company as the aviation industry has been severely affected by the Covid-19 crisis, it was reported.

The bankruptcy filing will enable the company to cut debt by at least US$2 billion (THB64.96 billion) and receive $655 million (THB21.27 billion) as capital.

PAL will reduce the fleet size by 25 per cent and commence negotiations to reduce rental fees.

Related stories:

• Philippine Airlines struggles to survive in pandemic
• Vietnam braces for long battle as Covid-19 cases, deaths rise in Asean
• Thailand recorded 15,452 Covid-19 cases and 224 deaths on Sunday

Meanwhile, a cargo flight carrying 2.5 million doses of Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine from China will land at Phnom Penh International Airport in Cambodia on Sunday morning.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Health said of the total doses, 500,000 were donated by Sinovac Biotech.

Cambodia plans to vaccinate 12 million people, or 75 per cent of the total population, by the end of this year.

Published : September 05, 2021

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40005716

U.S. Navy says five dead after helicopter crash off California coast

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The five missing crew members of a helicopter were comfirmed dead, one was rescued following the crash. Five sailors aboard aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln were also injured during the incident.

The five missing crew members of an MH-60S helicopter which crashed off the coast of California on Tuesday, have been declared dead, U.S. Navy said Saturday.

U.S. Navy said in a press release that the 3rd Fleet has shifted from search and rescue efforts to recovery operations.

“The transition from search and rescue efforts to recovery operations comes after more than 72 hours of coordinated rescue efforts encompassing 34 search and rescue flights, over 170 hours of flight time, with 5 search helicopters and constant surface vessel search,” said the Navy.

Assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, the helicopter was conducting routine flight operations from aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln when it crashed into the sea approximately 60 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego Tuesday afternoon, according to the Navy.

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One crew member was rescued following the crash. Five sailors aboard aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln were also injured during the incident.

Officials said that an investigation into the incident is underway.

San Diego-based USS Abraham Lincoln is the fifth Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in the Navy and a member of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. 
 

Published : September 05, 2021

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40005715

New York sets up service centers to help residents recover from flash flooding

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The service centers will provide those affected with in-person support and information on resources and services available, said a release by NYC Emergency Management.

The emergency management and social service departments in New York City (NYC) on Saturday announced the establishment of five service centers across the city in a bid to support individuals and families affected by flash floods brought by the remnants of hurricane Ida.

The service centers will provide those affected with in-person support and information on resources and services available, said a release by NYC Emergency Management.

“New York City government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and community-based organizations will be on-site to help connect families and individuals to critical services, including enrollment in public benefits and health insurance, housing, food assistance, and mental health counseling,” said the release.

It was noted that visitors to these sites will not be asked about their immigration status.

The American Red Cross in Greater New York will assist in disaster relief management including referrals, distribution of emergency supplies, and applying for assistance as well as mental health counseling, according to NYC Emergency Management.

Meanwhile, NYC’s Department of Sanitation said it would continue to pick up storm debris at curb over the weekend including the Labor Day holiday next Monday.

People move waterlogged belongings outside a house, in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York, the United States, Sept. 3, 2021.

Related Stories

• Thailand censured for releasing dam water, flooding border area
• Ida-driven rain, flooding claim over 40 lives in U.S. Northeast
• At least 17 dead as Hurricane Ida remnants spark floods in New York, New Jersey

New York City and surrounding areas in the northeast of the United States suffered from tornadoes and flash floods and lost the lives of near 50 people in total as the remnants of hurricane Ida hit the area on Wednesday.

The federal government has approved an emergency disaster declaration in 14 counties of New York State including New York City and is expected to provide up to 5 million U.S. dollars in immediate federal funding to support response operations in the early stage, according to a statement by the New York State government on Friday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency began damage assessment on Friday and would expedite the process with the support of local governments, said New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Power supply to over 8,200 customers affected by Tropical Storm Ida has been restored as of Thursday and planned to restore 95 percent of service interruptions by midnight on Friday, according to Consolidated Edison, Inc., which provides power in NYC and Westchester County.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday announced a climate-driven rain response plan involving more severe warnings, basement apartment evacuations and a 30-day extreme weather response task force to devise solutions quickly and expedite implementation.  

Waterlogged vehicles are seen in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York, the United States, Sept. 3, 2021.

Published : September 05, 2021

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UK records another 37,578 coronavirus cases

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Britains vaccine advisory body has said that coronavirus vaccines for healthy children aged between 12 and 15 should not be recommended on health grounds alone. The body, however, advised the government to look at “wider issues” including the impact of the virus on schooling. A final decision is expected next week.

Another 37,578 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 6,941,611, according to official figures released Saturday.

The country also reported another 120 coronavirus-related deaths, taking the national death toll to 133,161. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.

The latest data came as Britain’s vaccine advisory body announced that coronavirus vaccines for healthy children aged between 12 and 15 should not be recommended.

The Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation (JCVI) provided the assessment, saying the vaccine jabs should not be recommended to those in this age group on health grounds alone, but the body has advised the government to look at “wider issues” including the impact of the virus on schooling.

The decision on healthy children was based on concerns over an extremely rare side effect of the Pfizer vaccine which causes heart inflammation, according to the BBC.

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A final decision, signed off by the chief medical officers of Britain’s all four nations, is expected next week, according to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

“COVID-19 cases are likely to increase once schools reopen — in the absence of any COVID-19 restrictions, as children are still unvaccinated and schools are high density, high contact environments, with relatively poor ventilation and long contact duration episodes,” said Julian Tang, honorary associate professor at University of Leicester.

“Risks can be reduced by ideally, in principle, extending the COVID-19 vaccination program to younger children, improving school ventilation, masking the older children and teachers, reducing overall class sizes, staggering break periods, but this may have various practical complications that may be unacceptable to some parents and teachers,” said the clinical virologist.

More than 88 percent of people aged 16 and over in Britain have had their first vaccine dose and nearly 80 percent have received both, the latest figures showed.

Children play with water in a fountain near Tower of London in London, Britain, on Aug. 13, 2021.

Published : September 05, 2021

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Texas created a blueprint for abortion restrictions. Republican-controlled states may follow suit.

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Republican officials in more than a half-dozen states across the country moved this week to replicate Texass restrictive abortion ban after the Supreme Court declined to step in and stop the law from taking effect.

GOP officials in at least seven states, including Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina and South Dakota, have suggested they may review or amend their states’ laws to mirror Texas’s legislation, which effectively bans abortions after six weeks. Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio and more are expected to follow, after a year abortion activists have deemed “the worst legislative year ever for U.S. abortion rights.”

“It’s something we’re already working on,” Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson told local news station WFLA-TV when asked about copying the Texas law, which empowers private citizens to report and sue providers who offer the procedure after six weeks.

Announcing he planned to introduce a copycat bill, Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert, a Republican, the founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, shared a template of legislation lawmakers in other states could fill in the blanks on and reproduce.

In South Dakota, where just two facilities in the state provide abortions, Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, said Thursday she’s directing lawyers in her office to review Texas’s latest abortion law and the state’s current laws “to make sure we have the strongest pro life laws on the books.”

A quarter of states will likely introduce legislation that mirrors Texas’s ban, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports access to reproductive health. More abortion restrictions, an estimated 97, have been enacted in 2021 than any year since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the group, expects the number to break 100 in the days after the ban became law in Texas.

“This has been a seismic change,” Nash told The Washington Post. “Other states are clearly going to pay attention.”

Though most state legislatures are out on summer recesses, Nash said she expects to see Texas-style abortion bills filed before their next sessions begin. These bills will likely be high on the agenda next year, she said.

“In many places really the only thing left to do is ban abortion,” she said. “And they have momentum.”

The nation has reached a critical moment for abortion rights, with the Supreme Court preparing to hear a case in which Mississippi has asked it to overrule the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion. Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would call for a vote on legislation to cement the right to abortion into federal law.

A majority of Americans favor reproductive rights; 63% of Americans agree with the ruling in Roe, a Quinnipiac University Poll in May found.

GOP state leaders, whose attempts to outlaw abortions have faced and sometimes failed to pass legal scrutiny, could find new success with a bill like Texas’s, which allows private citizens to bring suit against abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure.

“If the Texas legislation stands a greater chance of being upheld by the Supreme Court, certainly we would move to pass legislation that would mirror what Texas did,” said South Carolina state Sen. Larry Grooms, a Republican, whose abortion ban bill that was passed during the last session was affirmed unconstitutional in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

Despite celebrations by antiabortion activists in Texas, some Republicans sounded a more cautious note. Senate Minority Leader McConnell, R-Ky., described the ruling as “a highly technical decision” and said “whether it leads to a broader ruling on Roe v. Wade is unclear at this point.”

Others sounded a more cautious note. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, told reporters Thursday he would “have to look more significantly” at the Texas approach but maintained he was “pro-life.”

“I welcome pro-life legislation,” he said. “What they did in Texas was interesting.”

Although Idaho’s legislation session never formally adjourned, state Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder, a Republican, said he wouldn’t bring senators back to consider similar legislation as Texas’s ban.

“We already have a fetal heartbeat bill in Idaho,” he told the Associated Press, referring to proponents’ name for such a bill based on when an embryo’s cardiac activity can first be detected by an ultrasound. (Medical experts say that’s a misnomer, however, as an embryo does not have a developed heart at six weeks.)

Sen. Grooms of South Carolina brushed aside national polling data, saying it doesn’t reflect opinions in South Carolina, where he believes more people are coming around to antiabortion stances. He also said this is a morality issue, rather than a political one.

“For me, it’s not about winning at the polls,” he said. “It’s about protecting the sanctity of human life, and that includes unborn humans.”

Ohio Republican state Sen. Kristina Roegner, who introduced a bill in March that would make abortion procedures a felony, celebrated the Texas ban but stopped short of saying she would sponsor an identical bill.

“As an unwavering advocate for the sanctity of human life, I applaud Texas for standing up to protect unborn human babies,” she said in a statement. “As a mother of three daughters, I am pleased to have carried the heartbeat bill in Ohio, and will continue to fight for the right to life.”

Two antiabortion groups told The Post that while they applaud Texas’s creativity in formulating a law that successfully circumvented Roe, the Mississippi Supreme Court case is their priority.

“This was an act of desperation in Texas, to figure out some way around all the challenges that states constantly have enacting any kind of restriction, but really the job falls on the state to protect unborn people from being exterminated,” said Steve Antosh, general counsel for the National Pro-Life Alliance.

“There could be some judge that finds a way to stop it next week,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life. “But if this is saving babies right now, of course, we’re supporting it.”

Advocates on both sides predicted the fallout will ramp up activism and rulemaking on one of the most fraught issues in American politics. Antiabortion groups are expected to seize on Texas victory, moving forward with other restrictions.

“This [Texas ruling] gives us more motivation to push our state legislature to advance our key issues,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life.

Lawmakers in Republican-controlled legislatures that have banned abortions early in pregnancies, such as South Carolina, Idaho and Oklahoma, could “piggyback” existing laws with Texas’s new enforcement mechanism that threatens to penalize providers, said University of Houston law professor Seth Chandler, pointing to Texas’s law triggering an abortion ban if Roe were overturned.

“I don’t see why the two couldn’t work in tandem, assuming of course that S.B. 8 is constitutional, which in my opinion, it is not,” he said, referring to the Texas bill by its number.

Chandler predicted that a provider challenging the ban could win on the grounds that the law is inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent that states cannot prohibit abortions prior to viability.

But because the bill made the public the enforcer instead of state, it would be harder to challenge. If the Texas law holds up in court, Chandler warned that the same strategy could be used by other states on a host of issues aside from abortion – such as guns and coronavirus restrictions.

“What’s good for the conservative goose is good for the liberal gander,” Chandler said.

Even as legislators and lobbyists ready themselves for a possible domino effect of similar bills, some reproductive rights advocates predicted a possible pushback against abortion bans in the wake of such a restrictive policy from Texas.

Since Vicki Ringer, public affairs director for Planned Parenthood Votes South Atlantic, warned of an attempt by South Carolina lawmakers to replicate the Texas ban in an op-ed in The State Thursday, she said her phone has “been ringing off the hook.” In South Carolina, where rates of maternal mortality are among the highest in the nation, particularly among Black women, such restrictions could be detrimental to women’s health, she said.

“People are terrified,” Ringer said in an interview.

The burden of any abortion restriction falls on people of color, low-income individuals and young people, advocates say.

As clinics close and appointments grow more scarce, people could have to travel hours, sometimes across state lines, to find care. The average cost of an abortion is $550, according to the Guttmacher Institute, and traveling for appointments adds additional cost and requires people to take time off work.

The threat to Roe could galvanize voters who believed the 1973 decision was settled law, said Kristin Ford, a spokeswoman for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

“Now that it is so clear that is not the case, that Roe is really hanging on by a very, very tenuous thread, the political calculation for voters changes,” she said. “Republicans are making a risky political calculation here because it is firing up our side. People are extremely concerned.”

Published : September 04, 2021

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Northeast officials vow to make changes after nearly 50 die in storm-related deaths in Idas wake

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NEW YORK – State and local leaders in the Northeast on Friday vowed to strengthen infrastructure and improve emergency alerts after Idas aftermath caused scores of deaths and untold costs in destruction on its path north from Louisianas Gulf Coast.

At least 49 people were killed after torrential wind and rain pounded New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, ripping through buildings, sparking massive flooding and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power. Officials, some of who said they were caught off guard by the deluge, fear the death toll could rise as several people remain missing.

Leaders in New York and New Jersey told reporters their states needed to prepare for this type of storm to become normal as climate change scrambles weather patterns across the country.

“Things that we were told are once-in-a-century are now happening regularly,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, said at a Friday news conference. “But bluntly, they’re also getting worse. It is an entirely different reality.”

Despite grave warnings from the National Weather Service that New York could be inundated with heavy rains and flooding, de Blasio admitted Friday that city officials were caught flat-footed by the historic nature of the deluge. But he placed blame on a changing climate that has brought disasters with “a speed and ferocity we’ve never ever seen before.”

“We have to change our entire mind-set because we’re being dealt a very different hand of cards now,” he said. “And it’s not just us, we saw the destruction of Hurricane Ida in Louisiana. We’ve seen what’s happening in the Southwest with unprecedented drought. We see what’s happening with the wildfires in the West Coast. We all understand this is coming from a climate crisis.”

De Blasio, whose final term in office is set to expire at the end of the year, said that climate change was forcing the city to rethink everything. De Blasio pledged that the city would make quicker use of travel bans during heavy rains and work harder to evacuate people, not just in coastal areas of the city, but also from basement apartments.

“It’s not just saying to people you have to get out of your apartment, it’s going door-to-door with our first responders and other city agencies to get people out,” de Blasio said.

Most of the deaths in New York occurred exactly where officials had told residents to seek safety – their homes. Most of those who died were in basement apartments where floodwaters quickly trapped them inside. De Blasio said that the city would set up special cellphone alerts for neighborhoods with large numbers of basement apartments, most of which are technically illegal but collectively house tens of thousands of New Yorkers who can’t afford sky-high housing costs elsewhere in the city.

Shekar Krishnan, a civil rights and housing lawyer who is the Democratic nominee to represent the hard-hit Queens neighborhoods of Elmhurst and Jackson Heights on the city council next year, said this was an utterly foreseeable tragedy.

“We were the epicenter of the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s the communities like mine that have had the least amount of investments in our infrastructure that are the most devastated and harmed by these disasters,” Krishnan said. “We must start investing significantly in disaster preparedness, especially in immigrant communities like my own.”

Krishnan said among his priorities is the legalization of basement apartments, which would allow tenants to report unsafe living conditions to city officials without risk of eviction. He said that illegal basement apartments throughout Queens flooded nine years ago during Hurricane Sandy, and it was now time for city officials to take action.

“The reality is, because of how expensive housing is in the city and how rents are skyrocketing, many families have and will continue to live in basement apartments because that’s the most affordable housing they can find in the city right now,” he said.

Last year, de Blasio cut funding to a pilot program that sought to find ways to legalize basement apartments and regulate them. “If there ever was an urgent moment in the city to really legalize basement apartments in the city, this is it,” Krishnan said.

De Blasio said that the city would not be able to adjust to this new reality alone and would need help from the state and federal governments. Particularly, he said, lawmakers in Washington needed to invest in infrastructure spending. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government spent $14.5 billion on a new levee protection system around New Orleans. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and other natural disasters this summer, vulnerable communities across the country will be looking to Washington for the same kind of investment.

On Friday, President Joe Biden approved emergency disaster declarations for New York and New Jersey, freeing federal resources to aid the storm response.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, tweeted that “record-breaking floods are the new normal” and said she had asked staff to draft an “after-action report” to examine the state’s preparation for the storm.

While officials across the four Northeastern states all sounded the alarms of what the storm signaled about a changing climate, the lessons derived from the storm varied.

In downtown Passaic, N.J., streets turned into rivers resulted in the first reported storm-related death. At least 60 people were evacuated from their flooding homes. Some 200 individuals were rescued by first responders. All are signs that “these storms are becoming not-so-rare storms,” Mayor Hector Lora said.

Lora said adapting to an era marked by exacerbated weather events requires strategic and pragmatic emergency plans.

“Mass evacuation is too broad of an approach,” he said. “Displacing a large number of families and inconveniencing individuals without having appropriate resources may end up creating more issues. If you’re putting all these people out of their homes, you better be prepared for where you’re going to place them.”

While the floodwaters in the city of more than 70,000 have receded, dozens have been unable to return to their homes – some may be “permanently displaced,” Lora said.

Displacement was not an issue unique to Passaic. Some 400 people sought refuge in Red Cross and community shelters across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Since Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane, at least 60 storm-related fatalities have been reported across eight states. Roughly 10 tornadoes also touched down, including one that caused the Northeast’s first-ever “tornado emergency,” the most dire type of alert the National Weather Service can issue. Biden visited Louisiana on Friday to assess the extensive damage the hurricane wrought there.

In the Northeast, at least 13 people were killed in New York City, with another five dead elsewhere in New York. Five people in the Philadelphia area and one person in Connecticut were also confirmed dead.

Among New York’s fatalities was an 86-year-old woman in Elmhurst who was killed when floodwaters rushed into her basement apartment. According to records from the city department of buildings, there had been several complaints about an illegal basement dwelling in the building, but inspectors never gained access to the premises.

As New Jersey’s death toll rose to 25 overnight into Friday – all related to flooding – Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said he expected that number to grow. Six people in the state remained missing, including an 18-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man who were voted Passaic’s city-sponsored prom queen and king.

“While the weather may be good and while the floodwaters may have receded, we’re still not out of the woods,” Murphy said Friday on NBC’s “Today” show.

Among those killed were a 69-year-old man whose car was swept away by the storm, a family of three and a neighbor at an apartment complex, and a veteran sergeant with the Connecticut State Police.

In Pennsylvania, Donald Bauer, 65, and his wife were returning to their home in Perkiomenville in heavy rain Wednesday when he drove into floodwaters in Bucks County. The flooding was deeper than he expected, and water poured into the vehicle, said his father, Victor Bauer. The floating SUV then crashed into a house and began to sink, said the couple’s son, Darby Bauer.

Donald pushed his wife out the car window but could not escape himself. First responders tried to pull the SUV from the raging waters but said the conditions were too dangerous. He was found dead Thursday inside the car.

The destruction in these four states came after Ida walloped the Gulf Coast, where Louisiana has grappled for 16 years with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. While Ida was downgraded from a Category 4 hurricane after landing Sunday near Port Fourchon, La., the storm proved even deadlier about 1,200 miles away in the Northeast.

Though the torrential weather has passed, its aftermath has proved to be just as harrowing for communities facing recovery.

In New York and New Jersey, the extent of the damage remains unknown. Answers will begin to emerge once officials wrap up the assessment that will enable federal aid to pour in, Jason Wind, FEMA’s acting Region 2 deputy, said in a news conference Friday.

Northeast of Philadelphia, in Bucks County, Pa., officials were so overwhelmed by the destruction that they asked municipalities to survey the damage to their own areas and report back to them.

“This damage was so widespread, our limited staff couldn’t get to all of it,” said James O’Malley, a spokesman for the county’s emergency services department.

Crews in Philadelphia tried to force water from Interstate 676, one of the city’s main arteries, back into the Schuylkill River. Others raced to reopen another nearby road before visitors arrive this weekend for the Made in America music festival, said Brad Rudolph, a spokesman for the regional office of the state Department of Transportation.

For those living near the river, its unprecedented swelling brought an overwhelming sense of loss. Throughout the day, crews piled damaged items from flooded buildings.

“It’s a disgrace. People lost a lot,” said Gerald Harris, who has run Harris Janitorial Services for 30 years. He watched as his workers filled one 40-yard dumpster with mattresses, cardboard boxes, trash bags, lawn chairs and other miscellaneous items.

On 25th Street, David King threw out sopping wet mats and swept brown muddy water out of his bike shop Thursday. He had opened the store six months before the coronavirus pandemic began, then temporarily closed. He reopened with the hope that he would not have to close again.

But the river had other plans.

“Oh, this is pretty devastating,” King said. “We opened, and things were starting to grow. We were building a customer base, and then we had to close down. And then when we reopened again, we were just in the process of building it back up.”

Down the street, Lisa Blackman used a little red cup to pour water out of her Toyota Prius. The hearing specialist checked on her car at 2:30 a.m. Thursday and saw no water. Six hours later, her street and her car had both flooded.

Mother Nature, Blackman said, is not happy.

“Somebody better believe in climate change very soon,” Blackman said as she and her son cleaned out three inches of water in her car using a towel decorated with fishes. “She is really upset with this world.”

Published : September 04, 2021