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Two climate activists in Australia have brought the world’s busiest coal port to a halt, strapping themselves to a massive piece of machinery and refusing to come down. The stunt follows more than a week of similar actions.

Blockade Australia, a climate group focused on “strategic direct action,” declared that two of its members had clambered atop equipment at the Port of Newcastle and stopped work there late Tuesday night, sharing footage captured by the activists as they suspended themselves from a large loading machine.

“Zianna and Hannah have shut down Newcastle coal port, abseiling from coal handling machinery. The port cannot resume operations until the pair are removed by police,” the group said, identifying the activists by their first names only, adding “This is the tenth consecutive day of disruption to Newcastle coal port and its supply rail network.”

The protest stunt follows at least 16 similar actions over the last week or so, the group said, some targeting the rail line near the port, the world’s largest for coal exports.

Another demonstration carried out on Tuesday saw a second pair of activists breach the port and “hit emergency stop buttons” on machines before strapping themselves to a different piece of equipment. They were brought down and arrested after “several hours” and are expected to appear in court in the coming days.

The disruptions have drawn the ire of state officials, with New South Wales Environment Minister Matt Kean calling them “completely out of line” and urging police to “throw the book” at the protesters, at least 19 of whom have already been arrested so far this month, according to ABC.

“Pull your heads in, get out of the way and stop hurting other people going about their lives, running their businesses,” the minister said during a radio interview on Wednesday. “There are hundreds of ways to make your views known and advocate for change, but risking the lives of rail workers is definitely not one of them.”

The activists could face charges that carry maximum sentences of 25 years in prison, NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller said, noting that local law enforcement has created a “strike force” to deal with future disturbances at the port.

READ MORE: The trillion dollar push to decarbonize global shipping

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Just three days after restrictions were announced for unvaccinated Austrians, a provincial governor is pressing for a nationwide lockdown of all residents as Covid-19 infections continue to hit record highs.

“If no national lockdown is ordered tomorrow, there will definitely have to be a lockdown of several weeks in Upper Austria, together with our neighboring province Salzburg as of next week,” Upper Austria Governor Thomas Stelzer told lawmakers on Thursday.

That will mean at least two of Austria’s nine provinces will be in full lockdown mode just days after the nation created a two-tier society by locking down approximately two million unvaccinated Austrians.

“We must raise the vaccination rate. It is shamefully low,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said on Sunday, announcing that unvaccinated residents would only be allowed to leave their homes for “essential” purposes, such as to buy groceries or go to a doctor’s office.

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Police are now doing random checks for proof of vaccination on Austrian streets. Those unvaccinated residents who are found to be in violation of the lockdown order face steep fines of up to €500. Those who refuse to go through a vaccination status check will have to pay about three times as much.

Stelzer and other Austrian governors are scheduled to meet with Schallenberg and Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein on Friday, when a full lockdown will likely be considered.

New Covid-19 cases in the country passed the 15,000 mark for the first time on Thursday, far surpassing 2020’s daily high of 9,586, set when no vaccines were available. Upper Austria and Salzburg have been hit the hardest, putting hospitals at risk of bed shortages. With some 66% of its population fully vaccinated, Austria lags behind other Western European countries in terms of the Covid-19 vaccination rate.

While Austria is the first to impose a lockdown on the unvaccinated, other EU countries – including Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Greece – have imposed increasingly tight restrictions on people who haven’t accepted a Covid vaccine.

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The number of musk deer in Mongolia has plummeted by some 83 per cent since the 1970s, landing them on the country’s red list of critically endangered species. A UN-supported biodiversity initiative is helping to stop the deer from disappearing altogether.

Read the full story, “From the Field: Saving the Mongolian musk”, on globalissues.org →

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China has accused the Philippines of breaching its territory, saying two supply ships were blocked by Beijing’s coast guard as they approached a disputed shoal. Manila protested over the run-in, citing its own claim to the area.

The two Philippines vessels “trespassed” into waters near the Nansha island chain – also known as the Spratly Islands – on November 16, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijan told reporters on Friday, noting that they entered the area “without China’s consent.”

“Chinese coast guard vessels performed official duties in accordance with law and upheld China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime order,” Zhao said, adding that the area is now “generally tranquil” and that the two countries are in communication about the encounter.

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The comments from Beijing come just one day after Manila first publicized the incident, with the Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin claiming Chinese vessels fired water cannon on the two supply boats and forced them to abandon their mission near a disputed shoal in the Spratlys. He called on China to “back off” and “take heed” of Philippines claims to the region. 

While both countries regard the Ayungin shoal – alternatively referred to as the Second Thomas or Renai Jiao shoal – as their own territory, The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration settled the dispute in the Philippines’ favor in 2016. However, despite that ruling, as well as the fact that Manila has maintained a presence on the shoal since 1999, Beijing has not abandoned its claims to the area.

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Israel has allegedly launched two missiles targeting an area south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syria’s state media reported, noting that one of the projectiles was intercepted. There are no reports of damage.

The reported attack took place shortly after midnight on Wednesday local time, according to Syria’s SANA news agency. The projectiles came from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the outlet noted. The strike targeted an “empty building” south of the capital and resulted in no losses, according to the report.

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Israel routinely makes incursions into Syria under the pretext of taking out alleged Iranian outposts there. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) typically refrain from commenting on the raids, in line with its long-standing policy on military operations conducted outside its borders. Just over a week ago, two Syrian soldiers were injured in reported Israeli missile strikes on the cities of Tartus and Homs, near Russia’s naval base. The bombing also reportedly inflicted material losses. 

Damascus has repeatedly condemned Israeli attacks against its territory as violations of its sovereignty. Russia, Iran, and Turkey have also denounced the Israeli airstrikes in Syria as a breach of international law.

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Japan’s fifth wave of Covid-19 has virtually disappeared so dramatically that some scientists are puzzled as to why it happened. One team suggests the highly infectious Delta strain mutated into extinction on the island nation.

In mid-August, Japan experienced a peak in Covid-19 infections, recording over 23,000 new cases per day. Now the metric is just around 170, with deaths attributed to the disease mostly remaining in single digits this month.

The decline has been attributed by many to high vaccination rates, public acceptance of masks, and other factors, but some researchers say the drop was uniquely significant, compared to other nations with similar conditions.

Ituro Inoue, a geneticist at the National Institute of Genetics, believes that Japan had the good fortune of witnessing the Delta strain mostly rooting out other variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus before then eradicating itself. He explained his team’s theory to the Japan Times newspaper this week.

For some time now, Inoue and his fellow scientists were researching mutations of SARS-CoV-2 and how they are affected by the protein nsp14, which is crucial for the reproduction of the virus.

RNA viruses, like the one causing Covid-19, tend to have a very high mutation rate, which helps them quickly adapt to changes in the environment. However, this opens the door for a so-called “error catastrophe,” when bad mutations pile up and finally cause the full extinction of a strain. The protein nsp14 appears to offer a form of error proofreading that helps the virus genome to stay below the threshold of the “error catastrophe.”

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In the case of Japan’s fifth wave of Covid-19, the Delta variant’s nsp14 failed at this job, Inoue believes, based on the genetic study of specimens collected from June to October. Contrary to his team’s expectations, there was a lack of genetic diversity, while many samples had many genetic changes in the site called A394V, which is linked to the error-fixing protein.

“We were literally shocked to see the findings,” the researcher told the Japan Times. “The Delta variant in Japan was highly transmissible and [was] keeping other variants out. But as the mutations piled up, we believe it eventually became a faulty virus and it was unable to make copies of itself.”

The theory could be relevant to the previous SARS strain, which was identified in 2003, explaining why it didn’t cause a pandemic. But that would be hard to confirm, since the outbreak ended relatively quickly and didn’t result in the massive collection of genetic data necessary to test the hypothesis.

It’s not clear why Japan had this lucky turn of events, but nothing comparable happened in other East Asian countries like South Korea, where populations are genetically close to that of Japan. Virus mutations similar to those flagged by the scientists have been discovered in at least 24 countries, Inoue said. He and his team plan to publish a paper detailing their findings by the end of November.

Even if the natural extinction theory is confirmed, it is at best a temporary reprieve for the Japanese people. New, more successful strains are likely to eventually find their way into the country, though quarantine measures and immigration control could delay the emergence of new variants in Japan, Inoue believes.

Meanwhile, Tokyo is bracing for a new wave of Covid-19 this winter and is preparing to live with the virus. The government reportedly plans to ease travel restrictions by increasing the number of people it allows to enter the country per day from 3,500 to 5,000.

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President Joe Biden commented on reports that US officials are planning to boycott the upcoming Olympics in Beijing over alleged human rights violations – but his answer left journalists perplexed.

When asked on Tuesday if an official US delegation will be traveling to the Winter Games in the Chinese capital in February, Biden responded: “I am the delegation.”

The president, however, did not elaborate, leaving the White House correspondents in a state of confusion, as his response could mean that Biden will attend the Winter Olympics alone or, as some reporters suggested, that he simply did not understand the question.

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A recent report by a Washington Post columnist claimed the US won’t be sending an official delegation to Beijing in 2022 over allegations of human rights violations by the Chinese government. According to the sources cited in the article, a formal recommendation for a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics has been already presented to Biden, with the move expected to be approved by the president by the end of November.

The piece was published on the day that Biden held a lengthy virtual meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in which they discussed a range of issues regarding the strained relations between the two nations – but not the Olympics.

The White House said that during the talks, President Biden challenged his Chinese counterpart over what Washington sees as persecution against the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang region, as well as human rights violations in Tibet and Hong Kong. China has strongly denied the claims, accusing the US of interfering in its internal affairs.

Calls for the Biden administration to boycott the Olympics and refrain from sending a political delegation to Beijing have recently been made by top Democratic and Republican lawmakers. 

If implemented, it won’t affect the American athletes, who will still be taking part in the Winter Olympics.

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People around the world will need to get a jab against Covid-19 once a year, at least when it comes to the Pfizer vaccine, BioNTech’s CEO Ugur Sahin said in an interview on Sunday, as he praised the quality of its booster shot.

In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper on Sunday, Sahin said he considers the vaccine, co-developed by his company, to be “very effective.”

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When asked whether people should be worried about the “breakthrough infections” – in which those vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine still developed Covid-19 symptoms – he dismissed such concerns, saying that the jab offers a “90 percent protection” against cases that require intensive care in those aged over 60.

A “very high” level of protection against severe illness lasts for up to nine months, the BioNTech CEO maintained. He said this level starts decreasing “from the fourth month,” however. To maintain the protection, Sahin strongly pushed for booster shots, arguing that they would not just restore levels of antibodies but would potentially help “to break … chains of infection.”

He also encouraged doctors to be “as pragmatic as possible” when it comes to greenlighting vaccination and “not to send people home unvaccinated even though they could be vaccinated without any problems.”

In the future, people might need to get booster shots once a year, the BioNTech CEO believes. He said that he expects protection from a booster shot to “last longer” than the initial immunity one acquires after getting two doses of the vaccine.

“Subsequent … vaccinations may only be needed every year – just like [with] influenza,” he said. Currently, the German Federal Center for Health Education – an agency subordinated to the Health Ministry – recommends a booster shot six months after one gets the second dose of a vaccine. It also says that “booster vaccination makes sense after a minimum interval of about four months.”

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Sahin’s interview comes days after it was revealed that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are making a combined profit of $65,000 every minute – all thanks to their Covid-19 jabs. That is according to estimates made by the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA) – a coalition demanding wider access to vaccines.

The PVA estimated that the three companies are to earn a total of $34 billion in combined pre-tax profits this year alone, which roughly translates into more than $1,000 a second and $93.5 million a day.

PVA has slammed the three companies over their refusal to allow vaccine technology transfer despite receiving a combined $8 billion in public funding. Such a move could increase global supply and save millions of lives as well as drive down prices, the coalition said.

“Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritize the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low-income countries out in the cold,” said Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa.

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Talk about a gift that keeps on giving; each month reveals yet another beautiful pooch answering nature’s call. Also important: $1 from each “Pooping Pooches 2022” calendar is donated to the Maui Humane Society to support animals in need. This tasteful calendar is available on Etsy and Amazon, but you can also get 500 piece jigsaw puzzle for those long, dark winter evenings!

This year’s latest addition is a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle which can also be purchased on Amazon (not suitable for babies and individuals who have a tendency to put things in their mouth and potentially choke on the pieces).

Just like the calendar, every puzzle sale will also contribute to Maui Humane Society to help animals in need (one poop at a time).

Anyways, if pooping dogs is something you would like to look at for a whole year, you can get this calendar on Etsy or Amazon.

The post 2022 Pooping Dogs Calendar Is Here! (Now With a Puzzle) first appeared on .

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Greece will soon prohibit unvaccinated residents from entering a litany of public spaces, the country’s prime minister has announced, claiming its current Covid outbreak is largely fueled by those who haven’t received the jab.

Starting next week, the unvaccinated will be barred from entry to restaurants, cafes, theaters, bars, gyms and museums, among other indoor public places, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday, noting that a negative Covid-19 test will no longer be accepted as an alternative to proof of vaccination.

“This is indeed a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” he said as he announced the move in a televised address, adding “Greece is mourning unnecessary losses because it simply does not have the vaccination rates of other European countries.”

The new rules are set to take effect on Monday, and will require Greeks to present vaccine certificates to businesses and other indoor establishments to be allowed inside. Those attending religious services mark a rare exception, however, as they will only be asked to present a negative test in order to enter a church or other place of worship.

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In a bid to encourage booster vaccinations among the elderly – a population much more vulnerable to Covid-19 – citizens over the age of 60 will be made to renew their certificate after a period of seven months.

While officials had hoped to hit a full vaccination figure of 70% for Greece’s population of 11 million by autumn, the number currently stands at about 62%, according to Reuters. As its weekly case counts continue to soar to record highs, the country reported 7,317 new Covid-19 infections and 63 deaths on Thursday, bringing the totals to more than 860,000 cases and some 17,000 fatalities since the pandemic kicked off in late 2019.

The new restrictions in Greece mirror similar policies implemented elsewhere in Europe, with Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia each imposing limits on public life for the unvaccinated. Though the Austrian government recently imposed a full lockdown for millions of residents who have not received the shot, some officials in that country are pushing for even harsher policies, including a national stay-at-home order on the jabbed and non-jabbed alike.

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