Confronting the historic drought that has a firm grip on the American West requires a heavy federal infrastructure investment to protect existing water supplies but also will depend on efforts at all levels of government to reduce demand by promoting water efficiency and recycling, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said Thursday.

Haaland told reporters in Denver that the Biden administration’s proposed fiscal 2022 budget includes a $1.5 billion investment in the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water and power in the Western states, and more than $54 million for states, tribes and communities to upgrade infrastructure and water planning projects.

“Drought doesn’t just impact one community. It affects all of us — from farmers and ranchers to city dwellers and Indian tribes. We all have a role to use water wisely,” Haaland said at the start of a three-day visit to Colorado to address the U.S. response to the increasing scarcity of  water and the massive wildfires burning throughout the region.

The American West, including most of western Colorado, is gripped by the worst drought in modern history. The northern part of the state is experiencing deadly flash flooding and mudslides after rain fell in areas scarred by massive wildfires last year. Fires are burning across the West, most severely in Oregon and California, while the drought stresses major waterways like the Colorado River and reservoirs that sustain millions of people.

The drought and recent heat waves in the region that are tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires larger and more destructive.

Haaland spoke after meeting with Democratic Representative Diana DeGette, Governor Jared Polis and Jim Lochhead, chief executive of Denver Water, Colorado’s largest water agency, for a discussion on the drought and possible federal solutions.

Among other initiatives, she said, the Bureau of Reclamation is working to identify and dispense “immediate technical and financial assistance for impacted irrigators and Indian tribes.”

Tanya Trujillo, the department’s assistant secretary for water and science, cited a recent decision to release water from several Upper Colorado River basin reservoirs to supply Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the two manmade reservoirs that store Colorado River water.

The reservoirs are shrinking faster than expected, spreading panic throughout a region that relies on the river to sustain 40 million people. Federal officials expect to make the first-ever water shortage declaration in the Colorado River basin next month, prompting cuts in Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.

“We have seen hydrologic projections that are worse than anticipated,” Trujillo said.

Haaland’s three-day stay in Colorado includes her first trip Friday to the Bureau of Land Management’s new headquarters in Grand Junction, established by the Trump administration in 2019. The agency’s move from Washington, D.C., produced an outcry from critics who said it gutted the office. Haaland opposed the move as a member of Congress.

The agency overseen by the Interior Department manages nearly 250 million acres of public lands, most of which are in the West. Polis and Colorado’s congressional delegation have urged Haaland to keep the office in Grand Junction.

Haaland is visiting as severe dry periods sweeping areas of the West over the last several years have resulted in more intense and dangerous wildfires, parched croplands and a lack of vegetation for livestock and wildlife, according to government scientists.

They also found that the problem is accelerating — rainstorms are becoming increasingly unpredictable and more regions are seeing longer intervals between storms since the turn of the century.
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Over 600,000 users of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service’s (NHS) COVID-19 test and trace app were “pinged” alerts recommending self-isolation earlier this month.

In what has been dubbed the “pingdemic,” the app told users to begin a 10-day quarantine if they tested positive for the coronavirus or had been in close contact with someone who did.

The mass alerts have had significant repercussions for supermarkets and other businesses in the U.K. Stores warn that products are running low, and staff shortages have affected restock abilities. Some shops are altering their hours of operation in response to the challenge.

Grocery store chain Lidl indicated a worker shortage was “starting to have an impact on our operations.”

Supermarkets are hiring large numbers of temporary employees to overcome staffing challenges. After 1,000 staff members were unable to return to work, the Iceland grocery chain is hiring 2,000 interim workers.

Photographs of empty shelves were widely shared on social media, but supermarkets downplayed the shortages, with Iceland declaring them “isolated incidents.”

Driver shortages and a rising number of workers required to self-isolate have also led to fuel supply issues.

BP announced that a “vast majority” of the shortages were going to be resolved “within the day,” but a “handful” of their gas stations will be temporarily closed.

According to the BBC, isolation is only legally required when instructed by the NHS test and trace program. A ping from the NHS COVID-19 app is only an advised self-isolation.

Some business owners are trying to circumvent this regulation by allowing ‘pinged’ employees who have received a negative PCR test to return to work.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng cautioned those attempting to avoid isolation, stating that “the rules are clear, and I think they should be followed.”

The British government announced that it is necessary to maintain these guidelines until August 16, when further restrictions are scheduled to be lifted.

 
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Nine people have been indicted on charges of operating in the United States as illegal agents of China.

The group allegedly “conducted surveillance of and engaged in a campaign to harass, stalk and coerce certain residents of the United States to return to the PRC as part of a global, concerted and extralegal repatriation effort known as ‘Operation Fox Hunt,” according to a Justice Department press release.

“Unregistered, roving agents of a foreign power are not permitted to engage in secret surveillance of U.S. residents on American soil, and their illegal conduct will be met with the full force of U.S. law,” said Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement.

Those charged are Tu Lan, 50, Zhai Yongqiang, 46, Hu Ji, 46, and Li Minjun, 65, all from China; Zhu Feng, 34, a Chinese national residing in Queens, New York; Michael McMahon, 53, of Mahwah, New Jersey; Zheng Congying, 24, of Brooklyn, New York; and Zhu Yong, aka Jason Zhu, 64, of Norwich, Connecticut. The name of the ninth defendant remains under seal.

According to the press release, the suspects are accused of acting “at the direction and under the control of” Chinese officials to try to force the return to China of two individuals identified only as John Doe #1 and wife Jane Doe #1.

The statement said that around 2012 and 2014 the Chinese government had caused the international police organization Interpol to issue “Red Notices” alerting police around the world that the two were wanted in China. for embezzlement and accepting bribes — crimes which carry maximum penalties of death and life in prison respectively.

The nine subsequently “participated in an international campaign to threaten, harass, surveil and intimidate John Doe #1 and his family, in order to force John Doe #1 and Jane Doe #1 to return to the PRC,” Justice officials said.

 
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Cameroonian police say they have for the first time during the pandemic seized parts of an estimated 2,000 pangolins poached in Cameroon and neighboring Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Police say travel restrictions had slowed trafficking of the endangered anteater to Asia, where its meat is considered a delicacy and the scales are used in traditional medicine.

At least 12 bags of Pangolin scales and leopard skin are in a police warehouse at Nlonkak, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde. 

Claude Mboutou Abessolo, the ranking officer at the police station says the Pangolin scales and leopard skin were seized from traffickers in Yaounde this week.

Abessolo says the traffickers were arrested while preparing to transfer the scales and animal skin to Cameroon’s neighbor, Nigeria.

He says the police in Cameroon, Nigeria and Benin are collaborating to track other members of a group of Pangolin traffickers operating in the three countries. He says it will not take long for the traffickers to be caught in the police dragnet. He says some of the traffickers have been arrested in Cameroon.

Abessolo did not say how many people have been arrested but said the youngest among the traffickers is 24 years old. He said some of the pangolin scales and leopard skins are either hidden in Cameroon or are being illegally shipped to Nigeria, from where they will be smuggled to Asian countries especially China.

The police said the operation was supported by Cameroon’s Forestry and Wildlife Ministry and the Last Great Ape, a conservation group.

The group’s vice president, Eric Kabah Tah, says close to 2,000 pangolins have been illegally killed in Cameroon in the past 16 months. Tah says the scales are hidden in houses and in the bush. He says with COVID-19 travel restrictions over and police control relaxed, traffickers are struggling to smuggle pangolin scales out of Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

“Wildlife traffickers came up to bring problems due to the restrain in mobility because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but right now we are seeing a remobilization, we are seeing more and more traffickers in pangolin scales. We are witnessing pangolin scales leaving Cameroon and other central African countries and moving over to Nigeria where it is exported to Asian countries.”  

Tah said villagers in Cameroon who lost their jobs or whose agricultural work took a nosedive due to COVID-19 are selling pangolins to traffickers, who kill the animals for their scales.

Harouna Nyandji Mgbatou is a senior government official, a division officer in Yaounde’s first district, where Nlonkak is. He says the government will make sure those who help traffickers are prosecuted.

He says Cameroonians should report traffickers and reduce poaching. He says pangolins are protected to maintain a balanced ecosystem and save humans and the forest from environmental degradation. Mgbatou says Cameroon’s government will not spare anyone caught selling or helping to sell pangolin scales.

According to Cameroonian wildlife law, anyone found in possession of pangolin scales or parts is considered to have killed the anteater and is liable to prison time of one to three years and or a payment of up to $ 20,000.

Cameroon reports that pangolins are killed in the central African state and smuggled to Asian countries where demand is high. Small numbers of pangolins are killed for food.

Last year, Pangolin scales were removed from the list of ingredients approved for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Animal protection groups said the move was a key step in stamping out trade in pangolins, the world’s most trafficked mammal.

Last Great Ape and Cameroon’s government say the effort by Chinese authorities has not stopped the slaughter of pangolins in the country. 

 
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China has rejected the World Health Organization’s proposal for a second phase of its investigation into the origin of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the Chinese National Health Commission, told reporters in Beijing Thursday that he was extremely surprised when he read the proposal offered by the U.N. health agency includes audits of laboratories in the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019 that led to more than 192 million infections around the globe, including 4.1 million deaths. 

Zeng said the WHO’s origin-tracing proposal lacks “common sense” and displays a disrespect toward science that makes it “impossible” for Beijing to accept. 

A team of WHO researchers visited Wuhan earlier this year to research the initial cause of the virus. The team concluded the virus likely jumped from animals to humans and that it was “extremely unlikely” that it leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as some experts have speculated. But WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has criticized China for not fully cooperating with investigators by not sharing raw data, and has called for a continued probe of all theories, including a lab accident.

Chinese officials and news outlets have begun speculating that the virus may have escaped from a U.S. military laboratory, a theory that has been widely dismissed by the scientific community.

Meanwhile, a new study says that two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine are effective against the highly contagious delta variant of the disease. In a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Public Health England found that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are 88% effective at preventing symptomatic disease caused by the delta variant, compared to 93% against the alpha variant. The researchers also say two doses of AstraZeneca vaccine are 67% effective against delta, compared to 74% against the alpha variant.

A single dose of Pfizer is just 36% effective against delta, the researchers say, while one shot of AstraZeneca was just 30% effective. 

A study posted online Tuesday suggests that Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine may be less effective against the emerging variants of the coronavirus, compared to either of the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and AFP.
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Регулятор додає: інфляція вже найближчим часом незначно перевищить 10%, але сповільниться наприкінці 2021 року
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Торги на міжбанківському валютному ринку завершилися на рівні 27 гривень 23–25 копійок за долар
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Tanzania’s main opposition party, the Party for Democracy and Progress, also known as Chadema, says police have detained their leader Freeman Mbowe.  Mbowe was arrested before he was scheduled to speak at a conference to announce demands for constitutional reforms.

The statement from Chadema’s Communication Director John Mrema, shared on Twitter, says Freeman Mbowe and 10 other Chadema members were rounded up at night in Tanzania’s northwestern port city of Mwanza.

“The party condemns the repression of the rights of Tanzanians with the strongest force. These are signs that the dictatorship that existed during the rule of President John Magufuli continues,” the statement said.

Mbowe was approached by an army of police officers in his hotel when he arrived at 2:30 am Wednesday and was arrested together with other leaders of the party, according to local reports.

While other Chadema members were taken to the Mwanza police station, there has been no information about Mbowe’s whereabouts so far.

“We want the police to come out and say where the chairman is and why he was arrested,” the opposition party statement said.

The deputy chairperson of Chadema, Tundu Lissu, pleaded for action in support of the country’s civil society.

“Calling for political reforms is no breach of any law,” he said. Lissu said that he urges “Tanzania’s dev’t [development] partners to stop subsidizing the CCM [Chama Cha Mapinduzi] dictatorship & to support democracy,” in a Twitter post Wednesday.

The Chama Cha Mapinduzi is the country’s ruling party and the second longest ruling party on the continent.

On Monday, Mbowe said the party would not leave the city until the new constitution conference takes place, telling the government if it intends to prevent them from organizing the conference they should enhance their skills to fight the people.

 
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