April 2021

Regulators are moving to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes and cigars, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday.The move follows years of pressure from advocates who say that the tobacco products are targeted at African Americans and are responsible for higher death rates in this group from illnesses brought on by smoking.“Today’s action by the FDA to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes, while long overdue, is a major step toward preventing a new generation from becoming tobacco users and saving lives,” said Susan R. Bailey, president of the American Medical Association.Companies have aggressively marketed menthol cigarettes in African American communities, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 85% of African Americans who smoke use menthol cigarettes, compared with 46% of Hispanics and 29% of whites, the FDA noted.“For far too long, certain populations, including African Americans, have been targeted, and disproportionately impacted by tobacco use,” FDA Center for Tobacco Products Director Mitch Zeller said in a statement.Menthol soothes the irritation that tobacco smoke causes. Since the cigarettes are easier to smoke, an FDA review found that new smokers were more likely to start smoking and become regular users.By encouraging more people to start and making it harder for them to stop, a study found that menthol cigarettes were responsible for an extra 10.1 million people becoming smokers between 1980 and 2018.Congress banned flavored cigarettes in 2009, but the law exempted menthol. Instead, it instructed the government to study the impacts of menthol on public health.FDA’s 2013 review determined that “menthol cigarettes pose a public health risk above that seen with non-menthol cigarettes.”Public health groups petitioned the FDA to ban menthol cigarettes. The FDA proposed a ban in 2018 but did not follow through.Groups sued in 2020. Thursday was a court-ordered deadline for the FDA to respond to the petition.Some groups have expressed concerns that making menthol cigarettes illegal would make criminals of people who still sought them, disproportionately affecting minority communities.Zeller said that would not happen.”The FDA cannot and will not enforce against individual consumer possession or use of menthol cigarettes or any tobacco products,” he said. “Our job will be to make sure that any unlawful tobacco products do not make their way onto the market.”The agency aims to have a final rule in place within a year, officials said. But the effort may run into legal obstacles.Tobacco companies disagree with the FDA’s assessment of the risks.”As was true when the FDA first examined menthol in 2013, and as the published literature continues to demonstrate, there is no scientific basis to regulate menthol and non-menthol cigarettes differently,” said R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company spokesperson Neassa Hollon.
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India set new records again Thursday in COVID-19 deaths and infections as its new vaccination registration program stumbled while millions of voters nonetheless turned out for an election in the state of West Bengal.Under the weight of a disastrous second surge of the disease, India’s efforts to begin registering its 1.4 billion people for inoculations stumbled Wednesday when the government launched a website for all Indians 18 and older to sign up for a vaccination drive that is set to begin Saturday.Many people flooded social media with complaints, however, that either the website had crashed or they were unable to make an appointment.The problems with the website come as the health ministry reported a record 379,257 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, including 3,645 fatalities, marking yet another one-day record for fatalities. The new figures have pushed India’s coronavirus casualty numbers well over 18.3 million total confirmed cases and 204,832 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Manika Goel, sits next to her husband who is suffering from the COVID-19 inside the emergency ward at Holy Family hospital in New Delhi, India, April 29, 2021.The second wave of the coronavirus has pushed India’s health care system to the brink of collapse, with hospitals at full capacity and an acute shortage of oxygen aggravating an already desperate situation.  Many parks and parking lots have been converted into makeshift crematories that are working day and night to burn dead bodies.Public health experts have blamed the spread on more contagious variants of the virus, plus the easing of restrictions on large crowds when the outbreak appeared to be under control earlier this year.West Bengal votingDespite the worsening crisis and soaring temperatures, many of the more than 8 million eligible voters in West Bengal state formed long lines at some of the more 11,800 polling stations Thursday to vote in the eighth and final phase of state elections.Indian women voters wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus wait outside a polling station to cast their votes during the last phase of West Bengal state elections in Kolkata, April 29, 2021.Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party were criticized over the last few weeks for holding massive election rallies in West Bengal. Health experts have suggested the rallies may have contributed to a record surge in the state, which recorded more than 17,000 new cases over the last day, its highest since the pandemic began.Other political parties also held rallies in the state.India’s vaccination drive has dragged at a slow pace since it was launched in January, with only 1.7% of the population fully vaccinated. The country has a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines as it struggles with a lack of raw materials needed to manufacture doses.The international community has responded by shipping critical supplies to India, including ventilators, oxygen concentrators, drug treatments and the raw materials necessary to develop vaccines.This photograph released by Indian External Affairs Ministry shows a shipment of oxygen concentrators, ventilators and other medical supplies arrived from Russia to India, April 29, 2021.The White House says an initial shipment of medical supplies worth $100 million will begin arriving in India on Thursday, including 1,000 oxygen cylinders, 15 million N95 face masks and 1 million rapid diagnostic tests, along with the raw materials that will allow India to manufacture 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca two-dose vaccine.The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory Wednesday urging Americans not to travel to India, becoming the latest country to impose a warning or outright prohibition on visiting the country.Meanwhile, the head of Australia’s drug regulatory agency said Thursday there is no evidence the AstraZeneca vaccine was responsible for the deaths of two people shortly after their inoculations.Two men in North South Wales state, including one in his 70s, died within days after receiving the vaccine.John Skerritt, the head of the government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, told reporters the men’s deaths are being investigated, but said “the current evidence does not suggest a likely association” between the deaths and the vaccination.The AstraZeneca vaccine has had a troubled rollout across the world, with many nations suspending its use after reports first surfaced of a severe side effect that combines blood clots with low platelet counts following inoculation, including a handful of deaths. 
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The U.N. General Assembly encouraged all countries Wednesday to take action to prevent drownings, which have caused over 2.5 million deaths in the past decade, over 90% of them in low-income and middle-income countries.The resolution, co-sponsored by Bangladesh and Ireland and adopted by consensus by the 193-member world body, is the first to focus on drowning. It establishes July 25 as “World Drowning Prevention Day.”The assembly stresses that drowning “is preventable” using “low-cost interventions” and calls on countries to consider introducing water safety, swimming and first aid lessons as part of school curricula. It encourages nations to appoint “a national focal point for drowning prevention,” develop countrywide prevention programs, and enact and enforce water safety laws.Unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding but they do reflect global opinion.According to the United Nations, the world’s highest drowning rates are in Africa while the highest number of drowning deaths are in Asia.”Drowning is a social equity issue that disproportionately affects children and adolescents in rural areas, with many countries reporting drowning as the leading cause of childhood mortality and drowning being among the 10 leading causes of death globally for 5- to 14-year-olds,” the resolution says.It notes “with concern” that the official global estimate of 235,000 annual deaths from drowning excludes drownings attributed to flood-related climate events and water transport incidents. This has resulted “in the underrepresentation of drowning deaths by up to 50 percent in some countries,” it says.The assembly says that “water-related disasters increasingly affect millions of people globally,” in part due to the escalating impact of climate change, “and that flooding affects more people than any other natural hazard, with drowning being the main cause of death during floods.”Bangladeshi Ambassador Rabab Fatima told the assembly after the resolution’s adoption: “The imperative to act on drowning is not simply moral or political. The economic cost is equally untenable.”
He said drowning is a leading cause of child mortality in Bangladesh and in the South Asia region, and the resolution’s call for preventive action is urgent.Ireland’s U.N. ambassador, Geraldine Byrne Nason, called the resolution and designation of July 25 as a day for the world to focus on preventing drowning a moment “to highlight the immediate need for strategic and significant international action to save lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.”Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the World Health Organization’s global ambassador for noncommunicable diseases and injuries, said: “Encouraging governments to adopt effective measures to prevent drowning will save thousands of lives and call attention to this urgent public health issue.””We have the tools to prevent these deaths – and need to act on them now,” he said in a statement.
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The International Council of Nurses warned Thursday that the world was facing a nursing crisis and could expect a significant shortage — perhaps a reduction by half — in the global nursing workforce of 27 million in the next few years.The council said its latest survey of 64 national nursing associations found disputes over pay, working conditions, violence and intimidation were causing nurses to leave their profession.There’s also the COVID-19 effect. The report found lack of protection and long, stressful shifts were having a profound impact on the mental health of nurses across the globe.ICN Chief Executive Officer Howard Catton said politicians and leaders have recognized the value of nurses in terms of their care and compassion. However, he said, they have not recognized their value to society and compensated them accordingly.“And that, I think is very much also at the heart of the discontent, the unhappiness, some of the actions that we are seeing from nurses around the world — this chasm between the rhetoric, the positive rhetoric for nurses but the paucity of practical action and practical responses to support nurses,” he said.Strikes in several countriesStrikes over nurses’ pay and working conditions have broken out in Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, the United States and elsewhere. The report said disputes, growing discontent and concerns such as protection at work were undermining people’s interest in pursuing a career in nursing.Another problem confronting the profession, said Catton, is the disruption of nurses’ education by the pandemic. He said that was resulting in a six-to-12-month delay in certifying new nurses.”So, those delays in the pipeline coming through, the rising discontent, unhappiness — both, we think, again have the potential to impact negatively on both recruitment to the nursing profession and the retention of those nurses that we already have,” he said.These issues and concerns exist throughout the world but are more pronounced in low- and middle-income countries. That is leading to a growing brain drain. The report noted a significant exodus of nurses in developing countries going to richer nations, where pay and conditions are better.At the same time, the ICN report said, some of the richer countries are actively seeking to recruit nurses in the poorer countries to reduce the shortages they are experiencing.
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A study published Wednesday shows nearly all the world’s glaciers have been melting at an accelerated pace in recent years, accounting for rises in sea level over the last two decades.In the study, published in the science journal Nature, an international group of scientists used high resolution imagery from NASA’s Terra satellite to study 220,000 of the world’s glaciers between 2000 and 2019.They found those glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tons – 267 gigatons – of ice per year.The study found melting increased over time, from an average of 227 gigatons in the early 2000s, to an average of 298 gigatons each year after 2015.The study showed the melt was raising sea levels by about 0.74 millimeters a year, or 21 percent of overall sea level rise observed during the period.Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were excluded from the study.Scientists have long warned that warming temperatures driven by climate change are shrinking glaciers and ice sheets around the world, contributing to higher sea levels that threaten the world’s populous coastal cities. The latest reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change project that future sea levels will rise by more than a meter by 2100.Glaciers in Alaska, Iceland, the Alps, the Pamir mountains and the Himalayas were among the most impacted by melting, researchers found.Glaciers with surrounding communities provide an important water source and their decline could lead to serious food and water shortages.About half of the world’s glacial losses are in North America. 
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American astronaut Michael Collins, who stayed behind in the command module of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin traveled to the lunar surface to become the first humans to walk on the moon, died on Wednesday at age 90, his family said.
A statement released by his family said Collins died of cancer.
Often described as the “forgotten” third astronaut on the historic mission, Collins remained alone for more than 21 hours until his two colleagues returned in the lunar module. He lost contact with mission control in Houston each time the spacecraft circled the dark side of the moon.
“Not since Adam has any human known such solitude as Mike Collins,” the mission log said, referring to the biblical figure.
Collins wrote an account of his experiences in his 1974 autobiography, “Carrying the Fire,” but largely shunned publicity.
“I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have,” Collins said in comments released by NASA in 2009.
Collins was born in Rome on Oct. 31, 1930 – the same year as both Armstrong and Aldrin. He was the son of a U.S. Army major general and, like his father, attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating in 1952.
Like many of the first generation of American astronauts, Collins started out as an Air Force test pilot.
In 1963, he was chosen by NASA for its astronaut program, still in its early days but ramping up quickly at the height of the Cold War as the United States sought to push ahead of the Soviet Union and fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s pledge of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Collins’ first voyage into space came in July 1966 as pilot on Gemini X, part of the missions that prepared NASA’s Apollo program. The Gemini X mission carried out a successful docking with a separate target vehicle.
His second, and final, spaceflight was the historic Apollo 11.
He avoided much of the media fanfare that greeted the astronauts on their return to Earth, and was later often critical of the cult of celebrity.
After a short stint in government, Collins became director of the National Air and Space Museum, stepping down in 1978. He was also the author of a number of space-related books.
His strongest memory from Apollo 11, he said, was looking back at the Earth, which he said seemed “fragile.”
“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles, their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced,” he said.
His family’s statement said they know “how lucky Mike felt to live the life he did.”
“Please join us in fondly and joyfully remembering his sharp wit, his quiet sense of purpose, and his wise perspective, gained both from looking back at Earth from the vantage of space and gazing across calm waters from the deck of his fishing boat.”
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, said Wednesday that the new outdoor mask recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should motivate people to get vaccinated.The CDC said Tuesday that fully vaccinated Americans did not need to cover their faces outdoors unless they were in crowds, and that they could enjoy activities such as exercising outside and eating outdoors at restaurants without masks.In an interview Wednesday with NBC, Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said that short of a huge concert or other major gathering, fully vaccinated people could go outside and enjoy the environment without masks. He noted that as vaccination rates rose, infection rates would fall and more restrictions would be lifted.Fauci also disputed reports that young, healthy people should not get vaccinated. He said youths could and would be infected if they put themselves at risk. And even without symptoms or with light symptoms, they can still propagate the virus and “inadvertently and innocently” infect someone who could develop a severe case of the virus.The best way to end the pandemic and its restrictions is to get vaccinated, Fauci said.
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