AFP UK

President Joe Biden has declared a major disaster in the southern US state of Tennessee and approved federal funding after devastating floods over the weekend left at least 21 dead, the White House said in a statement said Tuesday.

Tennessee was hit Saturday by what meteorologists called historic storms and flooding, dumping as much as 17 inches (38 centimeters) of rain.

Rural roads, state highways, bridges and hundreds of homes were washed out and widespread power outages affected thousands of people.

The move makes federal funding available to people affected in Humphreys County, where the downpour on Saturday broke a 24-hour rainfall record for Tennessee, the National Weather Service said.

Help for residents includes “grants for temporary housing and home repairs”, as well as “low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses”, the White House said.

Floods are natural phenomena, but climate change is altering Earth’s rainfall patterns, making some regions wetter and others drier.

Scientists say climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain around the world, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.

According to an international study published Tuesday, climate change made the deadly floods that devastated parts of Germany and Belgium last month up to nine times more likely.

Thailand on Tuesday decriminalised kratom, a tropical leaf long used as a herbal remedy but which some health regulators around the world have criticised as potentially unsafe.

Kratom — scientific name Mitragyna speciosa — is part of the coffee family, used for centuries in Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea for its pain-relieving and mildly stimulating effects.

It has become increasingly popular in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against its use, citing risks of addiction and abuse.

The change to Thai law means “the general public will be able to consume and sell kratom legally”, government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri said in a statement, while more than 1,000 prisoners convicted of offences related to the drug will be freed.

A Thailand Development Research Institute study estimated that the decriminalisation will save authorities about 1.69 billion baht ($50 million) in prosecution costs. 

Kratom stimulates the same brain receptors as morphine, though with much milder effects, and in Thailand, it is mainly used in the deep south, where Muslim workers use it for pain relief after manual labour.

It has not been subject to international restrictions, though the World Health Organization announced last month that it was examining whether kratom should be considered for control.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said the decriminalisation of kratom — which is native to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea — was “welcome, and frankly long overdue”.

“The legalisation of kratom in Thailand ends a legacy of rights-abusing criminalisation of a drug that has long been used in traditional, rural communities in the country,” Robertson told AFP.

In Indonesia, kratom is legal but its status is under review, with some politicians pushing for it to be banned.

Thai lawmakers have shown some appetite for reforming the kingdom’s harsh anti-drug laws in recent years.

In 2019, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian country to legalise medical marijuana, and the government has invested in the extraction, distillation and marketing of cannabis oils for use in the health industry.

But overcrowded Thai prisons are still packed with inmates handed long sentences for drugs offences — possessing just a few methamphetamine pills can earn a decade in jail.

Jeremy Douglas of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said Thailand is discussing and considering drug rehabilitation and diversion programmes for meth users to ease some pressure off the system and “also because it is more effective”.

Climate change made the deadly floods that devastated parts of Germany and Belgium last month up to nine times more likely, according to an international study published Tuesday.

At least 190 people lost their lives in severe floods that pummelled western Germany in mid-July, and at least 38 people perished after extreme rainfall in Belgium’s southern Wallonia region. 

Using the growing speciality of attribution science, climate experts are increasingly able to link manmade climate change to specific extreme weather events.

To calculate the role of climate change on the rainfall that led to the floods, scientists analysed weather records and computer simulations to compare the climate today — which is around 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer due to manmade emissions — with the climate of the past. 

They focused on one- and two-day rainfall levels, and found that two particularly hard hit areas saw unprecedented precipitation last month. 

In the Ahr and Erft regions of Germany, 93 millimetres (3.6 inches) of rain fell in a single day at the height of the crisis. The Belgium region of Meuse saw a record-breaking 106 mm of rain over a two-day period. 

They calculated that the floods were between 1.2 and nine times more likely to happen in today’s warmed climate, compared to a scenario where no heating had occurred since the pre-industrial era. 

Such downpours over Germany and the Benelux region are now between 3-19 percent heavier because of human-induced warming, according to the study, organised by World Weather Attribution. 

“Climate change increased the likelihood (of the floods), but climate change also increased the intensity,” said Frank Kreienkamp, from the German weather service. 

Friederike Otto, associate director of the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, said that the floods showed that “even developed countries are not safe from severe impacts of extreme weather that we have seen and known to get worse with climate change.”

“This is an urgent global challenge and we need to step up to it. The science is clear and has been for years.” 

– ‘Wake-up call’ –

By analysing local rainfall patterns across Western Europe, the authors of Tuesday’s study were able to estimate the likelihood of an event similar to last month’s floods occurring again. 

They found that similar events could be expected to hit any given area about once in 400 years at current warming levels. 

This means several events on the scale of the German and Belgian floods are likely across Western Europe within that timeframe, they said. 

“It was a very rare event,” said Maarten van Aalst, director of the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

“On the other hand it has already become more likely than before and it will become more likely in the future.”

The scientists said that they focused on rainfall in this study as river level data was missing after several measurement stations were washed away in the floods. 

Van Aalst said the study should be a “wake-up call for people”.

“The increase in risk that we found in this study is something we need to manage about flood risk management, about preparedness, about early warning systems,” he told journalists. 

“Sadly, people tend to be prepared for the last disaster.”

With feather headdresses, grass skirts and body paint, thousands of indigenous demonstrators camped out in Brazil’s capital Monday to protest far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies and an initiative that could take away their ancestral lands.

Pounding wooden tent poles into the ground, the protesters set up the “Fight for Life” camp outside the seat of power in Brasilia, near the trio of modernist buildings housing the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.

The protest camp, which opened Sunday, will hold a week of demos and other activities against what the organizers, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), call Bolsonaro’s “anti-indigenous agenda,” seeking to exert pressure ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on native lands.

“We’re living in a time of much oppression, of setbacks on the protections and laws the indigenous movement has fought so hard for all these years,” APIB representative Kleber Karipuna told AFP.

Indigenous groups in Brazil accuse Bolsonaro of systematically attacking their rights and trying to open their lands to agribusiness and mining.

A similar protest in June erupted into clashes, with three indigenous demonstrators injured and three police wounded by arrows.

The latest camp opened peacefully. Organizers said there were 4,000 indigenous protesters from 117 ethnic groups.

– ‘Case of the century’ –

The tension has peaked with a Supreme Court case opening Wednesday on the issue of how indigenous lands are protected.

The agribusiness lobby argues Brazil’s constitutional protection of indigenous lands should only apply to those whose inhabitants were present in 1988, when the current constitution was adopted.

However, indigenous rights activists say native inhabitants were often forced off their ancestral lands, including under Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, which wanted to develop the Amazon rainforest.

Having now returned, they should have the right to benefit from the protected status of official reservations, their lawyers argue.

The case centers on a reservation in the southern state of Santa Catarina, but will set legal precedent for dozens of similar cases throughout Brazil.

Protest organizers called it “the most important court case of the century.”

“If the Supreme Court accepts the so-called… ‘time frame’ argument in its ruling on land demarcation later this month, it could legitimize violence against indigenous peoples and inflame conflicts in the Amazon rainforest and other areas,” the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Francisco Cali Tzay, said in a statement.

On the other hand, if the ruling goes in the indigenous groups’ favor, it could also deflate a bill before Congress that would enshrine the 1988 “time-frame argument” in law.

That bill, which passed a lower house committee vote in June, is one of several that indigenous activists and environmentalists say Bolsonaro and his allies are trying to use to further the advance of agriculture and industry into Brazil’s rapidly disappearing forests.

“It’s a very important case at a time when we are seeing numerous setbacks in terms of indigenous rights,” Juliana de Paula Batista, a lawyer with the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), told AFP.

– Surging deforestation –

Brazil is home to around 900,000 indigenous people. They make up less than 0.5 percent of the population of 212 million, but their reservations cover some 13 percent of the country.

Environmentalists say protecting indigenous reservations is one of the best ways to stop the destruction of the Amazon, a critical resource in the race to curb climate change.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has surged since Bolsonaro took office in 2019. In the 12 months through July, a total of 8,712 square kilometers (3,364 square miles) — an area nearly the size of Puerto Rico — of forest cover was destroyed, according to official figures.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid shot, triggering a new wave of vaccine mandates as the Delta variant batters the country.

Around 52 percent of the American population is fully vaccinated, but health authorities have hit a wall of vaccine hesitant people, impeding the national campaign.

In a televised address, President Joe Biden called FDA approval the “gold standard” in evidence. 

“Today I’m calling on… more companies in the private sector to step up with vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people,” he said.

Pfizer’s vaccine, which will now be marketed under its brand name Comirnaty, is the first to receive full approval. 

More than 200 million Pfizer shots have already been administered under an emergency use authorization (EUA) that was granted on December 11, 2020.

The decision to fully approve it among people aged 16 and up was based on updated data from the drug’s clinical trial involving more than 40,000 people, which found the vaccine 91 percent effective in preventing Covid.

The FDA tracked data from 12,000 vaccine recipients six months out from their vaccine series.

Most commonly reported side effects were mild and included pain and swelling at the injection site as well as headache, chills and fever. 

The agency is continuing to investigate safety data regarding the highly rare but more worrisome condition myocarditis (heart inflammation), particularly within seven days after the second dose. 

The highest risk has been detected in boys aged 12 through 17, with available data suggesting most individuals recover but some require intensive care.

– Military, NYC announce mandates –

The US military said shortly after the announcement that it would mandate the vaccine, and a slew of private businesses and universities are expected to follow.

New York City also said it would require all its department of education employees to receive at least one dose of vaccine by September 27, without the option for regular testing instead.

The vaccine remains available under emergency use authorization to children aged 12 to 15, but because it has now been fully approved, physicians may prescribe it to children under 12 if they believe it will be beneficial.

But Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock recommended against so called “off-label” use in younger children until clinical trials report their data, which is expected later this year.

“We need to get the information and data on usage in younger children — they are not just small adults,” she told reporters, emphasizing that knowing the correct dosage for this group was key.

– Boost for vaccination campaign –

Experts hailed the development, which many had been urging for months. 

Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security hailed the development as “good news” that may sway people still on the fence.

“One of the talking points of the anti-vaccine movement which has falsely claimed that this was an ‘experimental vaccine’ has been removed,”  he told AFP.

Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, added he expected to see “tens of millions more Americans vaccinated” as a result of new mandates.

A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 30 percent of adults said full approval would make them more likely to get vaccinated.

The approval came as the ultra-contagious Delta variant pummels the country, with around 80,000 Americans hospitalized with Covid and more than 700 dying every day.

The hardest hit regions include southern states Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. 

The vaccination rate has risen in these states in recent weeks, but the national rate is still well below its peak from spring.

Some 628,000 people have died from coronavirus infection in the United States, making it officially the hardest hit country in the world — though experts say it is possible that India may in fact hold the record.

Vaccines are less effective against the Delta variant than they were against previous strains, particularly against infection, making the goal of high population level vaccination critical.

The Biden administration announced last week plans to make a booster shot immediately available for immuno-compromised people, and recommended all vaccinated people get a third shot eight months after their second.

Nuclear scientists using lasers the size of three football fields said Tuesday they had generated a huge amount of energy from fusion, possibly offering hope for the development of a new clean energy source.

Experts focused their giant array of almost 200 laser beams onto a tiny spot to create a mega blast of energy — eight times more than they had ever done in the past.

Although the energy only lasted for a very short time — just 100 trillionths of a second — it took scientists closer to the holy grail of fusion ignition, the moment when they are creating more energy than they are using.

“This result is a historic advance for inertial confinement fusion research,” said Kim Budil, the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which operates the National Ignition Facility in California, where the experiment took place this month.

Nuclear fusion is considered by some scientists to be a potential energy of the future, particularly because it produces little waste and no greenhouse gases. 

It differs from fission, a technique currently used in nuclear power plants, where the bonds of heavy atomic nuclei are broken to release energy. 

In the fusion process, two light atomic nuclei are “married” to create a heavy one.

In this experiment scientists used two isotopes of hydrogen, giving rise to helium. 

This is the process that is at work in stars, including our Sun. 

“The NIF teams have done an extraordinary job,” said Professor Steven Rose, co-director of the center for research in this field at Imperial College London. 

“This is the most significant advance in inertial fusion since its beginning in 1972.” 

But, warned Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the same center in London, making this a useable source of energy is not going to be easy.

“Turning this concept into a renewable source of electrical power will probably be a long process and will involve overcoming significant technical challenges,” he said.

Thousands of climate change demonstrators thronged central London on Monday, as environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion held a new round of protests, promising two weeks of disruption.

Protesters were greeted with a large police presence as they converged on Trafalgar Square in the heart of the British capital, where they rallied with a marching band and speeches.

The latest action — branded the “Impossible Rebellion” — saw participants block roads leading to the square, deploying a large pink structure bearing the slogan “come to the table”.

“What are you waiting for? Your local area to flood, or your street to get blocked with rubble and cars?” Extinction Rebellion’s UK branch said on Twitter.

“The #ClimateEmergency is happening now, and the rebellion for life is happening now.”

The group, formed in Britain in 2018, is a network of climate activists who use civil disobedience to spotlight inaction over global warming.

“I worry about the state of our society by the time we hit old age, it’s frightening,” said Ali, a 21-year-old student.

“I hope it makes people stand and say we need to stop fossil fuel production, we need to stop car production,” said another participant, Craig, a 28-year-old paediatric physiotherapist wearing hospital scrubs.

Since holding its first protests in London in 2018, activists have repeatedly brought parts of the capital and other cities to a standstill with carnival-like demonstrations.

They have also targeted individual businesses and premises in London for direct action, including newspapers’ offices and energy companies’ headquarters.

The rallies have spread to many countries around the world.

– ‘Terrifying’ –

Norway on Monday arrested 29 Extinction Rebellion activists after they blocked a major road junction in Oslo and refused to leave. 

Some also broke into the oil ministry building during the first day of a planned week of civil disobedience ahead of legislative elections on September 13.

“We will stay here as long as our demands have not been met,” said Jenny Jaeger, a 21-year-old activist occupying the ministry’s reception room.

They were protesting against energy policy in Norway, Western Europe’s largest exporter of hydrocarbons, which continues to award licences for oil exploration.

Police at previous UK protests have arrested hundreds of participants, but have also faced criticism for being too lenient.

Extinction Rebellion’s latest action comes as the UK government gears up to host the crucial COP26 United Nations climate summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow, in November.

It is set to draw thousands of delegates — and demonstrators — from around the world.

Global leaders are under renewed pressure to agree radical policy changes at the summit following the publication this month of a UN climate science report called “terrifying” by campaigners.

It warned the world is on course to reach 1.5C of warming around 2030, much sooner than once predicted, and set to cause dire fallout impacting every continent.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine, a move that triggered a new wave of vaccine mandates as the Delta variant batters the country.

Around 52 percent of the American population is fully vaccinated, but health authorities have hit a wall of vaccine hesitant people, impeding the national campaign.

“This is a pivotal moment for our country in the fight against the pandemic,” acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock told reporters in a call.

“This FDA approval should give added confidence that this vaccine is safe and effective. If you’re not vaccinated yet, now is the time,” tweeted President Joe Biden.

Pfizer’s vaccine, which will now be marketed under its brand name Comirnaty, is the first to receive full approval. 

More than 200 million Pfizer shots have already been administered under an emergency use authorization (EUA) that was granted on December 11, 2020.

The decision to fully approve it among people aged 16 and up was based on updated data from the drug’s clinical trial involving more than 40,000 people, which found the vaccine 91 percent effective in preventing Covid.

“Overall, approximately 12,000 recipients have been followed for at least six months,” the FDA said in its statement.

Most commonly reported side effects are mild and include pain and swelling at the injection site as well as headache, chills and fever. 

The FDA is continuing to investigate safety data regarding the more concerning condition myocarditis (heart inflammation), particularly within seven days after the second dose. 

The highest risk has been detected in boys aged 12 through 17, with available data suggesting most individuals recover but some require intensive care.

– Military, NYC announce mandates –

The US military said shortly after the announcement that it would mandate the vaccine, and a slew of private businesses and universities are expected to follow.

New York City also said it would require all its department of education employees to receive at least one dose of vaccine by September 27, without the option for regular testing instead.

The vaccine remains available under emergency use authorization to children aged 12 to 15, but because it has now been fully approved, physicians may prescribe it to children under 12 if they believe it will be beneficial.

Woodcock however recommended against so called “off-label” use in younger children until clinical trials report their data, which is expected later this year.

“We need to get the information and data on usage in younger children — they are not just small adults,” she said, emphasizing that knowing the correct dosage for this group was key.

– Boost for vaccination campaign –

Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security hailed the development as “good news” that may sway people still on the fence.

“One of the talking points of the anti-vaccine movement which has falsely claimed that this was an ‘experimental vaccine’ has been removed,”  he told AFP.

“Hopefully now you’ll see people who said that they were waiting for full approval line up to get vaccinated.”

A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 30 percent of adults said full approval would make them more likely to get vaccinated.

Experts had been urging full approval for months. 

But FDA scientist Peter Marks told reporters the agency had to first review hundreds of thousands of pages of patient data, monitor clinical trial sites to ensure they were collecting information accurately, and inspect manufacturing facilities.

Approval comes as the ultra-contagious Delta variant pummels the country, with around 80,000 Americans hospitalized with Covid and more than 700 dying every day.

The hardest hit regions include southern states Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. 

The number of people rolling up their sleeves for a shot has risen in these states in recent weeks, but the national rate is still well below its peak from spring.

Some 628,000 people have died from coronavirus infection in the United States, making it officially the hardest hit country in the world — though experts say it is possible that India may in fact hold the record.

Vaccines are less effective against the Delta variant than they were against previous strains, particularly against infection, making the goal of high population level vaccination critical.

The Biden administration announced last week plans to make a booster shot immediately available for immunocompromised individuals, and recommended all vaccinated people get a third shot eight months after their second.

With feather headdresses, grass skirts and body paint, hundreds of indigenous demonstrators camped out in Brasilia Monday to protest President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies and an initiative that could take away their ancestral lands.

Pounding wooden tent poles into the ground, the protesters set up the “Fight for Life” camp outside the seat of power in the Brazilian capital, near the trio of modernist buildings housing the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.

Convened by the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the protest camp, which opened Sunday, will hold a week of demos and other activities against what organizers call Bolsonaro’s “anti-indigenous agenda,” seeking to exert pressure ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on native lands.

Indigenous groups in Brazil accuse the far-right president of systematically attacking their rights and trying to open their lands to agribusiness and mining interests.

The tension has peaked with a Supreme Court case opening Wednesday on the issue of how those lands are protected.

The agribusiness lobby argues Brazil’s constitutional protection of indigenous lands should only apply to those whose inhabitants were present in 1988, when the current constitution was adopted.

However, indigenous rights activists say native inhabitants were often forced off their ancestral lands, including by the 1964-1985 military dictatorship that preceded the current constitution.

Having now returned, they should have the right to benefit from the protected status of official reservations, their lawyers will argue before the court.

The case centers on a reservation in the southern state of Santa Catarina, but will set legal precedent for similar cases throughout Brazil.

The ruling could also deflate a bill before Congress that would enshrine the 1988 “time-frame argument” in law.

That bill, which passed a lower-house committee vote in June and is now due to come before the full Congress, is one of several legislative initiatives that indigenous activists and environmentalists say Bolsonaro and his allies are trying to use to further the advance of agriculture and industry into Brazil’s rapidly disappearing forests, including the crucial Amazon rainforest.

“It’s a very important case at a time when we are seeing numerous setbacks in terms of indigenous rights,” Juliana de Paula Batista, a lawyer with the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), told AFP.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine, a move expected to trigger a new wave of vaccine mandates as the Delta variant batters the country.

Around 52 percent of the country is fully vaccinated, but health authorities have hit a wall of vaccine hesitant people, impeding the national campaign.

“The FDA’s approval of this vaccine is a milestone as we continue to battle the Covid-19 pandemic,” acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement.

“While all three COVID vaccines have met FDA’s strict standards for emergency use, this FDA approval should give added confidence that this vaccine is safe and effective. If you’re not vaccinated yet, now is the time,” tweeted President Joe Biden.

The vaccine, which will now be marketed under its brand name Comirnaty, is the first to receive full approval. 

More than 200 million shots have already been administered under an emergency use authorization (EUA) that was granted on December 11, 2020.

The decision to approve it among people aged 16 and up was based on updated data from the drug’s clinical trial, which found the vaccine more than 90 percent effective in preventing Covid.

“Overall, approximately 12,000 recipients have been followed for at least six months,” the FDA said in its statement.

Most commonly reported side effects included pain, redness and swelling at the injection site, fatigue, headache, muscle or joint pain, chills and fever.

The FDA is continuing to investigate safety data regarding myocarditis (heart inflammation), particularly within seven days after the second dose. The data so far shows an increased risk among males under 40 compared to females and older males.

The highest risk has been detected in boys aged 12 through 17, with available data suggesting most individuals recover but some require intensive care.

The US military said shortly after the announcement that it would mandate the vaccine, and a slew of private businesses and universities are expected to follow.

Immediately after the announcement, New York City said it would require all its department of education employees to receive at least one dose of vaccine by September 27, without the option for regular testing instead.

The vaccine remains available under emergency use authorization to children aged 12 to 15, but because it has now been fully approved, physicians may prescribe it to children under 12 if they believe it will be beneficial.

– Blow to anti-vaxxers –

“One of the talking points of the anti-vaccine movement which has falsely claimed that this was an ‘experimental vaccine’ has been removed,” Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security told AFP. 

“Hopefully now you’ll see people who said that they were waiting for full approval line up to get vaccinated, hopefully more organizations, more businesses will require the vaccine as a condition of employment as a condition of participation.”

A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 30 percent of adults said full approval would make them more likely to get vaccinated.

It comes as the ultra-contagious Delta variant pummels the country, with new cases and hospitalizations approaching levels last seen during the winter wave.

The hardest hit regions include southern states Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. 

The number of people rolling up their sleeves for a shot has risen in these states in recent weeks, but the national rate is still well below its peak from spring.

Some 628,000 people have died from coronavirus infection in the United States, making it officially the hardest hit country in the world — though experts say it is possible that India may in fact hold the record.

Vaccines are less effective against the Delta variant than they were against previous strains, particularly against infection, making the goal of high population level vaccination critical.

The Biden administration announced last week plans to make a booster shot immediately available for immunocompromised individuals, and recommended all vaccinated people get a third shot eight months after their second.