UPDATED

'Huge' explosion rocks St. Vincent as volcano keeps erupting

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent — La Soufriere volcano fired an enormous amount of ash and hot gas early Monday in the biggest explosive eruption yet since volcanic activity began on the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent late last week, with officials worried about the lives of those who have refused to evacuate.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Experts called it a “huge explosion” that generated pyroclastic flows down the volcano’s south and southwest flanks.

“It’s destroying everything in its path,” Erouscilla Joseph, director of the University of the West Indies’ Seismic Research Center, told The Associated Press. “Anybody who would have not heeded the evacuation, they need to get out immediately.”

There were no immediate reports of injuries or death, but government officials were scrambling to respond to the latest eruption, which was even bigger than the first eruption that occurred Friday morning. Roughly 16,000 people who live in communities close to the volcano had been evacuated under government orders on Thursday, but an unknown number have remained behind and refused to move.

Richard Robertson, with the seismic research centre, told local station NBC Radio that the volcano's old and new dome have been destroyed and that a new crater has been created. He said that the pyroclastic flows would have razed everything in their way.

“Anything that was there, man, animal, anything...they are gone,” he said. “And it’s a terrible thing to say it.”

Joseph said the latest explosion is equivalent to the one that occurred in 1902 and killed some 1,600. The volcano last erupted in 1979. Ash from the ongoing explosions has fallen on Barbados and other nearby islands.

One government minister who toured the island’s northeast region on Sunday said he saw an estimated two or three dozen people still remaining in the community of Sandy Bay alone, prompting Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves to urge people to leave.

“It is over time for you to leave,” he said. “It is dangerous.”

The ongoing volcanic activity has threatened water and food supplies, with the government forced to drill for fresh water and distribute it via trucks.

“We cannot put tarpaulin over a river,” said Garth Saunders, minister of the island’s water and sewer authority, referring to the impossibility of trying to protect current water sources from ongoing falling ash.

He told NBC Radio that officials also are trying to set up water distribution points.

Meanwhile, Gonsalves said government officials are meeting Monday afternoon to talk about difficulties with food supplies.

Deputy Prime Minister Montgomery Daniel told the radio station that the damage was extensive in the island’s northeast region, which he toured on Sunday. Forests and farms were wiped out, with coconut, breadfruit, mango and soursop trees destroyed, as well as plantain and banana crops.

“What I saw was indeed terrible,” he said.

Cots, tents, water tanks and other basic supplies were flooding into St. Vincent as nearby nations rushed to help those affected by the eruptions. At least four empty cruise ships floated nearby, waiting to take evacuees to other islands who have agreed to temporarily receive them, including Antigua and Grenada. Gonsalves, however, said he expects his administration might call off the cruise ships since the vast majority of people seem to be staying in St. Vincent for now.

The only people evacuated from St. Vincent via cruise ship are 136 farm workers who are part of a seasonal agricultural program and had been stranded on the island. The group was supposed to fly to Canada, but their flight was cancelled as a result of Friday's explosion. They arrived Saturday in St. Lucia and will board a flight to Canada from there.

Gonsalves told NBC Radio on Sunday that his government will do everything possible to help those forced to abandon their homes in ash-filled communities.

“It’s a huge operation that is facing us,” he said. “It’s going to be costly, but I don’t want us to penny pinch...this is going to be a long haul.”

Gonsalves said it could take four months for life to go back to normal in St. Vincent, part of an island chain of that includes the Grenadines. The majority of the 100,000 inhabitants live in St. Vincent.

Among them is Ranique Chewitt, a 32-year-old salesman who lives in South Rivers, located southeast of the volcano.

He hasn't had to evacuate, but said he is worried about his health and water supply and hasn't left home since the first eruption on Friday morning: “I do get shortness of breath from dust, and I am inside.”

The pandemic also is complicating response efforts. At least 14 new cases of COVID-19 have been reported since the eruptions began on Friday, and all those going to shelters are being tested. Those who test positive are taken to isolation centres. More than 3,700 people are in 84 government shelters.

The eastern Caribbean has 19 live volcanoes, 17 of those located on 11 islands. The remaining two are located underwater near Grenada, including one called Kick ’Em Jenny that has been active in recent years. The most active volcano of all is Soufriere Hills in Montserrat, which has erupted continuously since 1995, destroying the capital of Plymouth and killing at least 19 people in 1997.

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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico

Kristin Deane And DáNica Coto, The Associated Press

Power outages hit Saint Vincent island amid explosive volcano tremors

Sunday, April 11th 2021, 1:58 pm - On Sunday morning, Saint Vincent's National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) said there was a huge power outage after "another explosive event" at the volcano. However, by 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT), power had been restored, residents said.

By  Robertson S. Henry

Reuters

KINGSTOWN, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Reuters) - The Caribbean Saint Vincent island was hit by another explosive event from the La Soufriere volcano early on Sunday, triggering power cuts and water outages in some areas, while ash clouds began to blanket parts of the island of Barbados.

After decades of inactivity, the volcano erupted on Friday, spewing dark clouds of ash some 10 km (6 miles) into the air and prompting an evacuation of thousands of people on the island. The volcano has continued to rumble and vent ash since then.

 

FILE PHOTO: Ash covers palm trees and a church a day after the La Soufriere volcano erupted after decades of inactivity, about 5 miles (8 km) away in Georgetown, St Vincent and the Grenadines April 10, 2021 in a still image from video. REUTERS/Robertson S. Henry/File Photo

On Sunday morning, Saint Vincent's National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) said there was a huge power outage after "another explosive event" at the volcano. However, by 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT), power had been restored, residents said.

"Explosions and accompanying ashfall, of similar or larger magnitude, are likely to continue to occur over the next few days," the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre said on Twitter.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which has a population of just over 100,000, has not experienced volcanic activity since 1979, when an eruption created approximately $100 million in damages. An eruption by La Soufriere in 1902 killed more than 1,000 people.

 The name means "sulfur outlet" in French.

Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves said the government believes about 20,000 people will be internally displaced for about three to four months.

"Historically, the volcano keeps going intermittently for a couple months," he said. "Most crops on island will be lost, and untold livestock."

FILE PHOTO: Ash and smoke billow as the La Soufriere volcano erupts in Kingstown on the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent April 9, 2021. REUTERS/Robertson S. Henry/File Photo

Some houses in the island have also collapsed due to the weight of the ash, Gonsalves added.

In the tourist island of Barbados, about 178 km (110 miles) from Saint Vincent, the meteorological services agency said varying intensities of ash were impacting the island. Videos posted on social media showing a thin layer of ash coating cars and even the country's airport, which remains closed.

(Reporting by Robertson S. Henry; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

What the St. Vincent volcano's eruption could mean for the atmosphere

Embedded content: https://players.brightcove.net/1942203455001/B1CSR9sVf_default/index.html?videoId=6248409115001

After blasting to life after decades of dormancy on Friday, the La Soufriere volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent has continued to vent ash into the air, along with regular volcanic rumblings.

So far no deaths have been reported, but the volcano is expected to cause significant hardship, with thousands expected to be displaced for several weeks amid severe impact to crops and livestock.

The volcano was so powerful that the shockwave was actually visible from space, and ash from the eruption soon reached Barbados, some 200 km to the east.

Aside from the impact on people, there may be a climate effect as well, as Tyler Hamilton, a meteorologist at The Weather Network, explains in the video above.

It's all to do with sulfur dioxide, one output from the volcano (in fact, the volcano's name, 'La Soufriere,' is a reference to sulfur). Depending on how long the eruption goes on, and how much sulfur dioxide is emitted, and whether the ash cloud reaches the stratosphere, it may actually induce a global cooling effect for a period.

Watch the video above for a full explanation.

Volcanoes Could Be To Blame For Respiratory Illnesses Even if You Live Hundreds of Miles Away

Duration: 01:19 

They may be beautiful, but they could be more destructive to respiratory health than previously thought.

Amaze Lab

SEE

St. Vincent covered in ash as volcano activity continues

Volcanic eruption rocks Caribbean island of St. Vincent

TODAY IN HISTORY SIXTY YEARS AGO

Yuri Gagarin: The first man in space

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was having a rough time of it in April 1961

By Gregory McNamee, CNN 

4/12/2021

© Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/Getty Images Cosmonaut yuri gagarin during last minute checks of vostok i control systems before launch, 1961. (Photo by: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

In office for less than three months, Kennedy was facing down what he and his advisers suspected to be an untrustworthy Central Intelligence Agency.

He would confirm his suspicion toward the end of the month, when Cuban rebels bankrolled by the agency invaded their Communist-held homeland. At a meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and others on April 12, Kennedy had stressed he wanted the invasion to be a Cuban operation as much as possible, and the CIA assured him that the rebels were up to the job.

The result, a week later, was the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a military and political disaster that would only embolden Fidel Castro and his chief benefactor, the Soviet Union.

Kennedy blamed the Soviets for his bad April. In his inaugural address in January, he made an overture to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, inviting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to join the United States in "exploring the stars."

Khrushchev's answer came 60 years ago, on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth aboard a spacecraft called Vostok 1. After parachuting from the craft near the Russian village of Smelovka, Gagarin landed a hero — and a major embarrassment for the United States, already stung by the Soviet first-in-the-race launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite four years earlier.

READ MORE: Famous firsts in space

The Vostok rocket was the brainchild of Soviet engineer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. Embarrassed in turn by their failure to develop an atomic bomb before the Americans did, the Soviet leadership had poured a huge portion of the country's budget into scientific research, building a testing ground and rocket base in Kazakhstan that, wrote Stephen Walker in his new book "Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space," was four times the size of Greater London. There, Korolev worked his magic, building a series of rockets over several years.

The CIA reported, accurately, to President Dwight Eisenhower that thanks to Korolev's powerful fleet of intercontinental missiles, the Soviets would be ready to put a satellite into space by 1958.

The Soviets were ahead of schedule by three months. And with Sputnik, as Tom Wolfe wrote in his frenetic classic of the space race, "The Right Stuff," "a colossal panic was underway, with congressmen and newspapermen leading a huge pack that was baying at the sky where the hundred-pound Soviet satellite kept beeping around the world. ... Nothing less than control of the heavens was at stake."

Emboldened by the success of Sputnik, Korolev asked Khrushchev for permission to send "biological materials" into space. He had a long history of lofting dogs into the sky on massive rockets that had an unfortunate tendency to explode on liftoff. But in August 1960, one of Korolev's new generation of rockets lifted off with two dogs, 40 mice, a rabbit, a pair of rats, and a bottle full of fruit flies -- and this menagerie orbited Earth 18 times. All returned alive, after which Korolev extended his "biological materials" to include humans.

He began screening Soviet military pilots, thousands of them. The American astronauts in the competing Mercury program may have joked about being "Spam in a can," but it seems clear that Korolev wanted to have plenty of cosmonauts on hand in case another rocket blew up.

One of the cosmonauts was a former fighter pilot named Pavel Romanovich Popovich, a good-humored man who quickly made his way to the top of the class. He was a likely choice to travel on the first manned launch, but, as Walker noted, he was handicapped by being Ukrainian. For even in the supposedly internationalist and multiethnic Soviet Union, the Politburo made clear to Korolev that a Russian had to go up first. (Popovich would have his turn aboard Vostok 4 in August 1962.)

Enter Yuri Gagarin, who ticked all the boxes: He was the son of a carpenter who grew up on a collective farm and had survived the Nazi occupation — though, it would emerge, he was traumatized by the experience, which included the attempted execution of his 5-year-old brother.

Gagarin had gone to trade school, earning top marks, before joining the Soviet Air Force and undergoing pilot training. He excelled as an aviator, and while, as Walker recounted, the head of the Vostok training program exclaimed, "All six cosmonauts are terrific guys," Gagarin led the field from the moment he arrived for training. It helped, of course, that he was Russian.

So it was that on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 lifted Yuri Gagarin into space, the first human being to travel there. His orbit, which lasted for an hour and 48 minutes, had a few unsettling moments. He lost radio contact with Earth for 23 minutes, during which time, Walker recorded, he amused himself by watching droplets of water float about in the cabin, released from his drinking tube.

He also had only the vaguest idea of where he was when he came back to Earth, at one point crossing over a corner of Antarctica before finally parachuting out over a collective farm like the one of his childhood. "Boys, let's be acquainted," he told the astonished farmers he encountered. "I am the first spaceman in the world, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin."

Khrushchev crowed about the Soviet victory over his capitalist rival. Gagarin was feted, celebrated and put up in the finest hotels the country could offer. Lonely amid all the hubbub, he drank heavily and unhappily. Finally allowed to return to active service after spending time as a delegate to the Supreme Soviet, he died in 1968 in what authorities described as a "routine training flight."

Four months after Gagarin's spaceflight on Vostok 1, cosmonaut Gherman Titov circled Earth 17 times on Vostok 2. It would be another six months before American astronaut John Glenn joined the extraterrestrial elite aboard Friendship 7.

Meanwhile, a frustrated John Kennedy, realizing that the United States would have to find another event in the space race in which to compete, sent a memo to his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, asking, "Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man?"

Johnson conferred with NASA, returning with a projected price tag of $20 billion. Kennedy reversed an earlier round of budget-cutting, first extracting NASA's assurance that an American would be on the Moon by 1970. Kennedy then addressed the nation, saying, "We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share. ... No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

All of that turned out to be true, all the more so when NASA beat Kennedy's schedule by 164 days and, on July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong, accompanied by Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, piloted the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle to the surface of the Moon.

If only for his part in spurring on the space race 60 years ago, Yuri Gagarin deserves some credit for that transformative moment, too.

Yuri Gagarin wearing a suit and hat: Gagarin waves to crowds who have come to see him at the Soviet exhibition at London's Earls Court, July 11, 1961.

Gagarin waves to crowds who have come to see him at the Soviet exhibition at London's Earls Court, July 11, 1961.

Soviet cosmonaut made pioneering spaceflight 60 years ago

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV4/12/2021

1 of 9N

FILE - In this undated file photo, Soviet cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin, first man to orbit the earth, is shown in his space suit. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space 60 years ago. The successful one-orbit flight on April 12, 1961 made the 27-year-old Gagarin a national hero and cemented Soviet supremacy in space until the United States put a man on the moon more than eight years later. (AP Photo/File)

MOSCOW (AP) — Crushed into the pilot’s seat by heavy G-forces, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin saw flames outside his spacecraft and prepared to die. His voice broke the tense silence at ground control: “I’m burning. Goodbye, comrades.”

Gagarin didn’t know that the blazing inferno he observed through a porthole was a cloud of plasma engulfing Vostok 1 during its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and he was still on track to return safely.

It was his quiet composure under pressure that helped make him the first human in space 60 years ago.

Gagarin’s steely self-control was a key factor behind the success of his pioneering 108-minute flight. The April 12, 1961, mission encountered glitches and emergencies — from a capsule hatch failing to shut properly just before blastoff to parachute problems in the final moments before touchdown.

From the time 20 Soviet air force pilots were selected to train for the first crewed spaceflight, Gagarin’s calm demeanor, quick learning skills and beaming smile made him an early favorite.

Two days before blastoff, the 27-year-old Gagarin wrote a farewell letter to his wife, Valentina, sharing his pride in being chosen to ride in Vostok 1 but also trying to console her in the event of his death.

“I fully trust the equipment, it mustn’t let me down. But if something happens, I ask you Valyusha not to become broken by grief,” he wrote, using a nickname for her.

Authorities held onto the letter and eventually gave it to Gagarin’s widow seven years later after he died in an airplane crash. She never remarried.

Gagarin’s pioneering, single-orbit flight made him a hero in the Soviet Union and an international celebrity. After putting the world’s first satellite into orbit with the successful launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the Soviet space program, rushed to secure its dominance over the United States by putting a man into space.

“The task was set, and people were sleeping in their offices and factory shops, like at wartime,” Fyodor Yurchikhin, a Russian cosmonaut who eventually made five spaceflights, recalled.

As the Soviet rocket and space program raced to beat the Americans, it suffered a series of launch failures throughout 1960, including a disastrous launch pad explosion in October that killed 126 people. Missile Forces chief Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin was among the victims.

Like Gagarin, Soviet officials were prepared for the worst. No safety system had been installed to save the cosmonaut in case of another rocket explosion at blastoff or after.

Authorities drafted three versions of a bulletin about Gagarin’s flight for the official TASS news agency: one announcing a successful flight, another in case of problems, and the third one for a mission ending in disaster.

Apart from potential engine failures and other equipment malfunctions, scientists questioned an individual’s ability to withstand the conditions of spaceflight. Many worried that a pilot could go mad in orbit.

Soviet engineers prepared for that situation by developing a fully automatic control system. As an extra precaution, the pilot would receive a sealed envelope containing a secret code for activating the capsule’s manual controls. The theory was that a person who could enter the code must be sane enough to operate the ship.

Everyone in the space program liked Gagarin so much, however, that a senior instructor and a top engineer independently shared the secret code with him before the flight to save him the trouble of fiddling with the envelope in case of an emergency.

Problems began right after Gagarin got into Vostok 1, when a light confirming the hatch’s closure did not go on. Working at a frantic pace, a leading engineer and a co-worker removed 32 screws, found and fixed a faulty contact, and put the screws back just in time for the scheduled launch.

Sitting in the capsule, Gagarin whistled a tune. “Poyekhali!” — “Off we go!” — he shouted as the rocket blasted off.

As another precaution, the orbit was planned so the spacecraft would descend on its own after a week if an engine burn failure stranded the ship. Instead, a glitch resulted in a higher orbit that would have left Gagarin dead if the engine had malfunctioned at that stage.

While the engine worked as planned to send the ship home, a fuel loss resulted in an unexpected reentry path and a higher velocity that made the ship rotate wildly for 10 agonizing minutes.

Gagarin later said he nearly blacked out while experiencing G-forces exceeding 10 times the pull of gravity. “There was a moment lasting two or three seconds when instruments started fading before my eyes,” he recalled.

Seeing a cloud of fiery plasma around his ship on re-entry, he thought his ship was burning.

A soft-landing system hadn’t been designed yet, so Gagarin ejected from the module in his spacesuit and deployed a parachute. While descending, he had to fiddle with a sticky valve on his spacesuit to start breathing outside air. A reserve chute unfolded in addition to the main parachute, making it hard for him to control his descent, but he landed safely on a field near the Volga River in the Saratov region.

Gagarin was flown to Moscow to a hero’s welcome, hailed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and greeted by enthusiastic crowds cheering his flight as a triumph on par with the victory in World War II. In the years before he died at age 34, he basked in international glory, visiting dozens of countries to celebrate his historic mission.

“The colossal propaganda effect of the Sputnik launch and particularly Gagarin’s flight was very important,” Moscow-based aviation and space expert Vadim Lukashevich said. “We suddenly beat America even though our country hadn’t recovered yet from the massive damage and casualties” from World War II.

Gagarin was killed in a training jet crash on March 27, 1968. Not quite 16 months later, the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the space race, putting an astronaut on the moon.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union ended the era of rivalry. Russia’s efforts to develop new rockets and spacecraft have faced endless delays, and the country has continued to rely on Soviet-era technology. Amid the stagnation, the much-criticized state space corporation Roscosmos has focused on a costly plan to build its new, rocket-shaped headquarters on the site of a dismantled rocket factory.

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Associated Press journalists Kostya Manenkov and Kirill Zarubin in Moscow contributed to this report.

TODAY IN HISTORY
40th anniversary of first space shuttle orbital mission a bittersweet occasion

By Paul Brinkmann

The entrance to the "Rubber Room" under Launch Complex 39A opens 32 years to the day since NASA launched space shuttle Columbia on its maiden voyage. The space agency is making final preparations to close down the pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 12, 2013. Photo by Joe Marino-Bill Cantrell/UPI | License Photo


ORLANDO, Fla., April 9 (UPI) -- The 40th anniversary Monday of the first orbital flight of a space shuttle -- Columbia -- evokes the accomplishments of the program, but also a grim reminder of tragedies during its existence.

The first shuttle orbital flight in April 1981 revolutionized space exploration because it proved a reusable, piloted space plane could succeed.

But that legacy also offered perilous lessons. Space shuttle flights were canceled in 2011 after 14 astronauts perished in two accidents.

"We had two terrible tragedies that shouldn't have happened," Bob Crippen, 83, who piloted Columbia, told UPI in a recent interview.

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"But it was quite a vehicle that allowed us to do some great things in space, bring over 300 people to space -- a much more diverse group of people than ever before. And I'm proud of it."


NASA built six shuttles -- one flew tests, while the others flew 135 space missions from 1981 to 2011, all launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA first created the shuttle Enterprise as a test vehicle that flew only in Earth's atmosphere. Following that, Rockwell International turned out Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, in that order.

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Shuttles carried the first American woman into space, Sally Ride, and the first Black American, Guion Bluford, in 1983. They also launched important spacecraft, such as the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, and they transported large segments of the International Space Station.

Long before the space station existed, shuttle missions led to advances in understanding how the low gravity of space affected people and materials. The shuttle also carried a set of special radar instruments to map previously uncharted jungles and mountaintops.

Disaster first struck the program in 1986 when the Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. NASA recovered and launched shuttles successfully for the next 15 years until Columbia exploded during re-entry over Texas. Each tragedy killed all seven astronauts on board.

The final flight, an Atlantis mission, came on July 8, 2011, with a four-astronaut crew. It delivered electronics equipment to the space station.

UPI Audio · 40th anniversary of NASA shuttle program

As the 40th anniversary of the first launch approached, Crippen recalled celebrating many previous anniversaries with his crewmate, the late John Young, commander of the first mission. Young died in 2018 at age 87.

"John Young was the natural, right pick for that initial flight because he was their most experienced astronaut. He had flown to space four times and walked on the moon on Apollo 16," said Crippen, who noted he was a rookie when selected for the mission.

"I was his friend, and I'm sorry he's not here to mark this anniversary with us," he said.

Young was aware of the age difference between the two, according to a quote attributed to him by the New Mexico Museum of Space History, where Young is a Hall of Fame inductee.

"My heart rate wasn't as high as his [Crippen] because I'm so dang old and it just wouldn't go any faster" during the first shuttle launch, Young said. He was 50 that day; Crippen was 43.

Crippen remembered the first shuttle launch as a boost for the country's morale, coming as President Ronald Reagan recovered from a gunshot wound after a March 30 assassination attempt. The nation also dealt with inflation and a rise in unemployment during a recession in 1980.

The first flight had few problems, with the shuttle performing almost exactly as planned, he said.

"John and I found that the space shuttle -- the fact that it did succeed on that first launch -- really did kind of bring the country together, so I think it had a lot of positive support once we got to that first flight," Crippen said.

He said he always regretted that the United States canceled the shuttle without a replacement vehicle for U.S. human spaceflight. A replacement finally arrived after nine years with the launch of a crewed SpaceX Dragon capsule aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

"It was a sad day for me when the last flight occurred," Crippen said.

The first orbital launch of shuttle captured public attention as the first human space venture from U.S. soil since 1975's Apollo-Soyuz Test Project with the Soviet Union, said Piers Bizony, a space historian and author of space books that include Space Shuttle: 40th Anniversary.

The United States employed a Saturn 1B rocket for its portion of the mission, and it was the last flight of that kind of rocket. The focus then turned to developing a reusable spacecraft.

"There was huge public interest in this major new adventure, especially as it seemed to promise a new era of regular and routine access to orbit," Bizony said in an interview.

But getting funding for the shuttle from Congress and President Richard Nixon's administration in the 1970s was difficult, Bizony said.

"Many people assumed the space race [with the Soviet Union] had been won with Apollo 11, so there didn't seem to be any need for another grand astronaut program," he said. "President Nixon's advisers eventually persuaded him that the shuttle was important as a way of maintaining American leadership in space."

NASA described the average cost of a shuttle mission as $450 million, but the program consumed a total of over $190 billion in 2010 dollars, so the average cost actually was more than $1 billion per mission.

Ultimately, Bizony said, it was the regularity of shuttle missions that led to complacency regarding risks, particularly during re-entry. Columbia disintegrated when super-heated air entered a wing where foam falling off a fuel tank had damaged the spacecraft during launch, according to NASA.

Challenger, on the other hand, blew up moments after being launched on Jan. 28, 1986. NASA personnel had dismissed warnings from engineers that cold weather in Florida that morning could create problems with circular gaskets that sealed part of the rocket's boosters.

A failure in such a gasket, or O-ring, led to the deadly explosion.

"Unfortunately, in the shuttle era, by the time a few flights had gone off without too many problems, the agency began to believe that the system was safe to fly, but it never really was," Bizony said.

One of the biggest flaws, he said, was the lack of an escape system, which is one reason NASA returned to space capsules that can abort more easily during launch.

Former astronauts, like shuttle pilot Sid Gutierrez, are marking the anniversary of the first shuttle flight in their own way.

"The first shuttle launch definitely said to the world, we're back -- the U.S. is back in leadership for spaceflight," Gutierrez said in an interview. "But we mistakenly thought spaceflight was routine then, partly because NASA sold it that way. Spaceflight was never going to be routine."

Shuttle safety issues are why Gutierrez is trying to develop a safer rocket engine at his Florida company, Vaya Space, he said. The company is testing a solid rocket fuel core that could be easier to shut off after ignition than purely solid rockets, which is what the shuttle's boosters were.

The retired shuttles are on display around the country. Discovery, which flew the most missions, 39, is on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., near Washington D.C. It's temporarily closed because of the pandemic.

Atlantis is at the visitor complex outside Kennedy Space Center. Endeavor is in the California Science Center in Los Angeles. And the original shuttle, the Enterprise, is on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.

Dutch man arrested in theft of van Gogh, Hals paintings

"Spring Garden" by Vincent van Gogh was stolen from the Singer Laren museum on March 30, 2020. File Photo by Marten de Leeuw/EPA-EFE/HANDOUT


April 6 (UPI) -- Dutch police announced Tuesday that they arrested a man suspected of stealing two paintings -- one by Vincent van Gogh and the other by Frans Hals.

Neither painting, stolen in separate museum heists on separate dates, has been recovered.

Law enforcement said they arrested a 58-year-old man at his home in Baarn. A statement from police didn't include his name.

"This arrest is an important step in the investigation," Dutch police said in a statement.

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He's accused of stealing van Gogh's De Lentetuin, which, in English is known as Spring Garden, the vicarage garden in Nuenen in the spring, on March 30, 2020, from the Singer Laren museum. The 1884 painting was on loan at the time from the Groninger Museum.

Police at the time said the thief or thieves broke a large glass door at the front of the museum and tripped a burglar alarm.

The painting, which is about 15 inches by 28 inches, depicts the garden of the Dutch Reformist Church in Nuenen, which is where van Gogh's father was a vicar.

In June, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said he received "proof of life" photos of the painting, which included a copy of The New York Times dated May 30 and the cover of the book Master Thief: The Bizarre Experiences of Van Gogh Robber Okkie Durham.

A 1626 painting by Hals called Two Laughing Boys was reported stolen from the Het Hofje van Aerden museum Aug. 27.

The painting has been stolen and recovered twice before -- once in 1988 along with a Jacob van Ruidael painting, and again in 2011.

RELATED Rarely seen Vincent van Gogh painting fetches $15.4M at auction


Hals, who died in 1666, worked as part of the Dutch Golden Age of painting, which included other masters such as Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt van Rijn. He was known for his realistic portraits of various members of society, not just the wealthy.

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U.S. 'concerned' by Saudi Arabia's sentencing of aid worker and critic

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sentenced aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan to 20 years in prison as the Biden administration has vowed to hold the country accountable for its human rights abuses. Photo by G20 Riyadh Summit/EPA-EFE

April 6 (UPI) -- The United States said it was "concerned" Tuesday over reports that Saudi Arabia had sentenced aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan to 20 years in prison followed by a 20-year travel ban over allegations he ran an anonymous Twitter account critical of Riyadh.

In a statement, Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said al-Sadhan, 37, had been sentenced by a counterterrorism court.

"We will continue to monitor this case closely throughout any appeal process," Price said. "As we have said to Saudi officials at all levels, freedom of expression should never be a punishable offense."

U.S. citizen Areej al-Sadhan, the humanitarian aid worker's sister, confirmed Tuesday the court had sought the stiff penalty, calling it "insane."

"No words can describe how I feel," she said following the sentencing. "This BRUTAL & UNJUST ruling is just a reminder of the horrible situation the Saudi people are in."

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., condemned the sentencing of al-Sadhan for engaging in peaceful dissent anonymously as "brutal.

"This act continues Saudi Arabia's profoundly disturbing assault on the freedom of expression and its pattern of human rights abuses, which must be condemned by all freedom-loving people worldwide," she said in a statement.

Al-Sadhan was detained on March 12, 2018, by Saudi authorities at the main offices of the Saudi Red Crescent Society where he worked in Riyadh, according to the London-based Gulf Center for Human Rights.

The sentencing attracted condemnation from activists and human rights groups, including ALQST for Human Rights, which called on Saudi authorities to release al-Sadhan and to drop all charges against him.

"In a trial marred by violations of fair trail guarantees, al-Sadhan was tried under the counter-terrorism and anti-cybercrime laws, which are frequently used to stifle free speech in Saudi Arabia," the organization tweeted.

The sentencing came as the Biden administration has said it will take a stronger stance against Saudi Arabia over its human rights abuses than the previous Trump administration did.

During his presidential campaign, then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden vowed to treat the Middle Eastern country as "the pariah that they are."

As president, Biden paused arms deals with Saudi Arabia and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has vowed to put human rights at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy.

In February, a U.S. intelligence report identified Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as approving the operation to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In response, the United States banned 76 Saudis under a ban that bears Khashoggi's name.

"We'll apply the ban to officials from any country that targets dissidents beyond its border," Blinken said late last month.

Pelosi said in her statement Tuesday that Congress stands with Biden as he seeks to hold Saudi Arabia accountable through visa denials and sanctions.

"Congress will continue to monitor this case closely throughout any appeals process, as well as any other human rights abuse in Saudi Arabia," she said. "Riyadh needs to know that the world is watching its disturbing actions and that we will hold it accountable."

Tishaura Jones elected first Black woman mayor of St. Louis


Tishaura Jones cries while speaking to supporters after clinching the win as St. Louis Mayor, in St. Louis on Tuesday. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

April 7 (UPI) -- St. Louis voters have elected Tishaura Jones as mayor, making her the first Black woman to lead the city.

Jones, the city's treasurer, secured 52% of the vote to Alderwoman Cara Spencer's 48%, according to the unofficial tally from the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners, St. Louis Public Radio reported

Only some 3,000 votes separated the two candidates in an election that saw a 29% turnout, the commissioners said.

Before her supporters Tuesday night, Jones said this election was an opportunity for the city "to rise" and that her administration will neither shrink from tough conversations nor from confronting racism.

"It's time for St. Louis to thrive. It's time to bring a breath of fresh air to our neighborhoods," she said. "I will lead with compassion, intention, a bit of humor, and yes, I hope you get to see a bit of my style."

It was her second time running for mayor, having lost in the 2017 Democratic primary to Lynda Krewson by fewer than 900 ballots.

Krewson, who would go on to win the mayoral election, had announced in November that she would not seek a second term.

"Congratulations to Mayor-elect Tishaura Jones!" Krewson tweeted Tuesday night. "I am rooting for your success. My administration and I are prepared to make this as smooth a transition as possible."

Spencer also sent her congratulations on Jones' victory, stating "you have my support in making St. Louis the great city we know it can be."

St. Louis Comptroller Darlene Green described Jones in her congratulatory message as a strong leader "with a deep personal commitment to the people of St. Louis."

"We have many challenges and I look forward to working with Tishaura on tackling them so that St. Louis can become the thriving, equitable city we all deserve," Green said in a statement.

Jones will be sworn in April 20

Tishaura Jones is serenaded by sorority sisters at a watch party, after clinching the win as St. Louis mayor, in St. Louis on Tuesday. Jones, the current City Treasurer, made history by becoming the first black woman to become St. Louis Mayor. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

 

Exercise can help kids with autism manage behavioral issues, study says

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HealthDay News

Being active is good for most everyone, and new studies now show it can help kids with autism manage common behavioral issues.

"Exercise goes beyond health-related benefits and increased levels of fitness for those with autism," said David Geslak, a pioneer in using exercise to help kids with autism.

"Research shows that exercise can increase focus, improve academic performance, reduce stereotypical behaviors and build confidence," Geslak said.

A study in the April issue of the Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise journal reported that 10 minutes of low-intensity exercise reduced verbal repetition of phases or words and hand-flapping, two common behaviors associated with autism.

RELATED Virtual training helps parents of kids with autism manage behavior

Another recent study from Oregon State University found that targeted exercise programs should take place between ages 9 and 13, to help kids maintain physical activity.

That's when kids show the biggest decline in active time, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.

In a national survey that rated the effectiveness of more than 300 medications, nutritional supplements, diets and therapies to treat autism, more than 700 families rated exercise No. 1, according to ACSM.

RELATED Sperm samples may help predict autism risk in children

Geslak's experience teaching exercise at a school for kids with autism led to development of a custom fitness program that has been included in the curriculum at 12 universities.

His passion was also key to launching the Autism Exercise Specialist Certificate program in 2018. More than 500 professionals have participated in it, according to ACSM.

"Analysis of participants' engagement in the online portion of the Autism Exercise Specialist Certificate program indicates increased confidence in using evidence-based practices," said Scott McNamara, an assistant professor of physical education pedagogy at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

RELATED Autism rates among Black, Hispanic children rise by 40% since 2014, study finds

"This shows the program is filling a knowledge gap for practitioners, which ultimately translates to increased access to quality physical activity programming for those living with autism," said McNamara.

Geslak suggested three evidence-based strategies to help kids with autism get more active.

• Use visuals: Pictures and other visual aids can help those with autism make the exercise connection and establish structure and routine.
• Establish routines: An exercise program should be integrated into a child's daily or weekly routine. Even one exercise session per week can be beneficial.
• Choose persistence over perfection: Just get your kids moving, Geslak suggested, even if the exercise isn't what you see on TV.

"Teaching exercise to those with autism has a profound impact on the individual, their parents and the therapists or educators working with them," he said.

About 1 in 54 kids in the U.S. has autism spectrum disorder, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. April is Autism Acceptance Month.

More information

Autism Speaks has more information on autism spectrum disorders.

Copyright 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved. 

ACA slowed healthcare out-of-pocket spending growth, study says


The Affordable Care Act has slowed increases in out-of-pocket costs for health services, a new analysis reveals. Screenshot courtesy Healthcare.gov

April 9 (UPI) -- The Affordable Care Act has slowed increases in out-of-pocket costs for those with health insurance coverage under the law by about 80%, an analysis published Friday by JAMA Network Open found.

Since the ACA, also known as Obamacare, was enacted in 2010, average out-of-pocket expenses for doctor visits, prescription drugs and other services have risen by an average of 0.2% per year, the data showed.

However, during the nine years before the law's passage, from 2000 to 2009, these fees, which are charges over and above what insurance pays, increased by an average of 1% per year.

Much of this slowed growth in cash outlays for health services has been fueled by a 24% drop in out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs under the health insurance law, according to the researchers.

RELATED New health insurance subsidies become available for ACA coverage

"The rate of increase in out-of-pocket costs to consumers slowed as a result of the ACA," study co-author Dr. Amit Jain told UPI in an email.

Still, on average, people insured with ACA plans paid $1,148 in out-of-pocket costs in 2018, a 12% increase over the $1,028 spent in 2000, according to Jain and his colleagues.

"Unfortunately, not all states chose to [participate in the ACA], resulting in persistent inequities in access, which contribute to increasing out-of-pocket costs," said Jain, an orthopedic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

RELATED Gallup: 1 in 5 U.S. adults can't afford needed healthcare

Among other provisions, the ACA was designed to grow the number of people covered by either private health insurance plans or Medicaid by lowering costs for the former and expanding eligibility for the latter.

The Medicaid provision remains controversial over fears of rising costs for states as more beneficiaries access services under the government-funded program.

However, research has shown that Medicaid expansion under the ACA actually lowered healthcare expenditures for those covered.

RELATED 200,000 sign up for ACA during first 2 weeks of special enrollment

For this study, Jain and his colleagues analyzed healthcare expenses on a per capita basis between 2000 and 2018 -- the nine years before and the nine years after the ACA's passage.

Out-of-pocket costs above what is covered by insurance or Medicaid -- for physician care increased by 0.5% per year between 2000 and 2009 and by 0.8% annually between 2009 and 2018, the data showed.

Conversely, for dental services, out-of-pocket expenses increased by 0.3% annually between 2009 and 2018, versus 1.7% per year between 2000 and 2009, the researchers said.

Out-of-pocket fees for prescription drugs declined by about 3% per year after passage of the ACA, after they had increased by more than 1% annually in the nine years before the law was enacted, according to the researchers.

"A mandate to expand insurance access to previously uninsured patients across all states would help improve care access and ultimately reduce net out-of-pocket expenditures," Jain said.

"Further, new laws that aim to limit out-of-network billing and surprise billing will further reduce out-of-pocket cost burden," he said.

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Scientists find clues to why AstraZeneca's vaccine may cause clots

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
4/10/2021

LONG READ

The AstraZeneca vaccine appears to cause certain people to develop antibodies that target a protein in the human body called platelet factor 4 (PF4), which spurs platelets into action and activates a clotting cascade, File Photo by Luong Thai Linh/EPA-EF

Doctors might have figured out why AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine may cause life-threatening blood clots in very rare cases.

The discovery, made in a pair of reports published online Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, could be key to the global rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, helping develop effective treatments for the side effect and providing clues on how to refine the vaccine and fix the problem, experts say.

But it also might hinder efforts to have the vaccine approved in the United States, where there are three other vaccines available.

The AstraZeneca vaccine appears to cause certain people to develop antibodies that target a protein in the human body called platelet factor 4 (PF4), which spurs platelets into action and activates a clotting cascade, explained report co-author Dr. Theodore Warkentin, a professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

RELATED COVAX delivers 100 million COVID-19 vaccines to world's poorer nations


"It's an antibody that's somehow triggered by the vaccine, and in some circumstances this results in unusual blood clotting," Warkentin said.

The phenomenon is similar to a rare drug side effect caused by the blood thinner heparin, called heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, Warkentin said.

The vaccine's clotting side effects are so rare that the European Medicines Agency and the UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency have decided to keep it on the market, concluding that its benefits outweigh the risks, AstraZeneca noted in a statement.

RELATED EU regulator says 'possible' blood clotting risk with AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine

However, the vaccine's label will be updated to list blood clotting as an extremely rare potential side effect.

"AstraZeneca has been actively collaborating with the regulators to implement these changes to the product information and is already working to understand the individual cases, epidemiology and possible mechanisms that could explain these extremely rare events," the company statement said.

As of Sunday4, the EMA had received reports of 169 cases of cerebral clotting and 53 cases of abdominal clotting out of about 34 million AstraZeneca doses administered throughout Europe, according to Reuters.

RELATED Oxford University pauses AstraZeneca vaccine trial in children

In the United Kingdom, 19 people have died from serious blood clots related to the vaccine, CNN reported.Blood thinner heparin

Two of the three COVID-19 vaccines being distributed in the United States -- Pfizer and Moderna -- have not shown any such side effect. But on Friday, European drug regulators said they are reviewing reports of rare blood clots in four people who received Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine. Of the four cases, three occurred in the United States during the rollout of the vaccine and one person had died, and the fourth case was reported in a clinical trial, CNBC reported.

One of the new AstraZeneca vaccine reports focuses on 11 patients in Germany and Austria who developed serious clotting problems after getting the vaccine, while the other reviewed the cases of five healthcare workers between the ages of 32 and 54 who developed the side effect.

Tests revealed that all patients had developed PF4 blood-clotting complexes similar to that caused by heparin, even though none had received the blood thinner.

These new findings still don't give doctors any clue who might fall ill with excess clotting after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, noted Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

"It's focused in younger age groups so far, but we can't pick out in advance who these people are. So, the question will be as we go forward in public policy around the world, how you will manage this vaccine?" Schaffner said.

But the findings could help guide treatment of people who develop symptoms similar to heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, Warkentin said.

"If someone develops symptoms five or more days after the vaccine, either headache or neurological symptoms, or abnormal pain or shortness of breath, then the vaccine recipient would know they ought to seek medical attention," Warkentin said. "Just as important, the clinicians who evaluate the patient would know how to look for it."

There might already be a treatment available, based on how doctors treat an even rarer type of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, Warkentin said.

Heparin usually directly affects PF4 to cause clotting, but in some cases the drug promotes an autoimmune response that affects the important protein, Warkentin said.

Doctors treat autoimmune heparin-induced thrombocytopenia by administering high doses of IV immunoglobulin, essentially flooding the body with healthy antibodies to drown out the signal produced by the drug, Warkentin said.Future uncertain

"We're recommending that when a doctor recognizes such a patient with this new condition, called vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, they be treated not only with anticoagulation but with this high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin," Warkentin said.

Now that AstraZeneca knows what's happening to cause the clotting side effect, they also have the opportunity to review the makeup of the vaccine and the way it's manufactured to figure out what's happening, Warkentin said.

"There may be a way to figure out what that might be and perhaps a way to tweak the vaccine to make it safer," Warkentin noted.

These reports, Schaffner said, "implicate the vaccine as an immune initiator of a very rare event that creates antibodies which involve platelets, those tiny elements in the bloodstream that cause clotting."

Health ministries around the world now will have to weigh this information against the risks posed by COVID-19, Schaffner explained.

"This is particularly poignant because this vaccine is very inexpensive, and it can be made in large amounts and it can be handled in a normal cold chain. It was actually touted initially and anticipated this would perhaps be the major vaccine used in many developing countries," Schaffner said. "I think lots of ministers of health now have a cost/benefit analysis that is going to be undertaken."

AstraZeneca had been preparing to seek an emergency use authorization in the United States for its vaccine, but this news casts a shadow over those efforts, Schaffner added.

"I've heard nothing to the contrary, but you have to wonder whether the company wishes to go through that process," he said. "Here in the United States we appear to have, with our three vaccines under an emergency use authorization, an ample amount of vaccine at the moment. In some parts of the country, we have a vaccine supply that's exceeding demand for the vaccine. The need for a fourth vaccine has diminished enormously."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has also cast doubt on the AstraZeneca vaccine's prospects here in the United States.

"We already have contracted for enough vaccines, from Moderna and from Pfizer and from" Johnson &Johnson," Fauci told CNN. "There is no plan to immediately start utilizing the AstraZeneca [vaccine] even if it gets approved through the EUA [emergency use authorization], which it very well might."More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19 vaccines.

SOURCES: Theodore Warkentin, MD, professor, pathology and molecular medicine, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada; William Schaffner, MD, professor, infectious diseases, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn.; AstraZeneca, statement, April 7, 2021; New England Journal of Medicine, April 9, 2021, online

Copyright 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.