UK

Mystery dog illness could be caused by a coronavirus, experts claim

THEY HAVE NO CLUE

Dogs across the UK have been suffering from a mystery illness. / PA

By John Dunne@jhdunne

A mystery dog illness which triggered a warning for pet owners to stop walking their pets on beaches may have been caused by a coronavirus, experts have found.

Hundreds of dogs fell ill following walks on UK beaches with Yorkshire being the worst hit area.

At least one dog has died of the mystery illness that has been plaguing the pets.

Now researchers from the University of Liverpool have suggested the outbreak of acute gastrointestinal (GI) disease could have been caused by a type of coronavirus, despite the name it is not linked to Covid-19.

They believe the illness could be associated with a coronavirus variant known as a canine enteric coronavirus (CECoV) but the variant is not linked to the Cov-Sars-2 which causes Covid-19.

The University of Liverpool’s Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network (SAVSNET) drew their conclusion an “outbreak” could have happened in January after studying the illnesses in dogs.

The report said: “Analysis of real-time data collected by SAVSNET from veterinary practices suggests that in Yorkshire, levels of disease have been statistically higher than we would expect for three weeks – we can therefore call this an outbreak in Yorkshire.”

Professor Alan Radford, academic lead for SAVSNET, said: “Analysis of real-time data collected by SAVSNET from veterinary practices suggests that in Yorkshire, levels of disease have been statistically higher than we would expect for three weeks – we can therefore call this an outbreak in Yorkshire.

“In other regions, the increases we have seen so far look more like normal seasonal variation. However, such signals can change quickly, and we will continue to monitor the situation.”

A Great Dane died from a suspected lung infection after a day trip to Hayling Island beach near Portsmouth, Hampshire.

Initially vets had believed polluted sea water could have been behind the severe vomiting and diarrhoea illness being reported in dogs.

China’s Winter Olympics are carbon-neutral — how?

Researchers commend Beijing for mitigating a wide range of emissions, but say that future games should wean themselves off carbon offsets.

Smriti Mallapaty

A freestyle skier completes a practice run ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.Credit: Catherine Ivill/Getty

The Winter Olympics begin today in Beijing, a spectacle that will see 3,000 athletes compete in 109 events, from curling to speed skating. The event also claims two firsts: Beijing becomes the only city to have hosted both a summer and a winter games. And, China says, this Olympics will be the first to be carbon neutral.

The pandemic and the nation’s COVID-19 restrictions have helped in this effort, because few spectators can attend, but China has also saved emissions by retrofitting buildings from the 2008 summer games, using renewable power and procuring vehicles fuelled by hydrogen, natural gas and electricity.

China’s zero-COVID strategy: what happens next?

“We are very confident that we will be a truly carbon-neutral games,” says Liu Xinping, who is in charge of sustainability for the Beijing Organising Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Offsets greater than the games’ likely footprint have also been secured, Liu adds.

Previous Winter Olympics have claimed to be carbon neutral, but the International Olympics Committee (IOC) says that China is considering a much broader range of emissions. It has already been investing heavily in renewable energy as part of its overall goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

The games’ estimated footprint, equivalent to 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, is a drop in the ocean compared with China’s annual emissions of about 11 billion tonnes, but the value of its achievement is “in demonstrating that broader carbon-neutral activities are possible”, says Michael Davidson, an energy systems researcher at the University of California San Diego.

Although some researchers commend Beijing’s efforts, others take a more sceptical view of claims made by host nations of the Olympics. Some point out that, even with China’s efforts to keep emissions low, it still needs to offset emissions equivalent to that produced by about 220,000 cars in a year.

Retrofitting sports venues

The games are taking place in the capital and in the mountains of Yanqing and Zhangjiakou to the northwest. Beijing has reduced the impact of the current games by repurposing seven venues used in summer 2008 and for other sports events. For example, the Water Cube has been converted into a curling rink called the Ice Cube.

The organizing committee also says that all of the 13 newly constructed buildings have received the highest rating under a Chinese green-building certification system; another five are temporary structures that will have a limited carbon footprint.

One unexpected windfall came from the pandemic. China’s zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19 means that is not allowing international spectators; it has also cancelled local ticket sales. As a result, more than 500,000 tonnes of CO2 have been saved that would otherwise have been generated by the travel and accommodation sectors.

Torchbearers pass on the Olympic Flame on the Great Wall of China.Credit: Andrea Verdelli/Getty

These Olympics are also the first to use natural CO2 as a refrigerant to cool the skating venues, instead of synthetic hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, saving up to 26,000 tonnes of carbon. Claudio Zilio, who studies refrigerants at the University of Padua, Italy, says that CO2 is an environmentally friendly option for the purpose, but that the promised saving “seems very high”.

Yanqing and Zhangjiakou — where snow sports including skiing and snowboarding will be held — are cold in winter, but have very little precipitation, so China has had to pump in water from other regions to manufacture snow.

Running the games will consume 2.8 million cubic metres of water — enough to fill 1,000 Olympic-sized pools. But the organizing committee says that the games will use much less than 10% of the water resources of the Yanqing and Zhangjiakou regions, and that the impact of pumping water to create snow will produce no more than 3,000 tonnes of CO2.

Renewable energy and offsets

Another first for an Olympics is Beijing’s commitment to source entirely renewable electricity for all 25 venues. It has redirected wind and solar energy through a newly built grid and will purchase extra green power.

However, Jules Boykoff, a political scientist at Pacific University in Oregon, and author of books on the Olympics, points out that Beijing’s electricity comes largely from coal. It is coal power that has supported construction of some of the Olympic venues, he says, and is likely to support the games themselves. “How much is the use of coal ghosting behind a lot of the now sustainable energy practices that are happening?” he asks.

Davidson adds that redirecting renewable energy to the games might be “largely an accounting exercise”, because these renewable resources might have been developed even if the games had not been happening in China. But Liu says that the wind and solar infrastructure, and the grid in Zhangbei, northwest of Beijing, were constructed specifically for the Olympics.

Even if many aspects of the games have been designed to produce minimal environmental impacts, some emissions, such as those from construction and air travel, are unavoidable. To offset these, China has planted some 60 million trees, including white birch, oak and gingko, which will mitigate around 1.1 million tonnes of CO2. Sponsors of the games have contributed carbon offsets to the value of another 600,000 tonnes.

Daniel Scott, a geographer at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, cautions, however, that reforestation can be an unreliable offset because forests can be burnt or cut down.

Ice hockey is one of the sports benefitting from relatively environmentally friendly carbon dioxide refrigerants.Credit: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty

Future Olympic games

Nevertheless, Beijing’s winter games are the first to have considered a broad range of emissions from the earliest stages of preparation, says Marie Sallois, a director of sustainable development at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, who is currently in Beijing. They are also the first to have taken into account indirect sources of emissions, such as air travel, she adds.

Beijing’s approach of embedding sustainability at all stages of the process is “something we will encourage for future games,” Sallois says.

Martin Müller, a human geographer at the University of Lausanne, says that relying too much on offsetting encourages a “philosophy of burn now, pay later”.

China creates vast research infrastructure to support ambitious climate goals

In a 2021 analysis1, he and his colleagues found that the Olympics had actually grown less sustainable over time — particularly given that the games had increased in size, resulting in a greater spectator-related footprint. He recommends scaling back events and hosting the Olympics in the same location multiple times.

Sallois says that “everything is open” to discussion and that the IOC is willing to engage in such conversations with future hosts.

Scott says that making the winter games even greener is especially crucial given the existential threat posed by a warming world. His research2 has shown that, by the end of the century, changes in temperature and snow conditions would mean that the majority of cities that have hosted any of the past 21 Winter Olympics would struggle to host another.

This means that the IOC will need to be “even more creative and flexible in how they host” future games, he says.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00321-1

References

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   Müller, M. et al. Nat Sustain 4, 340–348 (2021).

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   Scott, D. et al. Current Issues in Tourism, 2022.

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JUMPING THE GUN? —
Controversy erupts over Aussie museum’s identification of HMS Endeavour wreck

"Based on archival and archaeological evidence, I'm convinced it's the Endeavour."

JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 2/3/2022

Enlarge / Painting by Samuel Atkins of the HMS Endeavour off the coast of New Holland during Cook's voyage of discovery (1768-1771).

The HMS Endeavour is famous for being sailed by Capt. James Cook to the South Pacific for a scientific expedition in the late 18th century. But the Endeavour (by then renamed the Lord Sandwich) met its demise in the Atlantic, when it was one of 13 ships the British deliberately sank (or "scuttled") in a Rhode Island harbor during the American Revolution.

Now, the Australian National Maritime Museum has announced that its researchers have confirmed that a shipwreck proposed as a likely candidate in 2018 is indeed the remains of the HMS Endeavour. However, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP)—the museum's research partner in the project—promptly released a statement calling the announcement premature. RIMAP insists that more evidence is needed and that its own final report is still forthcoming.

The HMS Endeavour holds special relevance for the scientific community because Cook's first voyage (1768-1771) was, in part, a mission to observe and record the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. The observation was part of a combined global effort to determine the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Those observations proved less conclusive than had been hoped, but during the rest of the voyage, Cook was able to map the coastland of New Zealand before sailing west to the southeastern coast of Australia—the first record of Europeans on the continent's Eastern coastline.

FURTHER READING Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour found off the coast of Rhode Island

But back to the Atlantic. As Ars' Kiona Smith reported, archaeologists and divers in 1993 consulted 18th-century maps and logs for information about the locations of the wrecks of the Endeavour (now the Lord Sandwich) and the other ships scuttled with it. Then the researchers took to the water with side-scan sonar to find the remains.Advertisement

Kiona continued:

It was painstaking work, especially in the early years before GPS technology was available to help with precise mapping. Every possible shipwreck that turned up in the sonar images had to be checked by divers, a process archaeologists call "ground-truthing." Some of those sites turned out to be modern vessels, lumpy geological formations, piles of abandoned commercial fishing tackle, and even Navy training torpedoes...

By 2016, RIMAP's volunteers, operating on grants and private donations, had located 10 of the 13 wrecks, almost exactly where historical charts said they should be. And the search had gotten a boost from the 1998 discovery of a 200-year-old paper trail linking the troop transport Lord Sandwich to its former life as HMS Endeavour.

But which of those wrecks was the Endeavour? One candidate was found just 500 meters off the coast of Rhode Island, 14 meters below the surface and buried in nearly 250 years' worth of sediment and silt. RIMAP's team concluded in 2018 that this was likely the wreck of the Endeavour, although the researchers emphasized that they needed to accumulate more evidence to support their conclusions.

Enlarge / A digital remodeling of the ship, which was scuttled in 1778.
Australian National Maritime Museum

That's because only about 15 percent of the ship survives. Any parts of the hull that weren't quickly buried by silt have long since decomposed in the water. Initially, all that appeared to be left were the piles of ballast (heavy stones placed in the bottom of a ship's hold to help keep it stable when empty) visible on the harbor bottom. But archaeologists have since found ceramic teapots, glass bottles, lead pieces from pumps, and bits of rope encased in concrete-like substances produced by corroding metal, all buried beneath the harbor's silt amid the waterlogged timbers.Advertisement

The Australian National Maritime Museum held a press conference to announce its conclusion. The museum said its researchers matched structural details and the shape of the remains to those on original plans of the Endeavour—including the size of the timbers and the scuttling holes in the keel. The remains are also European-built, the museum said.

"The last pieces of the puzzle had to be confirmed before I felt able to make this call," Kevin Sumption, director of the museum, said. "Based on archival and archaeological evidence, I'm convinced it's the Endeavour."

RIMAP executive director DK Abbass issued the following statement soon afterward:

The Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) report that the Endeavour has been identified is premature. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) is now and always has been the lead organization for the study in Newport harbor. The ANMM announcement today is a breach of the contract between RIMAP and the ANMM for the conduct of this research and how its results are to be shared with the public. What we see on the shipwreck site under study is consistent with what might be expected of the Endeavour, but there has been no indisputable data found to prove the site is that iconic vessel, and there are many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification. When the study is done, RIMAP will post the legitimate report on its website at: www.rimap.org. Meanwhile, RIMAP recognizes the connection between Australian citizens of British descent and the Endeavour, but RIMAP's conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics.

"We are very open to conversations with Dr. Abbass if she disagrees with our findings, their findings," Kieran Hosty, the ANMM's manager of maritime archeology, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). He added that he believed their contract with RIMAP had ended in November, although he could not be sure.

JENNIFER OUELLETTE is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Los Angeles.

 

HEALTH

A New, 'Highly Virulent' HIV Variant Was Just Discovered in Europe

NICOLETTA LANESE, LIVE SCIENCE

3 FEBRUARY 2022

A newfound variant of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been uncovered in the Netherlands and appears to cause faster disease progression compared with other versions of the virus.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infects and destroys immune cells called CD4 cells in the body, causing the number of these cells to plummet. If left untreated, the infection then progresses to AIDS. In people infected with the newfound HIV variant, called the VB variant, the CD4 counts fall at about twice the rate as those of people infected with closely related HIV strains, meaning those of the same genetic subtype (B).   

Without treatment, infections with the VB variant would likely progress to AIDS, on average, within two to three years of a person's initial HIV diagnosis, researchers reported Thursday (Feb. 3) in the journal Science.

With other versions of the virus, a similar degree of decline occurs about six to seven years after diagnosis, on average.

Related: Do other viruses have as many variants as SARS-CoV-2? 

"We found that on average, individuals with this variant would be expected to progress from diagnosis to 'advanced HIV' in nine months, if they do not start treatment and if diagnosed in their thirties," first author Chris Wymant, a senior researcher in statistical genetics and pathogen dynamics at the University of Oxford, told Live Science in an email. The disease's progression would be even faster in an older person, he said. 

Thankfully, in their study, the team found that antiretroviral drugs, the standard treatment for HIV, work just as well against the VB variant as they do against other versions of the virus.

"For an individual on successful treatment, the deterioration of the immune system towards AIDS is stopped, and transmission of their virus to other individuals is stopped," Wymant said.

"The authors use the case study to underpin the importance of universal access to treatment," said Katie Atkins, chancellor's fellow at Edinburgh Medical School and an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was not involved in the study.

"Both because we want to directly reduce the number of people dying unnecessarily of AIDS, but also as a means to reduce the amount of circulating virus and therefore reduce the chance of new, more deadly variants emerging," she told Live Science in an email.

How the variant was spotted 

Wymant and infectious-disease epidemiologist Christophe Fraser, the study's senior author, are both key members of the BEEHIVE project, an effort to better understand HIV biology, evolution and epidemiology.

"The BEEHIVE project, begun in 2014, was created to understand how changes in the virus, encoded in its genetics, cause differences in disease," Wymant said.

 "The project brings together data from seven national HIV cohorts in Europe plus one in Uganda."

While analyzing data from the ongoing study, the team identified 17 individuals infected with a "distinct" HIV variant, all of whom carried strikingly high concentrations of the virus in their blood early in infection – between six months and two years post-diagnosis. Fifteen of the infected individuals were from the Netherlands, one was from Switzerland and one was from Belgium.

The newfound variant belongs to the genetic subtype B, a group of related HIV viruses most commonly found in Europe and the US, the team found. To see if they could find more examples of the variant in the Netherlands, the researchers screened data from the ATHENA national observational HIV cohort, a large group of HIV-positive individuals in the Netherlands who were diagnosed between 1981 and 2015. 

Viral genetic sequence data was available for more than 8,000 of these individuals, and of these, about 6,700 were infected with subtype B viruses. Within this group, the researchers identified 92 individuals with the distinctive VB variant, which brought their total to 109.

Based on the available clinical data, these 109 individuals carried 3.5-fold to 5.5-fold higher viral loads than people infected with other subtype B strains. And at their time of diagnosis, the individuals infected with the VB variant already had lower CD4 counts than those infected with other strains. So compared with other people newly diagnosed with HIV, their CD4 counts both started lower and fell faster. 

Related: 11 surprising facts about the immune system

To explain how this sharp uptick in virulence arose, the researchers went back to the VB variant genome, searching for clues. They found that the variant carries many mutations, scattered throughout its genome, so for now, they couldn't pinpoint a single, isolated genetic cause for the virus's increased virulence, they reported.

"It is unlikely that one mutation, or even one gene, is responsible for this change," said Joel Wertheim, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study. "Working out this mechanism is of great interest," he told Live Science in an email.

The team was able to construct a diagram called a phylogenetic tree based on the available genetic data, "very similar to normal family trees for humans" that show how closely different individuals are related to each other, Wymant said.

Based on this tree, they estimated that the VB variant likely first appeared during the late 1980s or 1990s in the Netherlands. Around that time, the first antiretroviral treatment for HIV had just been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, and treatments using combinations of antiretrovirals were not yet available, according to a 2019 review in the journal Health Affairs.  

"During this decade, there would have been a high prevalence of untreated HIV infected individuals who were not virally suppressed in Western Europe," Atkins said. "This high number of people who were not virally suppressed would have provided a large virus population in which a new variant could have emerged."

The tree suggested that individuals who caught the VB variant carried "viruses that were unusually closely related to each other," Wymant said. This finding suggests that little viral evolution occurred between the time that someone acquired the virus and the point when they passed it on to someone else. 

In other words, on top of being highly virulent, the VB variant may also be more transmissible than other versions of HIV. However, this finding is less conclusive than the evidence of increased virulence, since the tree provides only indirect evidence of the virus's transmissibility, Wymant said.   

After the VB variant emerged in the 1980s or 1990s, the number of people infected with the variant steadily increased until about 2010. At the same time, the proportion of new VB cases among all new subtype B cases began to increase. This increase peaked around 2008 and then steadily declined, the team found. 

"This is most likely a by-product of the strong efforts in the Netherlands to decrease transmission of any HIV, regardless what variant it is," Wymant said. Absolute numbers of both VB and non-VB diagnoses were declining at this time, and there is some uncertainty in the data as to the exact ratio of VB to non-VB infections, the authors noted.

The discovery of a highly virulent HIV variant isn't necessarily surprising, Wertheim said. "This finding is in line with both evolutionary theory and the trends towards increased virulence we've seen in the United States over the decades," he told Live Science. "I am most surprised by how stark and distinct this newly described cluster is." 

Looking forward, Wertheim said he expects many groups around the world to begin screening their data to see if the VB variant has spread beyond the Netherlands. "Also, I am curious as to whether similar variants have emerged elsewhere in the world," Wertheim said.

Other than the cases detected in people from Switzerland and Belgium, the team found no initial evidence of the variant beyond the Netherlands. They searched publicly available viral genetic sequences and found no trace elsewhere, but there may be at least a few others infected with the variant that have yet to be identified, Wymant said.

"By making the genetic sequence of the VB variant openly available, we are allowing other investigators in different countries to check their own private data," he said.

Future studies of the VB variant could reveal how it builds up in the blood and decimates CD4 cells so quickly, and also provide more details as to how the variant first evolved. The team found evidence that the variant steadily picked up its mutations, one by one, over time, but they couldn't tell if this evolution occurred in multiple individuals or just one, Wymant said.

In the meantime, should the general public be concerned about the newfound VB variant? 

"The public needn't be worried," Wymant said. "Finding this variant emphasizes the importance of guidance that was already in place: that individuals at risk of acquiring HIV have access to regular testing to allow early diagnosis, followed by immediate treatment… These principles apply equally to the VB variant." 

Related Content:

Going viral: 6 new findings about viruses

12 amazing images in medicine

The deadliest viruses in history 

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

As COVID-19 hits Pacific islands for 1st time, nearby nations scramble to provide aid

By Kirsty Needham 

 Reuters
Posted February 3, 2022 


Pacific island nations that are some of the last places in the world to be hit by the coronavirus pandemic are recording a growing number of COVID-19 cases, prompting a rush to provide vaccines, medical teams and food aid.

Concern about the detection of the coronavirus in tsunami-hit Tonga, where one new case was recorded on Friday, has been heightened by thousands of infections sweeping neighboring Pacific islands.

In the Solomon Islands, where riots — not connected to the pandemic — saw buildings in the capital Honiara burn in November, an outbreak of the Delta strain with 2,357 cases has overwhelmed the health system, aid agencies say.


READ MORE: Tonga goes into COVID-19 lockdown, but ports receiving post-volcano aid unaffected

Australia has sent four defense flights to the Solomon Islands over the past two weeks with a medical team, vaccines, and emergency food for hospital patients and tens of thousands of households.

Katie Greenwood, head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross Pacific, said cases had taken off rapidly in the Solomon Islands, where just 11% of the population was fully vaccinated.

“People are scared and its affecting everyone,” she said.

“Fragile health systems get overwhelmed very quickly.”

The Solomon Islands government has reported 21 deaths from COVID, and imposed restrictions on movements.

Solomon Islands National University professor Transform Aqorau said Honiara has been shut off, causing a scarcity of fresh food, and he had been eating from one plant in his garden.

“They have blocked Honiara in, vendors from outside can’t come in,” he told Reuters by phone.

He credited essential workers for keeping the power and water running, despite increasing numbers of staff testing positive and needing to isolate.

The rush for vaccination had also caused crowding with “a high level of lack of obedience to social distancing,” he said.

Vaccination sites closed from Wednesday to prevent the spread of the virus to health workers and the public, the health ministry said in a statement, adding it would “re-strategise” distribution.


READ MORE: COVID-19 reaches Pacific island of Kiribati, one of last uninfected nations on Earth

An Australian medical team has also been sent to Kiribati, which has 913 cases after allowing a flight with returning nationals to land in January, its first outbreak since lifting border restrictions.

Palau, where 99% of the population of 18,000 is vaccinated, recorded 2,115 COVID-19 cases in a month.

Tonga recorded its first community transition of COVID-19 on Tuesday, after two workers at a cargo wharf were infected. There are now five cases.

An influx of tsunami aid brought by foreign navy ships has been delivered without contact with Tongan people, and pallets are quarantined for 72 hours.

Greenwood said Pacific islands had worked hard for two years to keep COVID out but new strains were more virulent and harder to detect. “There may be a small chink in the armor that allows COVID to get in,” she said.

Race is on to save the Great Salt Lake: Will it be enough?

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

1 of 15

Antelope Island State Park visitors view the the receding edge of the Great Salt Lake Friday, Jan. 28, 2022, at Antelope Island, Utah. The largest natural lake west of the Mississippi is shrinking past its lowest levels in recorded history, raising fears about toxic dust, ecological collapse and economic consequences. But the Great Salt Lake may have some new allies: conservative Republican lawmakers.

 (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The largest natural lake west of the Mississippi is shrinking past its lowest levels in recorded history, raising fears about toxic dust, ecological collapse and economic consequences. But the Great Salt Lake may have some new allies: conservative Republican lawmakers.

The new burst of energy from the GOP-dominated state government comes after lake levels recently hit a low point during a regional megadrought worsened by climate change. Water has been diverted away from the lake for years, though, to supply homes and crops in Utah. The nation’s fastest-growing state is also one of the driest, with some of the highest domestic water use.

This year could see big investment in the lake that’s long been an afterthought, with Gov. Spencer Cox proposing spending $46 million and the powerful House speaker throwing his weight behind the issue. But some worry that the ideas advancing so far at the state Legislature don’t go far enough to halt the slow-motion ecological disaster.

One proposal would tackle water use in homes and businesses, by measuring outdoor water that’s considered some of the country’s cheapest. Another would pay farmers for sharing their water downstream, and a third would direct money from mineral-extraction royalties to benefit the lake.

“I long took for granted the lake. It’s always been there, and I’ve assumed it always would be there,” said House speaker Brad Wilson at a summit he convened on the issue. But learning about the lake’s precarious position this summer left him terrified. “The Great Salt Lake is in trouble. ... We have to do something.”

The shrinking of the lake poses serious risks to millions of migrating birds and a lake-based economy that’s worth an estimated $1.3 billion in mineral extraction, brine shrimp and recreation. Health risks exist too: The massive dry lakebed could send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe.

The Great Salt Lake is shown in the background of the earthwork "Spiral Jetty," by Robert Smithson, on Feb. 1, 2022, near Rozel Point in Utah. Last year the Great Salt Lake matched a 170-year record low and kept dropping, hitting a new low of 4,190.2 feet in October. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

“The Great Salt Lake needs some leaps to be saved. It’s not going to do it with baby steps,” said Zach Frankel, executive director of the nonprofit Utah Rivers Council. “These are tiny baby steps that should have been taken 20 years ago.”

The lake took a pummeling last year, with especially devastating effects on its microbialites, the Great Salt Lake’s version of a coral reef. The mushroom-like structures are formed by furry, deep green mats of microbes, which are the base of the lake’s food chain and main sustenance for brine shrimp.

The shrimp both support a multimillion-dollar industry supplying food for fish farms and nourish millions of migrating birds whose massive flocks can show up on radar. The lake is also the nation’s biggest source of magnesium and could soon provide lithium, a key mineral for renewable energy batteries.

But last year the lake matched a 170-year record low and kept dropping, hitting a new low of 4,190.2 feet (1,277.2 meters) in October. A significant portion of the microbialites were exposed to air, killing the vital microbes. The die-off will likely take years and years to repair even if they are fully submerged again, said Michael Vanden Berg, a state geologist.

And if the water levels continue to drop, the lake could get too salty for the edible microbes to survive, something that’s already happened in the bright pink waters of the lake’s north arm.

Still, Vanden Berg is cautiously optimistic for the south arm, where a portion of the green microbialites did survive last year’s lake drop.

“It’s bad but not catastrophic yet,” he said. “There is still time to fix and mitigate the situation.”

In some ways, the fix is simple: More water needs to flow into the lake.

But that’s no small task in the state that grew by 18.4% over the past decade, to nearly 3.28 million people.

Utah has relatively inexpensive water overall. A 2015 state audit found Salt Lake City water prices were lower than almost every other city surveyed, including Phoenix, Las Vegas and Santa Fe.

But a subset of homes have access to especially low-price water — the cheapest in the nation, according to the Utah Rivers Council.

Mud surrounds the boat dock Jan. 29, 2022, at Antelope Island, Utah. Last year the Great Salt Lake matched a 170-year record low and kept dropping, hitting a new low of 4,190.2 feet in October. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

About 200,000 homes and businesses pay a flat fee for an entire season of irrigation water. It’s called a secondary water system, made from converted agricultural supply in communities that are now largely suburban. Those account for a disproportionately large segment of the state’s water use — and many of them are on the Great Salt Lake watershed, Frankel said.

“It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet,” he said. While most people have a water meter on the side of their homes, usage isn’t measured for secondary-water users.

But small-scale projects have shown that simply being aware of how much they’re using makes people cut back by 20%, said GOP Utah Rep. Tim Hawkes.

There’s been pushback to change the system before, and part of the reason is the per-meter cost of about $1,500, but the governor has backed spending about $250 million in federal pandemic relief money to install them.

The Utah Rivers Council would like to see people pay more for that water, but there’s been little public discussion of that this year. Hawkes argues that even conserving 20% through awareness would dramatically increase the chances that the lake stays healthy.

This year is shaping up to be a wetter year than 2021, but that doesn’t immediately translate to more water for the lake. First comes replenishing drinking water supplies. Then comes the lake.

And homes and businesses aren’t the only ones that need moisture. About 65% of the water on the Great Salt Lake watershed goes to agriculture. Farmers have a right to that water, and under historic laws they could lose the water they don’t use.

“Right now, there’s actually a disincentive for agriculture to conserve, or optimize, the water they’re using,” said Republican Rep. Joel Ferry.

He’s sponsoring legislation that would let farmers get paid for water they let flow to the Great Salt Lake and other bodies. Because each farm is so much larger than the average home, even slight adjustments can have a major impact.

Under his plan, which has advanced at the state Legislature, it would be up to each farm to decide whether to sell water in a given year. The fund would also likely start with some federal pandemic money, and backers would hope to get donations as it continues.

“This is going to be a slow start,” said Ferry, who is a farmer himself. “We recognize there’s a problem, and farmers want to be part of the solution. ... Ultimately the solutions to this are going to be expensive.”

The costs of doing nothing may be even higher. The draining of California’s Owens Lake as Los Angeles grew has cost billions. Overseas, the Aral Sea became as source of toxic dust after its water was diverted away by the former Soviet Union. Experts estimate a drying Great Salt Lake could cost Utah more than $2 billion every year.

“There’s a real question about what happens next. Are we going to break through some critical thresholds here in the next little bit if we continue to go lower?” Hawkes said. “If we act now and we are thoughtful about it ... there’s a good chance we can keep the lake healthy and happy — and us along with it.”

Japan border policy keeps thousands of foreigners in limbo

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

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FILE - Passengers walk through the ticketing counter floor for international flights at the Narita International Airport in Narita, east of Tokyo, on Dec. 2, 2021. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners have been denied entry to study, work or visit families in Japan, which has kept its doors closed to most overseas visitors during the pandemic. 

(AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File)


TOKYO (AP) — More than a year ago Sebastian Bressa finished his paperwork to become a language teacher in Tokyo and made plans to quit his job in Sydney. His life has been in limbo ever since.

Japan has kept its door closed to most foreigners during the pandemic, and the 26-year-old Australian is one of hundreds of thousands denied entry to study, work or see their families.

Japan has become one of the world’s most difficult countries to enter and some are comparing it to the locked country, or “sakoku,” policy of xenophobic warlords who ruled Japan in the 17th to 19th centuries. The current border rules allow in only Japanese nationals and permanent foreign residents, and have raised the ire of foreign students and scholars who say the measures are unfair, unscientific and force talented visitors to go to other countries. Critics say the rules are also hurting Japan’s international profile and national interest.




About half a million foreigners — including academics, researchers and others with highly skilled jobs and 150,000 foreign students — have been affected, various statistics show.

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Strained US hospitals seek foreign nurses amid visa windfall

Japan border policy keeps thousands of foreigners in limbo



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“I think the most difficult thing for me has been this state of living in standby,” Bressa said. He has been unable to commit himself to any long-term plans with his family, friends or even at work. “I can’t plan that far ahead in the future, just not knowing where I end up the next month or two.”

Frustrated students have gathered near Japanese diplomatic compounds around the world to protest.

In Spain’s second-largest city of Barcelona, Laura Vieta stood outside of the Japanese Consulate last week, holding up a sign saying “Stop Japan’s Travel Ban.”

“I gave up my job because I thought I was going to Japan in September,” said Vieta, 25, who wants to study Japanese at a private school for six months or longer. “As you can see, I’m still here.”

Japan plans to keep the border measures in place through the end of February as it copes with a record surge of cases in Tokyo and other major cities. Makoto Shimoaraiso, a Cabinet official working on Japan’s COVID-19 response, said the situation is painful but he asked for patience, noting much higher infection levels overseas.

Japan recently decided to let nearly 400 students enter, but many others including those on foreign government-sponsored scholarships still cannot get in.

A letter to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, signed by hundreds of academics and Japan experts and submitted last month in a petition drive, called for a relaxation of the border controls to enable educators, students and scholars to pursue their studies and work in Japan. It said many already have given up Japan studies, opting to focus elsewhere, such as South Korea.



“They become the bridges between Japan and other societies. They are future policymakers, business leaders, and teachers. They are the foundation of the U.S.-Japan alliance and other international relationships that support Japan’s core national interests,” the letter said. “The closure is harming Japan’s national interests and international relationships.”

Japan is not the only country imposing strict border controls, but the policy is drawing criticism from within Kishida’s governing party and from the business community.

Taro Kono, an outspoken lawmaker who has studied at Georgetown University and served as foreign and defense minister, urged that the government “reopen the country so that students and others waiting for an entry can have a future outlook and make plans.”

Masakazu Tokura, head of Japan’s powerful business organization Keidanren, recently said the border measures were “unrealistic” and are disrupting business. He called for a quick end to “the locked country situation.”

On Thursday, The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, the European Business Council in Japan and the International Bankers Association of Japan, in a joint statement, said the entry ban “has imposed real and increasing economic and human costs.” They urged the government to “quickly adopt a science-based entry policy” to accept vaccinated business travelers, students, teachers and separated family members.

However, the border controls have wide public support. Many Japanese tend to think troubles such as the pandemic come from outside their island nation.

Tightening border controls quickly after omicron outbreaks began overseas may have been unavoidable, Nippon University crisis management professor Mitsuru Fukuda said, but the decision to exclude only foreigners appears aimed at rallying public support. With careful preventive measures, Japan could allow foreign visitors just as many other countries are doing, he said.

“Crisis management is for the protection of people’s daily lives and happiness, and people should not have to compromise their freedom and human rights in exchange for their lives,” Fukuda said.

Japan’s coronavirus cases plunged as delta variant infections subsided in the fall, and Kishida has said closing the border to most foreign travelers in late November helped delay the latest surge in infections. He contends that overreacting is better than doing too little, too late.

He was likely taking a lesson from his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, who stepped aside after only a year in office partly due to his administration’s perceived weak handling of the pandemic.

Japan has just begun giving booster shots, but only 3.5% of the population have received them, and the medical system has been inadequately prepared for the latest huge wave of cases, leaving many sick with COVID-19 to isolate at home.

The border closures did not keep omicron out of U.S. military bases, where Japan has no jurisdiction, including troops that fly directly into the country without observing Japanese quarantine requirements. They were not tested for weeks, until Tokyo asked them to.

Clusters of cases among U.S. troops rapidly spread into neighboring communities including those in Okinawa, home to the majority of the 50,000 American troops in Japan, beginning in late December. Infections at U.S. bases exceeded 6,000 last month.

On Wednesday, Japan reported nearly 95,000 new confirmed cases, a record, and Tokyo’s cases exceeded 20,000 for the first time. Some pandemic restrictions are now in effect in much of Japan, including Tokyo and other big cities like Osaka and Kyoto, for the first time since September.

Phillip Lipscy, a political science professor at Toronto University in Canada who is part of the petition drive, said he was denied entry despite his Japanese roots and his dedication to the study of Japan.

“I grew up in Japan. I am a native speaker of the language, my mother is Japanese and she lives in Tokyo. But under the current policy I cannot enter Japan because of the color of my passport,” Lipscy told an online meeting.

With the outlook uncertain, many people are changing their studies or careers, he said.

“These are fateful decisions with long term consequences,” he said. “The border closure is depriving Japan of a generation of admirer, friends and allies.”

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Associated Press journalists Chisato Tanaka in Tokyo, Hernán Muñoz in Barcelona, Spain, and Aritz Parra in Madrid contributed to this report.

Amid scrambles for teachers, some fear worse shortages ahead
By MARK SCOLFORO

Kerry Mulvihill, a science teacher at Gerald Huesken Middle School poses for a portrait in Lancaster, Pa., Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022. Mulvihill said only five people applied for an 8th-grade science position this fall and none of them made it to the interview stage. Two special education teachers recently resigned in the middle of the year, a formerly rare occurrence during her 25 years as a teacher, she said. “We really have a crisis,” Mulvihill said. “Now, I’m like, oh my golly. I’m begging people, hold in, hold in, we need quality people, for sure. We can’t all retire at the same time.” 

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — As schools scramble to find enough substitute teachers to keep classrooms running through the latest surge of the coronavirus, some experts warn there are longer-term problems with the teacher pipeline that cannot be solved with emergency substitutes, bonuses and loosened qualifications.

For years, some states have been issuing fewer teaching licenses, and many districts have had trouble filling vacancies, particularly in poorer areas. Shortages are being felt much more widely due to absences during a pandemic that is testing educators like no other stretch of their careers, raising fears of many more leaving the profession.

To address the problem, states are raising salaries, seeking more teachers outside formal training programs, and pursuing other strategies to develop more educators.

School administrators hope it will be enough.

“I see a very large concern, it’s like impending doom almost, when you look out a few years at what this may turn into,” said Randal Lutz, superintendent of the Baldwin-Whitehall School District near Pittsburgh, where German classes had to go fully online last year when none of the handful of applicants was qualified for a vacancy.

Based on declining enrollment at teaching colleges and surveys of teachers about their future plans, shortages are likely to become more widespread, affecting regions and subject areas that traditionally have not been affected, said Jacqueline King, a researcher with the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

“What we seem to be seeing now is more widespread shortages in areas like elementary education and secondary English,” King said. “These weren’t fields that previously we thought, ‘Oh, there’s a big shortage there.’”

In Pennsylvania, the number of new teacher certifications fell by two-thirds in the 2010s. Although many of the state’s public universities began as teachers’ colleges, the number of education majors studying in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education has fallen from about 30,000 a decade ago to nearly 17,000 last year.

The trend worries Tanya Garcia, Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary for post-secondary and higher education.

“We used to be a prime exporter of educators, and now we’re not holding on to the people,” Garcia said.

Not every measure has been grim. Florida’s American Rescue Plan application said projected “day 1” teacher vacancies for the coming year dipped between 2019 and 2020. And California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing said initial teaching certificates increased from 15,400 in 2015-16 to 18,000 in 2019-20. Still, both are grappling with teacher shortages in particular specialties.

Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit education group, argued in a January 2019 report that shortages were clearly a problem in some areas but generic teacher shortages that had been warned about in recent decades have not materialized. “The misalignment between teacher supply and demand is where the teacher shortage crisis is born and lives,” the report said.

To get through the omicron-drive surge, which hit school staffing hard, schools have adopted an-all-hands-on-deck approach with administrators, parents and even National Guard soldiers filling in as substitutes. Credential requirements have been loosened temporarily. And bonuses backed by federal relief money have been offered to make working in schools more appealing amid a labor shortage.

For the longer term, states have identified needs to invest in strategies to bolster the teacher pipeline. State officials outlined plans to improve teacher recruitment and retention in applications last year for federal COVID-19 relief money. They include fostering teacher aides to qualify them for classroom teaching vacancies and subsidizing college tuition.

Kansas has been working on expanding “pathways to the classroom” to greater diversify its teachers, requires mentorship for new teachers and is developing new programs for math teachers. Michigan’s education agency has encouraged districts to give particular focus to raising salaries for teachers at lower levels and to help keep them by advancing them more quickly through the salary schedule. Michigan has also hosted virtual job fairs for educators.

In its application, Nevada warned that its teacher pipeline has continued to shrink over time. Michigan reported its annual certification of new teachers is not keeping pace with demand. Kansas said the work of its commission to address educator retention and recruitment was disrupted by the pandemic and the number of new teachers could not keep pace with vacancies.

Concerns about teacher shortages that have arisen in the past, sometimes during wartime, have prompted stopgap measures similar to what are currently being developed, said Diana D’Amico Pawlewicz, a University of North Dakota education professor. The results, she said, can be ineffective and even counterproductive, with poorly prepared instructors who are more likely to leave the job within a few years of starting.

“We may be solving one problem — there’s no teacher, there’s no adult in the room at this moment — but we are creating a ripple effect of problems that are going to reverberate for years,” she said.

Factors blamed for the current shortages include a drop-off in hiring during the Great Recession, the availability of better paying options, the politicization of curriculum, frustrations over standardized tests, less generous pensions and concerns about class size, a lack of autonomy and inadequate resources.

The stresses of working through the pandemic threaten to further thin the ranks of educators. A survey of National Education Association members conducted in January released this week found 55% planned to leave education sooner than planned because of the pandemic, up from 37% in August.

“There are literally not enough staff to keep schools open,” NEA President Becky Pringle said. “This is the tragic consequence of decades spent chronically underfunding education and shortchanging students.”

Kerry Mulvihill, a science teacher at Gerald Huesken Middle School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said only five people applied for an 8th-grade science position this fall and none of them made it to the interview stage. Two special education teachers recently resigned in the middle of the year, a formerly rare occurrence during her 25 years as a teacher, she said.

“We really have a crisis,” Mulvihill said. “Now, I’m like, oh my golly. I’m begging people, hold in, hold in, we need quality people, for sure. We can’t all retire at the same time.”

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Associated Press researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York and AP writer Collin Binkley in Boston contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

Strained US hospitals seek foreign nurses amid visa windfall

By AMY TAXIN

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In this Feb. 1, 2022, photo provided by University of Louisville Hospital, Faith Akinmade, an ICU nurse at the University of Louisville Hospital in Louisville, Ky., who is originally from Nigeria, poses for a photo in front of the hospital. After completing college in the United States, Akinmade has been working at the hospital, but her work permit is set to expire in March and she said she needs it renewed, or her green card approved, to stay on the job. Hospitals and recruiters are hoping international nurses like Akimnade and others overseas will be able to snap up a larger-than-usual number of immigrant visas that are available this fiscal year to professionals seeking to move to the United States. (Tom Round/University of Louisville Hospital via AP)

With American hospitals facing a dire shortage of nurses amid a slogging pandemic, many are looking abroad for health care workers.

And it could be just in time.

There’s an unusually high number of green cards available this year for foreign professionals, including nurses, who want to move to the United States — twice as many as just a few years ago. That’s because U.S. consulates shut down during the coronavirus pandemic weren’t issuing visas to relatives of American citizens, and, by law, these unused slots now get transferred to eligible workers.

Amy L. Erlbacher-Anderson, an immigration attorney in Omaha, Nebraska, said she has seen more demand for foreign nurses in two years than the rest of her 18-year career. And this year, she said, it’s more likely they’ll get approved to come, so long as U.S. consular offices can process all the applications.

“We have double the number of visas we’ve had available for decades,” she said. “That is kind of temporarily creating a very open situation.”

U.S. hospitals are struggling with a shortage of nurses that worsened as pandemic burnout led many to retire or leave their jobs. Meanwhile, coronavirus cases continue to rise and fall, placing tremendous pressure on the health care system. In California alone, there’s an estimated gap of 40,000 nurses, or 14% of the workforce, according to a recent report by the University of California, San Francisco.

Hospitals are filling the gap by hiring traveling nurses, but that can be expensive. And hospital administrators say not enough nurses are graduating from U.S. schools each year to meet the demand.

Some hospitals have long brought nurses from the Philippines, Jamaica and other English-speaking countries, and more are now following suit. And both longtime recruiters and newcomers are trying to take advantage of the green card windfall before the fiscal year ends in September.

The U.S. typically offers at least 140,000 green cards each year to people moving to the country permanently for certain professional jobs, including nursing. Most are issued to people who are already living in the United States on temporary visas, though some go to workers overseas. This year, 280,000 of these green cards are available, and recruiters hope some of the extras can be snapped up by nurses seeking to work in pandemic-weary hospitals in the United States.

The Biden administration, which has made moves to reverse Trump-era policies restricting legal immigration, has taken some steps to try to help foreign health care workers so they can assist with the pandemic. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it would speed the renewal of work permits for health care workers, which could help keep some foreign citizens already in the United States on the job. The State Department told consulates last year to prioritize applications for workers at facilities that are responding to the pandemic, an agency official said.

Faith Akinmade, a 22-year-old nurse from Nigeria, is among those hoping for a quick solution. After completing college in the U.S., Akinmade has been working as an ICU nurse for University of Louisville Hospital in Kentucky. But her work permit is set to expire in March. She said she needs it renewed, or her green card approved, to stay on the job.

“At this point and time, I just feel like I have faith that at the end of March something is going to show up to continue to work,” Akinmade said. She said the issue affects many of her international colleagues as well as domestic ones, who may be pressed to take on shifts for colleagues if their immigration paperwork doesn’t come through.

Dr. Roxie Wells, president of Cape Fear Valley Hoke Hospital in Raeford, North Carolina, said she started trying to bring over foreign nurses before the pandemic, but it wasn’t until last year that these recruits started getting consular interviews in larger numbers. So far, about 150 were approved to come work, but Wells said they’re still waiting on another 75.

“Obviously it has become more necessary during the pandemic,” she said. “The 150, if we didn’t have them, we would be in a precarious situation.”

The surge in the omicron variant in the United States has made the strained staffing situation even more apparent in hospitals as health care workers, like so many others, have been sickened by the highly contagious virus and sidelined from work at a time when more patients are coming in.

Sinead Carbery, president of International Nurse Staffing Solutions for AMN Healthcare, said the demand for international nurses has risen between 300% and 400% since the pandemic began. The number of nurses that can be brought into the United States even with the additional green cards won’t be enough to meet demand, and many more recruiters are now seeking to hire nurses overseas because there are immigrant visas available, she said.

“This is a window of opportunity,” she said. “Because everything is flowing so well, there’s a lot of competition for that talent.”

National Nurses United, a union representing 175,000 registered nurses, said more scrutiny should be given to international recruitment to ensure foreign nurses aren’t brought in and subjected to unsafe working conditions. The union contends hospitals drove away U.S. nurses by keeping staffing levels so low — and this was well before concerns arose about worker safety and protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michelle Mahon, the union’s assistant director of nursing practice, said many foreign nurses sign yearslong contracts with employers, which can make it hard for them to speak up about labor or patient safety concerns. She said hospitals that saw nurses quit during the pandemic are turning to an overseas workforce to replace them.

“This kind of dynamic is particularly attractive right now to employers who have not made any of the changes necessary to ensure patient and nursing safety during this COVID-19 pandemic,” Mahon said. “Instead of them addressing the actual problem, they want to go and pivot to this other really fake solution.”

Hospital administrators, however, contend there simply aren’t enough U.S.-trained nurses to go around. Patty Jeffrey, president of the American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment, said the United States should expand nursing education programs to train more nurses domestically, as well as let more nurses come in from overseas. But she acknowledged bringing in a much larger number of nurses would require legislation.

“The calls are every day ringing off the hook: We need 100, we need 200, we need all these nurses,” Jeffrey said.

Jorge Almeida Neri, a 26-year-old nurse from Portugal, arrived in the United States late last year, though he began the process before the pandemic. He said a required international nursing exam was delayed due to the virus and it took four months to get a consular interview, though other international nurses he’s met waited much longer. He interviewed for his current job at a Virginia hospital, which he got through a staffing agency, about a year ago.

“After getting everything certified, the immigration process started, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be quick.’ I was wrong,” he said.

Almeida Neri said many Portuguese nurses seek work overseas since wages are low, though many go elsewhere in Europe, which doesn’t take as long as the United States.

Despite the demand, there’s no guarantee hospitals will in fact snap up more visas. Greg Siskind, an immigration attorney, said U.S. consular offices aren’t required to issue visas solely because they’re available, and are hampered by limits on remote work and video interviews. He said most employment-based green cards tend to go to professionals already in the United States, not overseas, though more could be done to speed these up, too.

“Under their current policies, if they don’t make any changes, it is going to be hard,” he said of the likelihood the U.S. government will issue all the available visas, “but there’s a lot of things they could do.”

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This version has been updated to correct the timing of Jorge Almeida Neri’s arrival in the U.S.