The Omicron cluster has grown by 15 new cases today, with the Ministry of Health revealing a string of new locations of interest connected to cases of the variant.A total of 105 new community cases of Covid-19 were reported, which…
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Particles from first seconds of the universe discovered
Phycisists have discovered mystery particles from the dawn of time forming in the Large Hadron Collider.
In the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with elementary particles such as quarks and gluons, which formed countless combinations before cooling and settling into more stable configurations to make the neutrons and protons of ordinary matter.
Before cooling, a fraction of these quarks and gluons collided randomly to form short-lived "X" particles, so named for their mysterious, unknown structures.
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Today, X particles are extremely rare, though physicists have theorised they may be created in particle accelerators – such as the LHC – through quark coalescence, where high-energy collisions can generate similar flashes of quark-gluon plasma.
Now, physicists have found evidence of the mysterious particles.
The team used machine-learning techniques to sift through more than 13 billion heavy ion collisions, each of which produced tens of thousands of charged particles.
Amid this ultradense, high-energy particle soup, the researchers were able to tease out about 100 X particles.
The results, published this week in Physical Review Letters, mark the first time researchers have detected X particles in quark-gluon plasma — an environment that they hope will illuminate the particles' as-yet unknown structure.
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"This is just the start of the story," says lead author Associate Professor Yen-Jie Lee from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a statement.
"We've shown we can find a signal. In the next few years we want to use the quark-gluon plasma to probe the X particle's internal structure, which could change our view of what kind of material the universe should produce."
The study's co-authors are members of the CMS Collaboration, an international team of scientists that operates and collects data from the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of the LHC's particle detectors.
Particles in the plasma
The basic building blocks of matter are the neutron and the proton, each of which are made from three tightly bound quarks.
"For years we had thought that for some reason, nature had chosen to produce particles made only from two or three quarks," Associate Professor Lee said.
Only recently have physicists begun to see signs of exotic "tetraquarks" — particles made from a rare combination of four quarks.
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Scientists suspect that the recently-observed X particle — dubbed X (3872) — is either a compact tetraquark or an entirely new kind of molecule made from not atoms but two loosely-bound mesons — subatomic particles that themselves are made from two quarks.
In the next year or two, the researchers plan to gather much more data, which should help to elucidate the X particle's structure. If the particle is a tightly bound tetraquark, it should decay more slowly than if it were a loosely bound molecule.
Now that the team has shown X particles can be detected in quark-gluon plasma, they plan to probe this particle with quark-gluon plasma in more detail, to pin down the X particle's structure.
"Currently our data is consistent with both because we don't have enough statistics yet. In next few years we'll take much more data so we can separate these two scenarios," Associate Professor Lee said.
"That will broaden our view of the kinds of particles that were produced abundantly in the early universe."
'I haven't raised any issues': PM addresses Grace Tame photos
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has addressed the controversy around the images taken of him alongside 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame in Canberra this week.
Ms Tame, who was at times critical of Mr Morrison and the federal government during her tenure as Australian of the Year, was photographed at an Australia Day event shaking the prime minister's hand without appearing to look at him.
She was then snapped standing next to him during the event, maintaining a stern gaze.
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Some commentators criticised Ms Tame's demeanour, but many others have applauded her courage and ongoing outspokenness and said Ms Tame was right not to stand there and pretend to smile when she may have felt otherwise.
Mr Morrison was today asked about the photos on Queensland radio station 4BC.
He said when anybody came to his and wife Jenny's home, they "greet them with a smile".
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"That day was actually about all the (Australian of the Year) finalists that came to celebrate. That day was all about them," he said.
"I haven't raised any issues about this. All I am saying is we were there that day to celebrate those who have done an incredible job for our country, and Jenny and I wanted to welcome them into our home and wish them all the best."
He said Ms Tame was a "passionate person" who had raised "important issues".
"I know a lot of Australians, me included, support her efforts to ensure that these issues can be raised and addressed," he said.
"So I thank her for her time as Australian of the Year and, as I say, if people come to our house Jenny and I always greet them with a smile."
Ms Tame was made Australian of the Year in 2021 for her advocacy on behalf of sexual assault victims.
She was herself groomed and assaulted by a teacher when she was 15.
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Haiti: PM Ariel Henry Says Country Not Yet Ready for New Election
Henry met on Tuesday evening with eight of the ten senators at the invitation of the Bureau of the Senate to discuss the current situation and the priorities, such as the restoration of security and the organisation of elections in the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country.
“We are at a crossroads where we must continue to work together to pacify the country. At the same time, the security forces are working to fight against banditry,” Henry said.
He told the senators that the holding of elections is a constitutional prerogative, adding “we cannot wait to renew the political personnel.
“A return to democratic order is essential. We must entrust the reins of the country to an elected President. For me, it would have been easy to set up a Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) But I do not want to take action unilaterally and exclusively,” he said.
Prime Minister Henry said that it is “certain that in the days to come, with the collaboration of all the players, we will finalize the consultation process with a view to achieving the final result”.
He said that the new CEP and the Constituent Assembly will be in place by February 7 and that the country will have a new Constitution later this year.
“The country cannot wait more. We therefore have a duty to find a consensus around lasting solutions to this chronic crisis. We must organize the elections so that there are new elected officials. What I am certain of, there will not be a new president on February 7, 2022,” Henry said.
He told the legislators that with regards to the assassination of Moise on July 7 at his private residence “as long as I am at the head of the Executive, I will do everything in my power to ensure that justice is done to President Jovenel Moïse.
“As I committed upon my arrival at the Primature, I will continue to seek legal assistance in the context of the investigation into this assassination,” he added.
Moise was elected head of state on November 20, 2016, after electoral officials one week later said that he had won the election with 55.67 per cent of the vote and with an estimated voter turnout of 21 per cent, beating out 26 other candidates — four of whom claimed victory.
Moise, 53, was sworn in as president in February 2017 and in 2019, he faced political unrest and calls for his resignation.
At the time of his assassination, he had been demanding to serve out the remainder of the year and threatening to amend the Constitution to give himself more power.
Late last year, the President of the Senate, Joseph Lambert, suggested that 2022 be declared ‘Year of Haitian Dialogue’ aimed at bringing the Haiti “out of this too long crisis”.
Lambert, in an address to the Senate, which met for first time in a year with just a handful of lawmakers present, said ‘today the Republic of Haiti is deprived of its Chamber of Deputies and its Senate is reduced to a third of its members, these exercise their mandate which expires on the second Monday of January 2023”.
The Senate, composed of 30 members, currently has only 10 Senators as a result of the failure to hold legislative elections initially scheduled for October 2019 and postponed several times. (CMC).
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WORLD VIEW: US Court Justice to Retire, No Concessions to Russia, China Dissident Crackdown, Iran Winning Against Virus, More
Jan 27, 2022
The Associated Press
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The Rundown
Democrats stung by a series of election-year failures to deliver legislative wins for their most loyal voters may have been buoyed by the prospect that President Joe Biden will name the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court….Read More
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration and NATO told Russia on Wednesday there will be no U.S. or NATO concessions on Moscow’s main demands to resolve the crisis over Ukraine. In separate written responses delivered to the Russian…Read More
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BEIJING (AP) — From the deadly crushing of Beijing’s 1989 pro-democracy protests to the suppression of Hong Kong’s opposition four decades later, China’s Communist Party has demonstrated a determination and ability to stay in power th…Read More
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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has the air of an absent-minded professor, once joking in court that his wife put directions in his pocket to keep him from getting lost. He concocts outlandish hypothetical questions to try to get…Read More
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — As much of the world sees vaccination slowing and infections soaring with the spread of omicron, Iran has found a rare, if fleeting, respite from the anxiety and trauma of the pandemic. …Read More
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OTHER TOP STORIES
Current and former staffers have accused the top director of the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific of racist, unethical and abusive behavior that has underm…Read More
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U.S. Should Boost Financial Aid to Caribbean Nations: Antigua PM
MIAMI, Jan 26 (Reuters) – The United States should increase financing and aid to the Caribbean to help the region recover from the pandemic and cope with the growing impact of climate change, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said in an interview.
Countries in the region are facing unsustainable debt loads often equivalent to 100% of gross domestic product (GDP), Browne said, adding that many have been relying on loans from China due to favorable terms offered by Chinese banks.
“I feel that the U.S. ought to pay more attention to the Caribbean region in helping us to maintain our standard of living to avoid any mass movement of people,” he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
“If people are unable to live in (Caribbean) countries, then clearly they’ll end up on the shores of the United States as refugees.”
China has lent over $4 billion to Caribbean nations in the last 10 years, according to figures compiled by the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, much of which has gone to finance infrastructure development.
The conditions of those loans are more favorable than even those provided by multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Browne said, adding that borrowing from Chinese banks should not be understood as a political statement.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Caribbean was disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the IMF, which last year said tourism-dependent countries in the region saw economies contract by 9.8% in 2020.
Many struggle to get aid because multilateral agencies tend to classify them as a middle- or high-income nations based on per-capita GDP measurements, which do not factor in the higher costs facing small island nations or their vulnerability to climate change.
Sustained U.S. support for changing those criteria would provide a significant boost for the Caribbean, Browne said.
“We expect the United States would use its influence in the multinational financial institutions to effect that change,” Browne said, adding he had not seen evidence that this was happening.
The vast majority of some $336 million in U.S. aid to members of the Caribbean Community, or Caricom, goes to Haiti, with only around $70 million being distributed among 13 other countries, he said. The population of those countries is around 7.5 million.
“It’s just miniscule,” Browne said.
Antigua and Barbuda, a nation of two main islands and several smaller ones in the northeastern Caribbean, has, like other countries in the region, faced growing expenses associated with extreme weather events.
Hurricane Irma in 2017 ravaged Barbuda, leaving all buildings uninhabitable and forcing the evacuation of all residents for nearly 18 months. Reconstruction costs were in excess of $200 million.
Antigua and Barbuda bore most of those costs, but got only $169,000 in aid from the United States in 2019, Browne said.
Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Miami; editing by Jonathan Oatis
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Cuba Wants Biden to Normalize Relations With the Island
By Patrick Oppmann, CNN
Havana, Cuba (CNN) A high-ranking official in Cuba’s foreign ministry is calling for the Biden administration to restore relations with the island in light of a recent CIA report that found most “Havana syndrome” cases were unlikely to have been caused by a foreign power.
The spate of mysterious health incidents that have plagued American diplomats and CIA personnel in Havana, Cuba, among other cities, can be explained by environmental causes, undiagnosed medical conditions and other factors, rather than “a sustained worldwide campaign” by a foreign adversary intended to harm US personnel, CIA officials said last week, describing interim findings from a wide-ranging study.
While Cuban officials rarely agree with anything their longtime nemesis, the CIA, says, Carlos Fernández de Cossío Domínguez, a vice minister at Cuba’s foreign ministry, told CNN that the report should provide enough evidence for US President Joe Biden to order the reopening of embassies and normalize relations.
“The logical step by the US government with this evidence, with what they know now would be to put aside the excuse used at the time about attacks and then normalize the functioning and the operating of their embassy in Havana and to normalize our embassy in Washington,” said Fernández de Cossío, who served as director general of US affairs at the Cuban foreign ministry.
In 2016, US diplomats and undercover CIA officers in their homes and hotel rooms in Havana began complaining of unexplained symptoms, such as dizziness and pounding headaches. These sometimes were accompanied by an unidentified “piercing directional noise” that sounded as if metal was being scraped across a floor.
Eventually, 24 diplomats were diagnosed with brain damage that ranged from mild impairment to injuries “so severe they may never be able to return to their previous jobs.”
US officials feared the unexplained illnesses might have been caused by “sonic attacks,” an unknown directed energy weapon or microwaves.
In 2017, the US ejected 15 Cuban diplomats and withdrew most of its diplomats working in Havana, ending consular services for Cubans seeking visas to the US. Last year, the US government estimated that more than 100,000 Cubans had been unable to receive visas to travel to the US as a result of the closure of the consulate in Havana.
As investigators examined the circumstances surrounding the incidents, President Donald Trump said he believed Cuba was to blame.
Even though additional US diplomats in China, Austria, and other countries reported feeling similar symptoms, Cuban officials say they were singled out by Washington.
“Cuba is the only country that is being punished because of this, which proves there was no justification — which proves that this was a government delivered operation to use the excuse of symptoms suffered by diplomats to take action against Cuba,” Fernández de Cossío said.
In the interim findings delivered to Biden and briefed to Congress in recent weeks, the CIA reported it had yet to find any evidence that a nation-state is behind any of roughly 1,000 reported episodes around the globe.
Some of the diplomats and their family members expressed frustration following the release of the interim report that the US government still was unable to identify the cause of their symptoms.
A senior CIA official said the agency hasn’t ruled out that a smaller subset of incidents could be attacks, and the intelligence community continues to investigate “whether any device or mechanism plausibly could cause the symptoms reported.”
Fernández de Cossío said the CIA may once again try to accuse the communist-run island of being involved in the incidents: “It’s an agency known for its tricks and not for its honesty so one would think that they are leaving room for themselves to produce whatever version in the future.”
CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis contributed to this report.
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COVID-19 Cases Highest Ever in Americas -PAHO
BRASILIA, Jan 26 (Reuters) – New cases of COVID-19 in the Americas in the past week have been the highest since the pandemic began in 2020 and the very contagious Omicron variant has clearly become the predominant strain, the Pan American Health Organization said on Wednesday.
There were more than 8 million new cases, 32% higher than the previous week, while fatalities throughout the region also increased by 37%, with 18,000 new deaths caused by COVID-19.
The United States continues to have the highest number of new infections, although cases decreased by nearly 1 million over the last week, the regional health agency said.
Mexico’s southern states have seen new infections triple and Brazil has seen new cases surge 193% over the last seven days, PAHO said in weekly briefing.
Children in the Americas are facing the worst educational crisis ever seen in the region, with millions of children yet to return to classes, according to PAHO, which recommended that countries try to get them safely back to school to protect their social, mental and physical wellbeing.
It urged parents to get their children vaccinated.
Many countries have already authorized and are safely administering COVID vaccines to adolescents, PAHO said.
Last week, the WHO’s expert group on immunization authorized the COVID vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) for children aged 5 to 12 years, offering a roadmap for countries to roll out vaccines for them, the regional agency said.
Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by David Gregorio
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U.S. Coast Guard Intercepts 191 Haitians on Sailboat off Bahamas
MIAMI, Jan 26 (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted 191 Haitian migrants aboard an overloaded sailing vessel off the Bahamas that was believed to be headed for Florida, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, a day after the encounter.
The Haitians were taken aboard two Coast Guard vessels on Tuesday to be given food, water and basic medical attention, and will ultimately be returned to the Bahamas and repatriated to their country of origin, a Coast Guard spokesman, Petty Officer Jose Hernandez, told Reuters.
The cutters were on routine patrol around the Bahamas’ Great Inagua islands, about 540 miles southeast of Florida, in waters that have become hub of human smuggling operations between the Caribbean and Florida.
“These grossly overloaded vessels operate without proper safety equipment and are not built for these hazardous voyages,” Lieutenant David Steele, a Coast Guard liaison officer for the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, said in a statement.
The interdiction came as the Coast Guard searched for 38 people reported missing from a separate boat that departed the Bahamas’ Bimini islands on Saturday and capsized in rough seas on Sunday. One survivor from that incident was rescued on Tuesday.
The Coast Guard said the nationalities of the vessel from Bimini, which lies just 50 miles east of Miami, have yet to be determined.
Sea-borne smuggling of Haitian migrants has become increasingly frequent as the Caribbean island nation deals with economic and political crises, as well as gang-related kidnappings. The Coast Guard said it has rescued more than 800 Haitians since October, on top of 3,900 picked up at sea over the five previous years.
Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Miami; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler & Simon Cameron-Moore
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Flash flooding hits parts of North Queensland pelted by severe rain
Several North Queensland residents awoke to flooded streets this morning, as more than a third of the Townsville region's yearly rainfall dumped down in one day.
The onslaught prompted severe weather warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology, as parts of the region copped 381mm of rain in 24 hours — 277mm of that in just three hours.
Parts of the town were inundated by flash flooding not seen since the 2019 floods.
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The region's SES volunteers received 30 calls for help overnight, with one family requiring rescue from their car in Deeragun, north of Townsville, after being swept into floodwaters.
They attended several calls for flooded homes and leaking roofs providing sandbags to those who needed them.
"We are expecting more rain tonight so it's better to be prepared," SES volunteer Amanda Mcrae said.
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Areas between Charters Towers, Longreach and Winton were all drenched.
Grazier Samara Carrington from Molesworth Station said the rain was a welcome change.
"With this extra 121mm things will be starting to look up thankfully. We almost had to destock our cattle due to a lack of feed so this is a great sight to see," she said.
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The rain is expected to continue for the next three days, elevating risks of flash flooding in the region.
Overnight, the bureau had warned of "life-threatening flash flooding".
Slow moving thunderstorms dumped 362mm on Stony Creek, south-west of Townsville, on Wednesday, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
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An incredible 131mm of that fell in just one hour from 8pm-9pm and Mona Mona, north of Cairns, copped 67mm in an hour earlier in the night.
"Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce intense rainfall that may lead to dangerous and life-threatening flash flooding and damaging winds over the next several hours in parts of the North Tropical Coast and Tablelands, Northern Goldfields and Upper Flinders and Herbert and Lower Burdekin districts," the Bureau of Meteorology warned just before midnight.
https://twitter.com/BOM_Qld/status/1486341785538469892
Forecasts blamed the "strong, slow moving tropical thunderstorms" on a warm and "very heavy" air mass above the area, inland from Ayr Townsville and Tully.
Along the coast, forecasters were expecting widespread six-hourly rainfall totals of 140-180mm, with as much as 250mm in some areas.
By 2.40am, the risk to life had eased but the bureau was still warning of likely flash flooding through to morning in Forsayth, Woodstock, Lyndhurst Station, Abergowrie, Clare and Greenvale.