BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — Civil Society Organizations in St. Kitts and Nevis are invited to apply for grant funding of up to US$50,000 to implement or expand beekeeping under an Apiculture and Biodiversity project.
The funds are offered through the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grant Programme (SGP) which falls under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Country Programme.
Applicants are required to submit a Letter of Interest (LOI) to the GEF SGP UNDP National Coordinator via email il*******@***ps.org. Applications must be received on or before January 31, 2021.
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday accused President Trump of provoking the violent crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“The last time the Senate convened, we had just reclaimed the Capitol from violent criminals who tried to stop Congress from doing our duty. The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, marking the first convening of the full Senate since the attack.
McConnell’s statements carry significance ahead of an anticipated Senate impeachment trial. The GOP leader has told colleagues he hasn’t yet decided how he would vote on a House-passed article of impeachment against Trump.
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.@senatemajldr on the U.S. Capitol Attack: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.” pic.twitter.com/QIeviyHkl3
The caravan of migrants blocked a key road after being halted by police in Guatemala at the weekend
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has urged the US to make major reforms to its immigration policy as thousands of migrants were blocked by police in neighbouring Guatemala.
Mr Lopez Obrador said he was hopeful that President-elect Joe Biden would agree to work with Mexico and other countries on the issue.
About 7,000 migrants, mostly from Honduras, have entered Guatemala.
They hope to travel on to Mexico and eventually reach the US border.
Every year, tens of thousands of Central American migrants try to reach the US, often on foot, in groups known as “caravans”.
They say they are fleeing persecution, violence and poverty in their home countries. Conditions have been made worse by the devastation wrought by two huge hurricanes that battered Central America last November.
In remarks on Monday, Mr Lopez Obrador urged the US to reform its policies on immigration.
“I think the time has come for the commitment [to immigration reform] to be fulfilled, and that is what we hope,” he said.
“In Joe Biden’s campaign, he offered to finalise immigration reform and I hope that he is able to achieve this. That is what I hope.”
He said his government would try to dissuade migrants from crossing into Mexico but added that the rights of all migrants must be respected.
In Guatemala on Monday, security forces broke up a caravan of about 4,000 mostly Honduran migrants who had been camped out near the village of Vado Hondo.
Witnesses said officers, beating their batons against their shields, tried to force the group back in the direction of the Honduran border, about 50km (31 miles) away.
The migrants scattered but several threw stones at police who responded by firing tear gas.
image copyrightEPA
image captionWomen and small children were among those forced to scatter as police moved in
The caravan had been held back in the area since Saturday and was blocking a key road, causing a long tail-back of traffic. Clashes broke out on Sunday as some of the migrants tried to force their way past police lines.
Speaking to reporters, Guatemalan foreign minister Pedro Brolo urged the Honduran government to help ensure “an orderly and safe passage home for those in this caravan”.
President Donald Trump has taken a hard line against illegal immigration, especially along the southern US border with Mexico. He has also put pressure on Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to crack down on northbound migrants.
Mr Biden has vowed to end the strict immigration policies of his predecessor but his administration, which will take office on Wednesday, has warned migrants not to make the journey because policies will not change overnight.
An administration official told NBC News that migrants trying to claim asylum in the US “need to understand they’re not going to be able to come into the United States immediately”.
The Biden administration will prioritise undocumented immigrants already living in the US, not those heading to the country now, the official said
Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony said the mobile hospital will be established in the compound of the West Demerara Regional Hospital and would accommodate 60 beds. It would also be fully equipped with the necessary equipment to treat critically ill patients.
“This hospital would have the beds required for COVID-19 patients and will also have things like ventilators and monitors so if it’s necessary to intubate someone that will be able to do that,” Dr. Anthony said, during Monday’s COVID-19 update.
“They will have all the necessary equipment to assist somebody who’s critically ill…This would increase our capacity to respond to spikes.”
The field hospital is part of the realization of a commitment made by Qatar to the Guyana Government last October. President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani had held discussions on the countries’ bilateral relations.
Last year, the two leaders had discussed the fight against the Coronavirus Pandemic and critical areas of support for Guyana. The Emir committed to providing Guyana with much-needed equipment including portable military hospitals and ventilators.
Other areas identified for collaboration include support for the agriculture sector through investments in the halaal industry, expansion of the housing programme, the strengthening of diplomatic ties between the two countries, and support in other critical sectors including energy. Following the engagement, the teams also proceeded to design programmes and projects to access resources from the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD).
Guyana has also benefited from COVID-19 support from other countries including, Mexico, China, India and Kuwait. The country has received donations of several ventilators, and quantities of medication and personal protective equipment to boost its capacity.
Guardian (UK) In a cold, sombre, damp Washington four years ago this Wednesday, Donald Trump took the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States and delivered an inaugural address now remembered for two words: American carnage.
He delivered, but not as he promised. Trump pledged to end the carnage of inner-city poverty, rusting factories, broken schools and the scourge of criminal gangs and drugs. Instead his presidency visited upon the nation the carnage of about 400,000 coronavirus deaths, the worst year for jobs since the second world war and the biggest stress test for American democracy since the civil war
“It’s not just physical carnage,” said Moe Vela, a former White House official. “There’s also mental carnage and there’s spiritual carnage and there’s emotional carnage. He has left a very wide swath of American carnage and that is the last way I would want to be remembered by history, but that is how he will be remembered.”
Trump campaigned for president as a change agent but millions came to regard him as an agent of chaos. His line-crossing, envelope-pushing, wrecking-ball reign at the White House crashed in a fireball of lies about his election defeat and deadly insurrection at the US Capitol. Future generations of schoolchildren will read about him in textbooks as a twice-impeached one-term president.
It all began in earnest in June 2015 when the property tycoon trundled down an escalator at Trump Tower in New York and announced a presidential run based on “America first” nationalism and building a border wall. Exploiting white grievance, economic dislocation and celebrity culture, he clinched the Republican nomination and promised: “I alone can fix it.” He lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton but lucked his way to victory in the electoral college.
The first person elected to the White House with no previous political or military experience, he represented a shock to the system and rebuke to the establishment.
Ian McEwan, the British novelist, observed in the Guardian: “Charles Darwin could not believe that a kindly God would create a parasitic wasp that injects its eggs into the body of a caterpillar so that the larva may consume the host alive … We may share his bewilderment as we contemplate the American body politic and what vile thing now squats within it, waiting to be hatched and begin its meal.”
Trump tosses out ‘Keep America Great’ caps at a campaign rally at Oakland County international airport in Waterford Township, Michigan, in October 2020. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters
Hopes that Trump would “pivot” and become “presidential” were dashed by that speech on 20 January 2017. A day later, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, tried to mislead the nation about the size of the inaugural crowd, and soon after the White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway was defending Spicer’s “alternative facts”. It was the outbreak of a disinformation pandemic.
Trump, by all accounts, tried to govern by gut instinct, refusing to read national security briefs but hanging on the words of hosts on the Fox News network. His Twitter feed gave an astonishing window on his thinking and frayed the nation’s nerves. He showed a narcissist’s craving for attention from the media and affirmation from West Wing staff, who came and went at a record rate.
He assailed government bureaucracy, sought to undo Barack Obama’s legacy and displayed the brashness and shamelessness that served his business career: hurl insults, never apologize, hit back harder and throw out constant distractions. He aped demagogues of the past by handing his family top jobs and deriding the media as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”.
In his first year alone, Trump signed an executive order to prevent people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, fired the FBI director, James Comey, and other officials whose loyalty was less than absolute, announced America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and responded to deadly white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, by insisting that there were “very fine people on both sides”.
As his term went on, Trump oversaw a “zero-tolerance” policy at the border that separated immigrant parents from children and stripped away environmental regulations. He encouraged the QAnon conspiracy movement, described as a domestic terror threat by the FBI. In language often laced with violent imagery, it was all about “owning the libs” and mesmerising the “Make America great again” base at cultish rallies.
Jim Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general who served as his first defence secretary, said last year: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.”
Yet for three years, his beginner’s luck held and re-election seemed possible. An investigation into links between Russian meddling in the 2016 election and Trump’s campaign led to several criminal convictions but ultimately ended in anticlimax. He was impeached by the House of Representatives for pressuring Ukraine for political favours but was comfortably acquitted by the Senate.
Trump gratified Republicans by naming three supreme court justices and more than 220 federal judges, giving the judiciary an enduring conservative bent, and enacting the biggest tax cuts and reforms for a generation. He invested in the military and brought troops home, negotiated a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico and helped broker agreements between close ally Israel and three Arab states.
Trump observes a demonstration with the US army’s 10th Mountain Division troops, an attack helicopter and artillery, as he visits Fort Drum, New York, in August 2018. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters
Newt Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker, said: “It was a remarkably effective populist disruption of the old order. It changed regulations, it rebuilt the American military, it recentred American foreign policy on American interests, it renegotiated trade policy around American jobs, it began to fundamentally shift the judiciary system back to a constitutional basis. And at the same time it was generating economic growth so you had the lowest Black and Latino unemployment in American history.”
Using a term that had led to widespread criticism of Trump for fuelling racism, Gingrich added: “Except for the enormous intrusion of the Chinese virus, it was an astonishingly successful period.”
But the coronavirus did change everything. From the start, Trump deliberately played down the threat and failed to build a national testing strategy. He sidelined public health officials by refusing to embrace mask-wearing and suggesting unproven treatments, including the injection of disinfectant, and was eventually hospitalised with the virus himself. Vaccines came at historic speed but their distribution lagged and was described by President-elect Joe Biden as a “dismal failure”.
The summer brought another crisis. Faced with mass protests against racial injustice, Trump responded with brute force, law-and-order rhetoric and a renewed culture war over statues and Confederate symbols. On 1 June, security forces chased away peaceful protesters with teargas outside the White House before the president staged a photo op, awkwardly clutching a Bible at a historic church.
But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Trump era was also the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. His inauguration was immediately followed by women’s marches including a record 4 million people in Washington. The “resistance” was maintained by activists, journalists, politicians, satirists, watchdogs, whistleblowers and voters, who delivered their verdict by handing Democrats the House, then the White House, then the Senate.
By tapping America’s id, the president inadvertently did it a favor by bringing all its internal tensions and tormented histories to the surface, making them far harder to deny. Arisha Hatch, vice-president of the activist group Color of Change, said: “Trump’s four years in office led to a huge degree of suffering but it will also be remembered as a time of racial reckoning, a time when racial justice finally became a majoritarian issue.
“Trump will be remembered for exposing the flaws in our democracy that have, for decades, kept us from achieving racial equity. Trump was a symptom of many problems, not the cause.”
Trump hosts a coronavirus response task force briefing at the White House in July 2020. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Trump once boasted that he could shoot somebody on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, an insight vindicated time and again, including when he grew his support from 63m votes in 2016 to 74m in 2020, more than any incumbent president in history. But his opponent, Biden, gained a record 81m votes and won 306-232 in the electoral college. Trump refused to concede and launched a scorched earth campaign of lawsuits, fantasies and propaganda to overturn the result.
But the officials, courts, civil society and media held firm. As Trump turned on his closest allies, including even Vice-President Mike Pence, weeks of election denialism and years of inflammatory rhetoric reached a fiery climax when a mob sacked the US Capitol, flaunting the Confederate flag and other far-right iconography. Five people died and members of Congress cowered in fear.
Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, said: “That was perhaps the first time I was truly shocked and truly, personally, physically frightened. I’ve been frightened on every other level before but that was the first time I thought, ‘It really could happen here’. It was the first time that all of the norms and all the notions of it being somewhere else were completely blown away.”
Blair was interviewed by the Guardian in a New York diner in July 2015 as Trump began his political ascent. Looking back on all that has happened since then, she reflected: “It’s a combination of exactly what I expected and worse than I could have imagined. It’s utterly consistent with his entire career but, even as someone who has been watching him for more than 30 years, it’s hard to wrap my mind around.”
From carnival barker to world’s most powerful man, Trump, 74, leaves a legacy of division, destruction and death. He accelerated Americans’ distrust in institutions and in each other, waging war on truth itself. He still has millions of acolytes whose divorce from the reality of a Biden’s presidency threatens further instability and violence from domestic terrorists. Overseas, Trump made America an object of ridicule, scorn or pity as he gravitated towards foreign autocrats and alienated longtime allies.
Trump speaks at the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial in Paris, France, on 11 November 2018. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters
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Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director, said: “Future historians will say that it was perhaps the worst presidency the United States has had because of the person Trump is and because he had little respect for the values associated with the presidency, did not believe that there were any rules that constrained him and generally undermined the strength of the United States at a very critical time, both at home and abroad.”
But on Wednesday the lights will go out on the reality TV presidency as Trump exits the White House in defeat and disgrace, facing another impeachment trial in the Senate. A Pew Research Center poll found that his approval rating has collapsed to 29%, the lowest of his presidency. He has even been banned from social media, depriving him of the Twitter megaphone that gave diplomats and journalists sleepless nights.
Biden will be inaugurated in a city resembling a fortress and begin clearing up four years of carnage. Former president Gerald Ford’s proclamation after the departure of Richard Nixon – “our long national nightmare is over” – will be widely quoted. Many will hope that Trump was a mere heartbeat in historical terms, a blip as the baton passed from Obama to Biden, and a warning to the future: let’s not do that again.
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “If history is honest, it will remember Donald Trump as by far the worst president ever. No one else even comes close. Not Warren Harding, not James Buchanan, not Richard Nixon. Nobody comes close.
“And beyond that he is, in my view, the most horrible human being who has ever sat in the Oval Office. In addition to being the worst president, he’s a terrible person. What a combination. I hope we’ve learned this lesson. This ought to remind all Americans what happens when you make a mistake with your vote.”
Jan. 19 (UPI) — Amid a global pandemic and the heaviest security of any inauguration in modern American history, President-elect Joe Biden is set to be sworn in Wednesday as the 46th president of the United States.
Biden is scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday evening from Delaware and will participate in an Inauguration Eve ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial to honor the 400,000 people in the United States who have died of COVID-19 to date.
At about 5:30 p.m. EST, Biden, Harris and their families will be near the reflecting pool at the memorial as about 400 lights are switched on, each representing 1,000 Americans who will have died of the pandemic.
Similar memorials will be held nationwide, including the Empire State Building in New York City and the Space Needle in Seattle and other landmarks.
On Wednesday, the ceremonies will begin at 11:15 a.m. EST with the National Anthem, sung by pop superstar Lady Gaga, and invocation by Father Leo J. O’Donovan. Those will be followed by a poetry reading and musical performance by Jennifer Lopez.
Then, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Biden at around noon EST by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on the western front of the U.S. Capitol.
After Biden repeats the presidential oath, he will deliver his inaugural address.
Due to heightened security at this year’s event, which will come exactly two weeks after radical supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol in a bid to interrupt Congress certifying Biden’s electoral victory, there will be only about 1,000 guests in attendance — not the usual tens of thousands in front of the complex.
Those in attendance will be limited mostly to members of Congress and their guests.
After his speech, Biden will move to the eastern side of the Capitol Building for what’s known as a Pass in Review, in which the new commander in chief will inspect military troops.
Finally, Biden will receive a military escort back across the Potomac River to the White House at about 3:30 p.m. EST.
The visit to Arlington is expected to last about 30 minutes to an hour.
The parade
One of the most visible traditions involved with every inauguration in recent memory, the physical parade from the Capitol to the White House along Pennsylvania Avenue, will not be a part of the events this year.
Instead, there will be a virtual parade — Parade Across America — which will include “diverse, dynamic performances” nationwide and honor Americans and front-line health workers, according to Biden’s transition team.
The National Mall, a long stretch of land between the Lincoln Memorial and U.S. Capitol complex, will be closed to the public and blocks surrounding the Capitol will be blocked off, due to threats of more violence from radical Trump supporters.
Barricades and security fencing have been put up along the grounds and Metro transit stations in the area have been closed until after the inauguration.
Evening program
Actor Tom Hanks will host a 90-minute program at 8:30 p.m. EST Wednesday titled Celebrating America, to honor the inauguration.
The program will be broadcast on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and PBS.
Presidential inaugurations through the years
President Dwight D. Eisenhower takes the oath of office during his inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 1953. Photo courtesy of Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. Collection at the Archives Branch/Marine Corps History Division/Wikimedia Commons
During the 2020 Presidential campaign, one of the major promises by the Biden/Harris ticket was to create a pathway to citizenship for all Caribbean nationals and other immigrants in the United States.
According to the Associated Press, that proposal may be introduced on day one of Joe Biden’s four-year term. AP notes that Biden plans to unveil a new immigration bill, hoping to provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status.
Under the legislation, those living in the U.S. as of Jan. 1, 2021, without legal status would have a five-year path to temporary legal status, or a green card, if they pass background checks, pay taxes and fulfill other basic requirements. From there, it’s a three-year path to naturalization, if they decide to pursue citizenship.
For some immigrants, the process would be quicker. So-called Dreamers, the young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children, as well as agricultural workers and people under temporary protective status, could qualify more immediately for green cards if they are working, are in school or meet other requirements.
Prior to the election, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris had been extremely critical of the immigration policies that were implemented by the Donald Trump administration.
During his term, President Trump had imposed a travel ban on several countries in Africa and Western Asia (now known as the “Muslim Ban”), temporarily terminated the DACA program and even tried to “build a wall” on the US/Mexico border.
In October, Harris confidently stated that on the issue of immigration, “there couldn’t’ be a bigger difference between a Biden/Harris approach and a Donald Trump approach.”
“Donald Trump has been horrendous. Look at the policy which has been about putting babies in cages and separating children from their parents at the border. He also broke his promise to the DREAMers, some of which are coming from Caribbean countries,” she said.
She stated that one day of their term, she and Biden would, in fact, renew DACA and create a pathway towards citizenship.
Biden is also expected to take swift executive actions to reverse other Trump immigration actions, including the Muslim travel ban.
The latest statistics on coronavirus fatalities have revealed that the UK currently has the highest per capita death rate of any country in the world.
A chart produced by The Independent, using data from Oxford University research platform Our World in Data, ranked countries by their average coronavirus death toll over the previous seven days (as of 18 January 2021).
During that period, the UK saw an average of 935 daily deaths, equivalent to over 16 people in every million dying per day from coronavirus.
Measuring deaths per million people, this put the UK at the very top of the world chart for coronavirus deaths, followed by the Czech Republic and Portugal.
The chart does not cover overall, cumulative death tolls from coronavirus, though the UK still ranks highly on this measure, behind the US, Brazil, India and Mexico, all of which have much higher populations.
It also doesn’t measure overall age-standardised excess deaths during the pandemic, which some experts would say is the best measure of how countries have performed during the pandemic.
Measuring age-standardised excess deaths entails comparing numbers and rates of death to the average for the previous five years, which takes into account factors like population size and shape, life expectancy and advances in healthcare.
In spite of this, the UK has undoubtedly been hit badly by coronavirus when compared to other countries across the globe.
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St. Lucia to offer Covid-19 tests to travellers returning to England
St Lucia is to offer Covid-19 tests to travellers returning to England in order to meet new restrictions imposed by the UK government.
Many properties in the Caribbean destination will offer the service free of charge.
Visitors can obtain a Covid-19 test conveniently at select hotels or at local testing facilities, with test results returned within a 72-ho
Visitors can make an appointment for their test once they arrive on island or through their Covid-certified hotel.
Pricing varies based on location and the type of test administered.
As of today, there are 20 hotels and villas offering free Covid-19 antigen testing to qualified guests.
Additional properties in Saint Lucia are anticipated to roll out complimentary testing in the coming weeks.
Restrictions may apply and visitors should check with their accommodation provider for details; select hotels are offering PCR tests to guests who meet qualifications.
Since the first international flights returned to Saint Lucia in July last year, the country has implemented consistent responsible Covid-19 protocols, providing increased safety for both visitors and local citizens.
No Covid deaths in New Zealand since September
While the UK continues to suffer high daily death rates, New Zealand has not recorded a death from coronavirus since September.
There have been more than 3.4 million confirmed infections in the UK, equating to one in every 20 people.
Max Roser, founder of Our World in Data, blamed a lack of decisive action from leaders in Britain for the country’s poor record on coronavirus, tweeting: “The last Covid death in New Zealand was in mid-September.
Asked on Sky News about the chart, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, said that it was inappropriate to draw global comparisons on coronavirus: “It’s not really appropriate, or entirely accurate, to do direct comparisons with other countries around the world at the moment. Things move at different points in the cycle. We’re not through this virus yet.
“But […] every single death, let alone the scale of deaths that we’ve seen from this virus, both in the UK and across the world, is one too many. It’s an utter tragedy.”
The hippopotamus population has grown steadily and the animals have become a hazard, the study argues.
(CNN)Colombia’s best-known drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar, may have been killed in 1993 but his influence continues to be felt in the country, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Hippopotamuses brought to Colombia as part of Escobar’s private zoo at his ranch, Hacienda Napoles, have bred so successfully that there is serious concern over their environmental impact and human safety, according to a new study by researchers at Mexican and Colombian universities.
The hippos have spread out from their original home, some 100 miles east of the city of Medellin, in the Antioquia department, dispersing around the Magdalena river basin as their population continues to grow steadily.
Some hippos remain at Escobar’s Hacienda Napoles, which is now a theme park.
The authors of the study, published in the January edition of the journal Biological Conservation, recommend that the hippos be culled to prevent long-term negative effects, but other scientists are calling for a castration program to control the hippo population, citing concerns over animal welfare and the attachment of some locals to their new neighbors.
Back in the 1980s, Escobar imported one male and three female hippos to join his menagerie. Upon his death, other species of exotic animals were relocated, but the hippos were left because they were difficult to capture and transport, according to the study.
The hippos soon began to spread in the surrounding area, but government efforts to cull them were halted after a public outcry.
A sterilization campaign was begun instead, but it has done little to slow the hippos’ progress.
From 2011 to 2019 four males were castrated and two females were sterilized, but this “does not seem to have an important impact on reproduction,” according to the study.
Researchers say there are probably more than 80 hippos in the area today, up from 35 in 2012, and they worry that the hippos will continue to spread throughout Colombia if no action is taken.
The study also cites research showing the negative effects of hippo waste on oxygen levels in bodies of water, which can affect fish and ultimately humans, and raises concerns about the possible transmission of diseases from hippos to humans.
Hippos also pose a threat to the livelihoods and security of people in affected areas, the study said, eating or damaging crops and engaging in aggressive interactions with humans.
The researchers cite incidences of hippos chasing people, as well as a hippo attack in May 2020 in which a 45-year-old man was seriously injured.
Escobar brought the hippos to his ranch in the early 1980s.
But while the study’s authors recommend a cull, Enrique Zerda Ordóñez, a biologist at Colombia’s National University, believes castration programs are the way forward.
Culling the hippos would be an “easy option,” said Zerda, but it could affect the survival of a species that is under threat in Africa.
Though sterilizing hippos is no easy task, he said, he believes it is both possible and necessary to do so now, before their numbers rise further, according to a press release from the university.
“Right now, the authorities don’t consider the species to be a problem,” Zerda said, “but in the future, when there are 400-500 hippos, it could represent a threat to the survival of other species that feed in the same areas.”
David Echeverri Lopez, head of forests and biodiversity at the CORNARE regional environmental agency, told CNN that the situation is delicate.
“The option of killing them has always been on the table,” he said. “However it’s very difficult to imagine this could happen at the moment.”
While the hippos are an invasive species capable of completely changing local ecosystems, people in the area have gotten used to them, Echeverri said. They’ve become a tourist attraction that people feel some affection toward, he added.
Some of the hippos will have to be killed, because it’s “practically impossible” to find and relocate or sterilize them.
“But there are some other animals that are located in certain areas, in lakes and places that allow for a birth control plan to be put in place, assuming that adequate resources are available,” said Echeverri, who is working with the NGO Animal Balance to try to find alternative solutions.
Scientists have discovered a new coronavirus variant in California as the state continues to struggle with a rising number of cases and deaths.
The strain was first seen in Denmark but does not appear to be a more infectious one in the European country that was linked to minks and led to 17 million of the animals being culled in November.
This new variant, known as L452R, dates back to samples as early as May in The Golden State.
It has been linked to multiple outbreaks in Santa Clara County, including one in a Kaiser Permanante emergency room that sickened more than 90 and led to one death.
It remains unclear whether the new variant is more contagious or just becoming more easily identifiable as laboratories perform genome sequencing.
The variant is also different from the highly infectious one first identified the UK that has recently been sweeping the nation.
The UK’s strain, B 1.1.7., has been identified in 18 states, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of federal and state data.
As public health officials caution that this will soon become the dominant strain in the U.S., Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, says the warning should be a ‘clarion call’ for Americans to get vaccinated
A new coronavirus variant has been identified in California and has been linked to large outbreaks in Santa Clara. Pictured: Registered nurse Merri Lynn Anderson (right_ tends to her patient in a COVID-19 unit at S. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California, January 7
Known as L452R, it has been linked to large outbreaks in Santa Clara and seen in more than a dozen counties including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Pictured: Nurses wearing PPE in a COVID-19 unit at Martin Luther King Jr Community Hospital is Los Angeles, January 6
As of Monday, the new variant has identified in Lake, Los Angeles, Mono, Monterey, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Dan Diego, San Francisco and San Luis Obispo counties.
‘This virus continues to mutate and adapt, and we cannot let down our guard,’ said Dr Sara Cody, director of the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department, in a statement.
Cody did confirm that variant was identified in an outbreak in a Kaiser Permanente emergency room in San Jose that led to more than 90 people and patients infected and death.
An inflatable Christmas costume may have helped spread the virus.
The new California variant has three mutations on the spike protein, Dr Charles Chiu, a virologist at UC San Francisco, told The New York Times.
It was first detected in Denmark in March in California in May.
Chiu said, in December 2020, the new variant was present in 3.8 percent of genome samples that were sequenced. By January, it was in 25.2 percent.
He told The Times that although there is no evidence that the virus is more contagious, ‘there are worrisome signs that this variant may be highly transmissible.’
The two vaccines currently on the market, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, both target the spike protein to train the immune system to recognize the virus.
Chiu said researchers are currently studying whether or not the the virus will affect performance of either vaccine.
The vaccine rollout, overall, has been moving at a sluggish pace.
So far, just 12.2 million people have been vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This is far short of the 20 million people the Trump administration had hoped to vaccinate by the end of 2020.
