• China Says It Will Allow Couples to Have 3 Children, Up From 2 - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/world/asia/china-three-child-policy.html

    China said on Monday that it would allow all married couples to have three children, ending a two-child policy that has failed to raise the country’s declining birthrates and avert a demographic crisis.

    The announcement by the ruling Communist Party represents an acknowledgment that its limits on reproduction, the world’s toughest, have jeopardized the country’s future. The labor pool is shrinking and the population is graying, threatening the industrial strategy that China has used for decades to emerge from poverty to become an economic powerhouse.

    But it is far from clear that relaxing the policy further will pay off.

  • Israël-Palestine : le Conseil des droits de l’homme de l’ONU crée une commission d’enquête | ONU Info
    https://news.un.org/fr/story/2021/05/1097002

    Plus généralement, #Gaza a souvent été qualifiée de plus grande #prison à ciel ouvert du monde, la puissance occupante ayant toute autorité pour déterminer qui et quoi entre et sort de la bande. « Il n’existe aucune autre situation comparable dans le monde moderne où une puissance étrangère a enfermé et mis à l’écart une communauté entière de personnes », a affirmé M. Lynk.

    #crimes #sionisme #impunité

  • Immunity to the Coronavirus May Persist for Years, Scientists Find - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/health/coronavirus-immunity-vaccines.html

    [...] memory B cells produced in response to infection with #SARS-CoV-2 and enhanced with #vaccination are so potent that they thwart even variants of the virus, negating the need for boosters, according to Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York who led the study on memory maturation.

    Après avoir contracté le #coronavirus, l’#immunité pourrait durer bien plus d’un an - Edition du soir Ouest-France - 27/05/2021
    https://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/2021-05-27/apres-avoir-contracte-le-coronavirus-limmunite-pourrait-durer-bien-plus

    Les chercheurs ont analysé le sang de 63 patients guéris du #Covid-19 un an plus tôt, dont 26 ont aujourd’hui reçu au moins une dose des vaccins Pfizer/BioNTech ou Moderna. [Chez les personnes qui ont été vaccinées] [n]on seulement, le taux d’anticorps empêchant la réinfection est resté stable entre six et douze mois, mais les lymphocytes B à mémoire se sont aussi renforcés au fil du temps. Un an après l’infection, les anticorps qu’ils produisent ont acquis la capacité de neutraliser un large groupe de #variants

    [...]

    « Les personnes qui ont été infectées [puis] ont été vaccinées ont vraiment une réponse formidable, un ensemble formidable d’anticorps, qu’elles continuent à faire évoluer, explique le Dr Nussenzweig. Je m’attends à ce qu’ils durent longtemps. » [...]

    Afin de bénéficier d’une meilleure protection, les personnes qui n’ont jamais été infectées par le coronavirus pourraient, elles, avoir besoin d’une troisième dose, afin de voir leur réponse immunitaire améliorée. Pour l’heure, les scientifiques pointent un manque de données, qui devrait être comblé dans les prochains mois. Aujourd’hui, en Europe, seules les personnes immunodéprimées se sont vues recommander l’injection d’une troisième dose.

    SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans | Nature
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4

    Vaccination boosts naturally enhanced neutralizing breadth to SARS-CoV-2 one year after infection | bioRxiv
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.07.443175v1

    #vaccins

  • New Zealanders Are Flooding Home. Will the Old Problems Push Them Back Out? - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/world/asia/new-zealand-return-covid.html

    New Zealanders Are Flooding Home. Will the Old Problems Push Them Back Out? More than 50,000 have escaped the pandemic by moving back, offering the country a rare chance to regain talented citizens. But they are confronting entrenched housing and employment challenges.
    WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Like many New Zealanders before her, Cat Moody chased the broader horizons of life abroad, unsure if she would ever return to a homeland she saw as remote and limiting.But when the pandemic arrived, it “changed the calculus” of what she valued, she said. Suddenly, fresh air, natural splendor and a sparse population sounded more appealing, as did the sense of security in a country whose strict measures have all but vanquished Covid-19.In February, Ms. Moody, 42, left her house and the life she had built in Princeton, N.J., and moved back to New Zealand with her husband, a U.S. citizen. She is among more than 50,000 New Zealanders who have flocked home during the pandemic, offering the country a rare opportunity to win back some of its best and brightest.
    The unexpected influx of international experience and connections has led to local news reports heralding a societal and industrial renaissance. Policymakers are exhorting businesses to capitalize on the “fundamental competitive advantage” offered by the country’s success against the coronavirus. The question is how long the edge will last. While New Zealand may look from the outside like a liberal Eden, those returning to the country face some of the same pressures that provoked their departure, like sky-high housing costs, lagging wages and constricted job prospects.
    Given those issues and others, one out of every six New Zealanders lives abroad, a million people in all. Successive governments have pledged, without much success, to find ways to stanch the flood.For many, higher salaries, particularly in neighboring Australia, are a distinct draw. Another powerful force is the intractable housing shortage in New Zealand, which has vexed the current government, led by Jacinda Ardern, and its predecessors.New Zealand’s median house price increased by 19 percent in the 12 months that ended in April, and now stands at $576,000, or 800,000 New Zealand dollars, more than 60 percent higher than in the United States. Treasury figures released on Thursday project that house prices will peak in the middle of this year.
    Some of those who have returned to New Zealand will leave again as soon as the pandemic ends. Such was the lure last year of a coronavirus-free summer spent at crowded beaches and festivals that the government imposed quarantine fees starting at more than $2,000 on New Zealanders intending to make only short visits.And among those who intend to stay long term, many are cleareyed about the challenges.They had always planned to return to New Zealand Ms. Imam said. Their move was hastened not only by Covid-19 but also by the presidency of Donald J. Trump and the United States’ unresolved systemic racism, highlighted by last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
    Spending time overseas has long been a rite of passage for young New Zealanders like Ms. Imam. A large number — including, in her youth, Ms. Ardern — stay abroad only as long as visas or funds allow. But thousands of New Zealanders migrate overseas each year with little intention of returning — at least before starting a family or retiring, and therefore ending the hunt for faster-paced careers or higher wages abroad.The country typically posts a net loss of thousands or tens of thousands of citizens each year, with its overall population growth fueled by migrants. The pandemic has brought a stark reversal. In 2020, New Zealand posted a yearly net gain of thousands of citizens for the first time since the 1970s, the country’s statistics bureau said.Modeling by the bureau projects that 23,000 of the New Zealanders who returned home from living abroad during the year ending in March 2021 will stay for at least 12 months. By contrast, 7,800 citizens moved overseas. The Ardern government has announced no specific measures aimed at retaining citizens who return. But it is using its border shutdown as a moment to “reset” its immigration priorities, saying on Monday that it would loosen controls for wealthy investors while curtailing temporary visas for the migrants the country has long relied on as citizens moved away.
    Image Lamia Imam, a New Zealander, and her American husband, Cody Sandel. They had always planned to return to New Zealand, but their move was hastened by the pandemic and the political situation in the United States.Lamia Imam, a New Zealander, and her American husband, Cody Sandel. When the pandemic first struck, Ms. Moody and her husband were determined to remain in Princeton, she said. She was undergoing in vitro fertilization, and her husband was applying to American medical schools.
    Ms. Moody, who worked for the World Bank and the consulting firm Deloitte during her time abroad, said it was important that she “not feel like I’m trapped, career-wise or physically or psychologically.” If she returned to New Zealand, she said, “I was scared I would lose that outward-looking global connection.” But as the pandemic dragged on, the couple’s reasons for staying in the United States dwindled, and early this year they moved back to Auckland. They are so certain they will remain, despite the lower wages and less affordable housing, that Ms. Moody’s husband has begun the lengthy process of training as a doctor locally.
    Wages in her field are about 20 percent lower in New Zealand than in the United States, Ms. Moody said, so she has kept her job as the global head of leadership for the strategy firm OneLeap, headquartered in London. She is among many newly returned New Zealanders who hope to retain their overseas salaries for as long as they can.Time zone differences mean workdays in New Zealand and the United States or Europe scarcely overlap. Those working remotely are relying on a new willingness from their multinational employers to consider making flexible work arrangements permanent.For people returning to New Zealand in hope of finding work in the public sector, as Ms. Imam had planned, salaries are constrained. The government announced this month that wage increases would be prohibited for the next three years for those earning more than $71,000 and tightly restricted for those earning above $43,000.What New Zealand is now offering her — a caution that led Ms. Ardern to shut down the country before the virus spread out of control — is what she had craved for the past year as the United States’ at times cavalier response to the pandemic led to disaster.But she worries that New Zealand’s approach has not left it a clear route to rejoining the world. Fewer than 153,000 people in the country of five million have received both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, and Australians and residents of the Cook Islands are the only non-New Zealanders who can visit. Ms. Imam, who worked in communications for the computer company Dell in the United States, said that New Zealand’s reputation abroad was better than it deserved.Still, she said that new government policies, such as paid leave for women who have miscarriages, had convinced her that the “project that is New Zealand” was worth returning for.“At least we’re doing something right,” she said. “I want to be part of that.”

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#nouvellezelande#australie#etatsunis#emigration#retour#pandemie#sante#vaccination#politiquemigratoire

  • Life Under Occupation: The Misery at the Heart of the Israel-Gaza Conflict
    By David M. Halbfinger and Adam Rasgon
    May 22, 2021 - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/us/israel-gaza-conflict.html

    An eviction in East Jerusalem lies at the center of a conflict that led to war between Israel and Hamas. But for millions of Palestinians, the routine indignities of occupation are part of daily life.

    JERUSALEM — Muhammad Sandouka built his home in the shadow of the Temple Mount before his second son, now 15, was born.

    They demolished it together, after Israeli authorities decided that razing it would improve views of the Old City for tourists.

    Mr. Sandouka, 42, a countertop installer, had been at work when an inspector confronted his wife with two options: Tear the house down, or the government would not only level it but also bill the Sandoukas $10,000 for its expenses.

    Such is life for Palestinians living under Israel’s occupation: always dreading the knock at the front door.

    The looming removal of six Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem set off a round of protests that helped ignite the latest war between Israel and Gaza. But to the roughly three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and has controlled through decades of failed peace talks, the story was exceptional only because it attracted an international spotlight.

    For the most part, they endure the frights and indignities of the Israeli occupation in obscurity.

    Even in supposedly quiet periods, when the world is not paying attention, Palestinians from all walks of life routinely experience exasperating impossibilities and petty humiliations, bureaucratic controls that force agonizing choices, and the fragility and cruelty of life under military rule, now in its second half-century. (...)

    #Jerusalem #colonialisme_de_peuplement

  • Une enquête auprès des épidémiologistes démasque le mensonge que les enfants ne propagent pas le COVID-19 - World Socialist Web Site
    https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2021/05/18/pers-m18.html
    https://www.wsws.org/asset/471cb25e-e721-4483-ad57-3ec013969651?rendition=image1280

    Dans un article publié samedi par le New York Times, une enquête menée auprès de 723 épidémiologistes a mis en évidence le rôle central joué par les enfants dans la propagation du COVID-19. Ces résultats contredisent les affirmations faites tout au long de la pandémie par l’ensemble de l’establishment politique sur les dangers prétendument minimes que la politique de réouverture des écoles fait courir aux enfants et à la société dans son ensemble.

    Le rapport démasque également la décision irresponsable et anti-scientifique des Centres de contrôle et de prévention des maladies (CDC), sous la direction du gouvernement Biden, de mettre fin aux directives demandant à tous les individus de porter des masques à l’intérieur et à pratiquer la distanciation sociale. Un objectif central étant de faciliter la réouverture des écoles à l’enseignement en présentiel avant qu’il ne soit sans danger.

    L’article du Times, intitulé « 723 épidémiologistes sur quand et comment les États-Unis peuvent revenir pleinement à la normale », commence ainsi : « Les cas de Covid-19 diminuent aux États-Unis, et les masques ne sont plus nécessaires partout. Mais, la pandémie continue – et ne sera pas terminée tant que les jeunes enfants ne pourront pas, eux aussi, être vaccinés ».

  • La fin des directives du CDC sur la porte des masques vise à « normaliser » la mort - World Socialist Web Site
    https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2021/05/17/pers-m17.html
    https://www.wsws.org/asset/0de896bd-3a78-49d1-a6a7-c77c3aa9dfe9?rendition=image1280

    L’orientation du CDC est une décision politique, et non scientifique. Elle se veut un signal qui indique que toutes les mesures qui empiètent sur les intérêts des sociétés, qu’il s’agisse d’exigences de distanciation sociale ou de directives sanitaires renforcées, doivent être abandonnées. Les usines et les lieux de travail seront libres de regrouper les travailleurs en groupes, de ne jamais nettoyer les surfaces ou les salles de bain, et d’envoyer leurs employés dans des foules non masquées.

    En 24 heures, plusieurs des plus grands détaillants du pays, dont Walmart, Sam’s Club et Trader Joe’s, ont annoncé qu’ils n’appliqueraient plus l’obligation de porter un masque. Plus de 10 États, dont le Kansas et le Minnesota, ont assoupli les restrictions relatives aux masques en réponse aux nouvelles directives du CDC.

    L’annonce a été un choc pour les épidémiologistes. Après la publication des directives, le New York Times a publié un article intitulé « Des centaines d’épidémiologistes s’attendaient au port du masque en public pendant au moins un an ». Dans une enquête menée auprès d’épidémiologistes au cours du mois qui précédait l’annonce, le Times a constaté que « 80 pour cent d’entre eux ont déclaré qu’ils pensaient que les Américains devraient porter des masques dans les lieux publics intérieurs pendant au moins un an de plus. Cinq pour cent seulement ont déclaré que les gens n’auraient plus besoin de porter des masques à l’intérieur d’ici cet été ».

  • Bernie Sanders: The U.S. Must Stop Being an Apologist for the Netanyahu Government
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/opinion/bernie-sanders-israel-palestine-gaza.html

    In this moment of crisis, the United States should be urging an immediate cease-fire. We should also understand that, while Hamas firing rockets into Israeli communities is absolutely unacceptable, today’s conflict did not begin with those rockets.

    Palestinian families in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah have been living under the threat of eviction for many years, navigating a legal system designed to facilitate their forced displacement. And over the past weeks, extremist settlers have intensified their efforts to evict them.

    And, tragically, those evictions are just one part of a broader system of political and economic oppression. For years we have seen a deepening Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and a continuing blockade on Gaza that make life increasingly intolerable for Palestinians. In Gaza, which has about two million inhabitants, 70 percent of young people are unemployed and have little hope for the future.

  • A Misleading C.D.C. Number - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/briefing/outdoor-covid-transmission-cdc-number.html

    Saying that less than 10 percent of #Covid #transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving.

    En réalité moins de 1% et possiblement moins de 0.1% affirment les épidémiologistes interrogés par l’auteur de l’article.

  • Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/economy/seeing-the-real-faces-of-silicon-valley.html

    The workers of Silicon Valley rarely look like the men idealized in its lore. They are sometimes heavier, sometimes older, often female, often darker skinned. Many migrated from elsewhere. And most earn far less than Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook.

    This is a place of divides.

    As the valley’s tech companies have driven the American economy since the Great Recession, the region has remained one of the most unequal in the United States.

    During the depths of the pandemic, four in 10 families in the area with children could not be sure that they would have enough to eat on any given day, according to an analysis by the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. Just months later, Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, who recently added “Technoking” to his title, briefly became the world’s richest man. The median home price in Santa Clara County — home to Apple and Alphabet — is now $1.4 million, according to the California Association of Realtors.

    For those who have not been fortunate enough to make billionaire lists, for midlevel engineers and food truck workers and longtime residents, the valley has become increasingly inhospitable, testing their resilience and resolve.

    Here are 12 of them, who originally appeared in our book, “Seeing Silicon Valley,” from which this photo essay is excerpted.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • These Neanderthals Weren’t Cannibals, So Who Ate Them? Stone Age Hyenas. - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/world/europe/italy-neanderthal-fossils-guattari-cave.html

    The cave’s discovery in 1939 created an international buzz when it yielded what remains one of the best preserved Neanderthal skulls ever found. The skull had a large hole in the temple, and its fame may have been fueled by the thesis put forth by Alberto Carlo Blanc, the paleontologist who first studied it, that the Neanderthals had engaged in ritual cannibalism.

    In the latest excavations, led by a multidisciplinary team that has been working since October 2019, researchers found hundreds of animal bones with signs they had been gnawed on by hyenas — the Stone Age ancestors to today’s carnivores — who used the cave as a sort of pantry, said Mario Rolfo, who teaches prehistoric archaeology at the University of Rome at Tor Vergata.

    It appears that the hyenas also had a taste for Neanderthals, and one skull found at the site had a hole similar to the one found in the 1939 cranium. That find definitively put to rest Blanc’s theory of cannibalism and cult rituals.

    “Reality is more banal,” Professor Rolfo said, adding that “hyenas like munching on bones” and probably opened a cavity in the skull to get to the brain.

    It is unclear whether the Neanderthals were killed by the hyenas or the hyenas snacked on Neanderthals after they died from other causes.

  • 30 avril 2021, l’#OMS reconnaît la contamination par #aérosols (seulement dans la version anglaise pour l’instant)...
    https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-how-is-it-transmitted

    Current evidence suggests that the virus spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, typically within 1 metre (short-range). A person can be infected when aerosols or droplets containing the virus are inhaled or come directly into contact with the eyes, nose, or mouth.

    The virus can also spread in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings, where people tend to spend longer periods of time. This is because aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 metre (long-range).

    ... bien que sans tambour ni trompette
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airborne-transmission.html

    #sars-cov2 #transmission

  • Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-herd-immunity-vaccine.html

    Unnerving scenarios remain on the path to this long-term vision.

    Over time, if not enough people are protected, highly contagious #variants may develop that can break through vaccine protection, land people in the hospital and put them at risk of death.

    “That’s the nightmare scenario,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University.

    How frequent and how severe those breakthrough infections are have the potential to determine whether the United States can keep hospitalizations and deaths low or if the country will find itself in a “mad scramble” every couple of years, he said.

    #immunité #sars-cov2 #covid-19 #immunité_collective

  • Federal Judge Bans Tear Gas on Nonviolent Protesters in Columbus
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/us/columbus-police-tear-gas-ban.html?smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur

    Judge Marbley’s opinion begins with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — “Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights” — and his swift invocation of the rights of the press, protest and speech.

    “Unfortunately, some of the members of the Columbus Police Department had no regard for the rights secured by this bedrock principle of American democracy,” Judge Marbley wrote. “This case is the sad tale of police officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok.”

    Judge Marbley then traced policing back to the colonial-era “citizen watchmen,” which he said punished everything from claims of witchcraft to minor infractions like “extravagant boots.” He then explored the slave codes and patrol system of the antebellum South and the Black Codes that came after the Civil War. “The two codes were so similar, it is a wonder that the copy-and-paste functionality was only invented more recently,” the judge wrote.

    Rachel Moran, a professor at University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, called the opinion “remarkable” and “unusual” in its scope.

    “Historically, federal courts have been extremely reluctant to interfere with policing decisions and policies,” she said. The decision, she added, was “unusual not only because it restricts the Police Department’s options for using force on protesters, but because it thoroughly sets out this country’s troubling history of police brutality and unauthorized uses of force as a backdrop for this order.”

    A group of protesters filed the lawsuit in July, accusing the Columbus Police Department of using excessive force at protests the month before. That lawsuit, which seeks damages from the city and a permanent injunction on the police tactics, may not conclude for two years, according to Fred Gittes, one of the lawyers representing the protesters.

    […]

    The opinion bars the police from using a wide array of tactics against nonviolent protesters, including “tear gas, pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, wooden pellets, batons, body slams, pushing or pulling, or kettling.” Nonviolent protesters are defined in the opinion as people who are “chanting, verbally confronting police, sitting, holding their hands up when approaching police, occupying streets or sidewalks, and/or passively resisting police orders.”