The Bakersfield Californian

Floods, landslides kill 28 people in southern India

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW DELHI — Officials predicted more rain as the death toll from floods and landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerala rose to 28 on Monday.

Since the ferocious downpours began last week, swollen rivers have decimated bridges, and vehicles and homes have been swept away. Several dams were nearing full capacity.

K.J. Ramesh, one of India’s top meteorologists and the former chief of the weather agency, said the increased rainfall was linked to climate change and warmer oceans.

At least 23 people died in Kottayam and Idukki districts, among the worst hit. More than 9,000 people have taken shelter in over 200 camps across the state, officials said.

More COVID-19 booster shots may be on the way — but when it’s your turn, you’ll get an extra dose of the original vaccine, not one updated to better match the extra-contagious delta variant.

And that has some experts wondering if the booster campaign is a bit of a missed opportunity to target delta and its likely descendants.

“Don’t we want to match the new strains that are most likely to circulate as closely as possible?” Dr. Cody Meissner of Tufts Medical Center, an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, challenged Pfizer scientists recently.

“I don’t quite understand why this is not delta because that’s what we’re facing right now,” fellow adviser Dr. Patrick Moore of the University of Pittsburgh said last week as government experts debated whether it’s time for Moderna boosters. He wondered if such a switch would be particularly useful to block mild infection.

The simple answer: The FDA last month OK’d extra doses of Pfizer’s original recipe after studies showed it still works well enough against delta — and those doses could be rolled out right away. Now the FDA is weighing evidence for boosters of the original Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

But Pfizer and Moderna are hedging their bets. They’re already testing experimental doses customized to delta and another variant, learning how to rapidly tweak the formula in case a change eventually is needed — for today’s mutants or a brand new one. The tougher question for regulators is how they’d decide if and when to ever order such a switch.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said it is launching a broad strategy to regulate toxic industrial compounds associated with serious health conditions that are used in products ranging from cookware to carpets and firefighting foams.

Michael Regan, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said his agency is taking a series of actions to limit pollution from a cluster of long-lasting chemicals known as PFAS that are increasingly turning up in public drinking water systems, private wells and even food.

The Defense Department said it is moving to assess and clean up PFAS-contaminated sites throughout the country, while the Food and Drug Administration will expand testing of the food supply to estimate Americans’ exposure to PFAS from food. And the Agriculture Department will boost efforts to prevent and address PFAS contamination in food.

The plan is intended to restrict PFAS from being released into the environment, accelerate cleanup of PFAS-contaminated sites such as military bases and increase investments in research to learn more about where PFAS are found and how their spread can be prevented.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — As jury selection got slowly underway in the trial of three white men charged with fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery as he was running in their Georgia neighborhood, potential jurors said they came in with negative feelings about the case and worried about the personal consequences of serving on the jury.

The slaying of the 25-year-old Black man sparked a national outcry fueled by graphic video of the shooting leaked online more than two months after Arbery was killed. Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael

and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan are charged with murder and other crimes in Arbery’s death on Feb. 23, 2020, just outside the port city of Brunswick.

With hundreds called, jury selection could last two weeks or more. Arbery’s father said he was praying for an impartial panel and a fair trial, saying Black crime victims too often have been denied justice.

TOKYO — Almost overnight, Japan has become a stunning, and somewhat mysterious, coronavirus success story. Daily new COVID-19 cases have plum

meted from a mid-August peak of nearly 6,000 in Tokyo, with caseloads in the densely populated capital now routinely below 100, an 11-month low.

The bars are packed, the trains are crowded, and the mood is celebratory, despite a general bafflement over what, exactly, is behind the sharp drop.

Japan, unlike other places in Europe and Asia, has never had anything close to a lockdown.

Some possible factors in Japan’s success include a belated but remarkably rapid vaccination campaign, an emptying out of many nightlife areas as fears spread during the recent surge in cases, a widespread practice, well before the pandemic, of wearing masks and bad weather in late August that kept people home.

ROME — Italy’s center-left forces won big in Rome, Turin and several other mayoral runoffs, dealing embarrassing defeats to the anti-migrant and far-right parties that are hoping to capture Italy’s premiership in the next national election.

Roberto Gualtieri from Italy’s Democratic Party trounced a challenger who had been selected by the Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist roots, to win Rome’s City Hall, taking some 60 percent of the vote, with nearly all the ballots counted.

Democratic Party leader Enrico Letta predicted that the center-left wins over right-wing alliances will dampen any push by conservative forces, which include the anti-migrant League party, to hold an early national election. That enhances Premier Mario Draghi’s prospects of continuing in office until Parliament’s term expires in 2023.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopian military airstrikes hit the capital of the country’s Tigray region and killed at least three people, witnesses said, returning the war abruptly to the city of Mekele after several months of peace.

The airstrikes came days after a new military offensive was launched against the Tigray forces who have been fighting Ethiopian and allied forces for nearly a year.

HELSINKI — Norwegian police say the Danish man suspected of killing five people and injuring three others in an attack last week also used “stabbing weapons” along with a bow and arrow to kill his victims.

Police inspector Per Thomas Omholt said it was likely the 37-yearold suspect, identified as Espen Andersen Braathen, first used arrows to wound his victims and then killed them by stabbing them with an unspecified weapon or weapons in Wednesday’s attack in Kongsberg, southwest of the capital, Oslo.

NATION & WORLD

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2021-10-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

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