The officer who Cassandra Quinto-Collins says kneeled on her son’s neck for over four minutes assured her it was standard protocol for sedating a person experiencing a mental breakdown. “I was there watching it the whole time,” Quinto-Collins told The Associated Press. “I just trusted that they knew what they were doing.”  Angelo Quinto’s sister had called 911 for help calming him down during an episode of paranoia on Dec. 23. His family says Quinto did not resist the Antioch, California, officers — one who pushed his knee on the back of his neck, and another who restrained his legs — and the only noise he made was when he twice cried out, “Please don’t kill me.”  The officers replied, “We’re not going to kill you,” the family said. Police deny putting pressure on his neck. Three days later, the 30-year-old Navy veteran and Filipino immigrant died at a hospital.  It is the latest stark example …

The death toll from the natural disasters spawned by torrential rains across eastern Indonesia has risen to 55, according to new figures issued Monday by the country’s disaster relief agency. Landslides wiped out dozens of homes in Lamenele village on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara province shortly after midnight Saturday, with flash flooding striking other parts of the province, including nearby Lembata island. A spokesperson for the Natural Disaster Mitigation Agency said at least 42 people are missing, with hundreds of people forced to evacuate their homes.People carry a man injured during a flood in Ile Ape, on Lembata Island, East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia, April 4, 2021.The rains, landslides and floods have washed away bridges, downed trees and left roads thick with mud, complicating search and rescue efforts.  In neighboring East Timor, 21 people have died after the heavy rains triggered flash flooding and landslides on the outskirts of the capital, Dili, according to officials who spoke …

NASA’s Ingenuity mini-helicopter has been dropped on the surface of Mars in preparation for its first flight, the U.S. space agency said.The ultra-light aircraft had been fixed to the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18.”Mars Helicopter touchdown confirmed!” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted Saturday.”Its 293 million mile (471 million kilometer) journey aboard @NASAPersevere ended with the final drop of 4 inches (10 centimeter) from the rover’s belly to the surface of Mars today. Next milestone? Survive the night.”Swing low, sweet helicopter…@NASAPersevere is slowly and carefully deploying the #MarsHelicopter, Ingenuity. The tech demo is currently unfolding from its stowed position and readying to safely touch down on the Martian surface. See upcoming milestones: https://t.co/TNCdXWcKWEpic.twitter.com/3AyaiHOH2k — NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) March 30, 2021A photograph accompanying the tweet showed Perseverance had driven clear of the helicopter and its “airfield” after dropping to the surface.Ingenuity had …

Nine-year-old Nadja Pivoff from Boston, Massachusetts, has been drawing since she could hold a pencil.  It’s been especially important to her during the COVID lockdown, as Genia Dulot reports from Boston. Camera: Genia Dulot …

North Atlantic right whales gave birth over the winter in greater numbers than scientists have seen since 2015, an encouraging sign for researchers who became alarmed three years ago when the critically endangered species produced no known offspring at all.Survey teams spotted 17 newborn right whale calves swimming with their mothers offshore between Florida and North Carolina from December through March. One of those calves soon died after being hit by a boat, a reminder of the high death rate for right whales that experts fear is outpacing births.The overall calf count equals the combined total for the previous three years. That includes the dismal 2018 calving season, when scientists saw zero right whale births for the first time in three decades. Still, researchers say greater numbers are needed in the coming years for North Atlantic right whales to rebound from an estimated population that’s dwindled to about 360.”What we …

While it may not yet be planting season outside, inside some New Jersey shipping containers, it’s always spring. Vladimir Lenski has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.Producer: Marcus Harton.Cameras: Max Avloshenko, Dmitrii Vershinin.    …

A retired Iraqi judge who presided over the trial of Iraq’s late dictator Saddam Hussein has died after battling COVID-19, the country’s top judicial body said Friday.According to Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, 52, died in a hospital in Baghdad where he was being treated for complications from the coronavirus.Oreibi graduated from the Faculty of Law at Baghdad university in 1992 and was appointed a judge in 2000 by a presidential decree.He shot to fame after he was named an investigative judge in the trial of Saddam and his regime in August 2004. He later took over as the lead judge in Saddam’s trial for genocide, which also included Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and five other defendants on charges related to their roles in the bloody 1987-88 crackdown against Kurdish rebels, known as the Anfal campaign.The prosecution alleged that around 180,000 people …

The Biden administration, which had set a goal of 100 million shots in President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office, hit another milestone Friday. The U.S. became the first nation to vaccinate 100 million people.However, cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, remain on the rise in some regions of the United States.”I plead with you, don’t give back the progress we’ve all fought so hard to achieve,” Biden said Friday. “We need every American to buckle down and keep their guard up in this homestretch.”Earlier this week, Biden also said with the increased push to roll out the vaccine “at least 90% of all adults in this country will be eligible to be vaccinated by April the 19th, just three weeks from now, because we have the vaccines. For the vast, vast majority of adults, you won’t have to wait until May 1.”However, during a White …

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that fully vaccinated people can safely travel within the United States without getting tested before or after their journeys.CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced the new guidelines during the White House COVID-19 response team briefing and was quick to add the CDC still does not recommend nonessential travel for people who are not fully vaccinated.FILE – Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 18, 2021.The CDC also recommends fully vaccinated travelers continue to wear masks, maintain 2 meters of social distance and wash their hands regularly.Walensky was asked if the new guidelines suggest she does not still feel the sense of “impending doom” she described earlier this week regarding the pandemic.The CDC director said the new travel guidelines are only for fully vaccinated people. And, she said, the …

A handful of coins unearthed from a pick-your-own-fruit orchard in rural Rhode Island and other random corners of New England may help solve one of the planet’s oldest cold cases.The villain in this tale: a murderous English pirate who became the world’s most-wanted criminal after plundering a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims home to India from Mecca, then eluded capture by posing as a slave trader.”It’s a new history of a nearly perfect crime,” said Jim Bailey, an amateur historian and metal detectorist who found the first intact 17th-century Arabian coin in a meadow in Middletown.That ancient pocket change — among the oldest ever found in North America — could explain how pirate Capt. Henry Every vanished into the wind.On Sept. 7, 1695, the pirate ship Fancy, commanded by Every, ambushed and captured the Ganj-i-Sawai, a royal vessel owned by Indian emperor Aurangzeb, then one of the world’s most powerful men. …

Japanese Nobel laureate Isamu Akasaki, who won the physics prize for pioneering energy-efficient LED lighting — a weapon against global warming and poverty — has died aged 92, his university said Friday.   Akasaki won the 2014 prize with two other scientists, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura. Together they developed the blue light-emitting diode, described as a “revolutionary” invention by the Nobel jury.   He died of pneumonia on Thursday morning at a hospital in the city of Nagoya, according to a statement on the website of Meijo University, where Akasaki had been a professor.   LED lamps last for tens of thousands of hours and use just a fraction of energy compared with the incandescent lightbulb pioneered by Thomas Edison in the 19th century.   Red and green diodes had been around for a long time, but devising a blue LED was the holy grail, as all three colors …

After spending much of the past year in lockdown, Tel Aviv makeup artist Artyom Kavnatsky was ready to get back to work. But when he showed up for a recent photo shoot, his employer turned him away. The reason? He had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus.“He didn’t take me because I didn’t get vaccinated,” Kavnatsky said. “It’s discrimination, and it’s not all right.”The breakneck pace of Israel’s vaccination drive has made it one of the few countries able to return to much of its pre-pandemic routine. Bars and businesses, hotels and health clubs have all sprung back to life in Israel, where some 80% of the adult population is fully vaccinated and new infections and COVID-19 deaths have plummeted.While Israel provides a glimpse of what may be possible with high immunization rates, it also offers insight into the problems that lie ahead: Workplaces and schools are now grappling with …

India’s health ministry Friday reported 81,466 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period. The new tally is the South Asian country’s highest daily count in six months. The western state of Maharashtra has more than half of the new cases with 43,183.India has 12.3 million COVID infections. Only the U.S and Brazil have more cases, with 30.5 million and 12.8 million respectively, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Hopkins reports there are more than 129.6 million global infections.In Brazil’s largest city, gravediggers are exhuming bodies from old graves to make way for the latest victims of the coronavirus. Gravediggers in hazmat suits are working diligently in Sao Paulo’s Vila Nova Cachoeirinha cemetery to accommodate the growing number of bodies.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that vaccine manufacturer Moderna will be allowed to place 15 doses of its COVID vaccine in the same size vial that the …

Percentagewise, Lebanon is home to the largest Christian population in the Middle East. As the country struggles in the face of multiple deep crises with no sign of respite, Easter this year offers little to celebrate. Jacob Russell has this report from Beirut. Camera: Jacob Russell, Agency Archive        Producer: Jason Godman …

The coronavirus pandemic has increased hunger and food insecurity in Zimbabwe, which was already struggling with a poor economy before the pandemic began, according to a government report released this week. The World Food Program says the problem is especially acute for unemployed urban dwellers. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare.  Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe …

SpaceX had another rough day but still names the members of its all-civilian crew. Plus, a new study examines the effects of long-term space travel on the human body. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has The Week in Space.Producer: Arash Arabasadi.    …

A California community that has been a bellwether of the coronavirus pandemic’s rampage across the United States warned on Thursday that the number of cases of more contagious COVID-19 variants is increasing to worrisome levels.”The region’s progress in curbing the pandemic remains precarious,” the health department in Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, said.”County residents are therefore urged to avoid travel, quarantine if travelling, and consistently use face coverings.”The situation in Santa Clara, which was home to an early surge of coronavirus in California last year and the nation’s first death from COVID-19, offers a window into the pandemic’s progress across the wider United States.Several states, including Florida and Michigan, are struggling to contain a resurgence of the virus linked to new highly contagious variants.The seven-day daily average of cases across the United States has been increasing continuously since March 19, a Reuters analysis shows. Over the past 13 …

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, Thursday stressed the need for Germany to stock up on COVID-19 vaccine for possible repeat shots next year, and said the nation should do so with or without the rest of the European Union.Spahn made the remarks during a Berlin virtual news briefing on the countries COVID-19 vaccination program and to mark the opening of BioNTech’s plant in Marburg, Germany. He said the new plant provides Germany with an opportunity to plan for the possible need for additional doses of vaccine. Germany’s Merkel Says Europe Needs More Vaccine Independence Chancellor tells German lawmakers Europe must have enough COVID-19 vaccine for Europeans Spahn said at this point no one has been vaccinated for longer than a few months and no one knows how long protection will last, and there may be a need for third and fourth shots next year. He said Germany would be obtaining those …

The World Health Organization says Europe’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts are “unacceptably slow” in the face of a new surge of the virus and new, more contagious variants.  Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO’s European director, issued a statement Thursday urging the continent’s leaders to “speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines, and using every single vial we have in stock, now.”The number of new infections across Europe had fallen below 1 million just five weeks ago, but the global health agency says those numbers have since surged to 1.6 million new cases, with nearly 24,000 deaths. Dr. Kluge said barely 10% of people across Europe have received at least one dose of a vaccine, with just 4% fully vaccinated.EU Tightens Vaccine Exports to Ensure Supply for EuropeOfficials say more doses needed as pandemic worsens in EUEurope’s vaccination efforts have been hobbled by the troubled rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. France, Germany and …

A man in Africa who developed Ebola despite receiving a vaccine recovered but suffered a relapse nearly six months later that led to 91 new cases before he died. The report adds to evidence that the deadly virus can lurk in the body long after symptoms end, and that survivors need monitoring for their own welfare and to prevent spread.Relapses like this one from the 2018-20 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo are thought to be rare. This is the first one clearly shown to have spawned a large cluster of new cases. The New England Journal of Medicine published details on Wednesday.Earlier this month, scientists said a separate outbreak that’s going on now in Guinea seems related to one in West Africa that ended five years ago. A survivor may have silently harbored the virus for years before spreading it.”The most important message is, someone can get the …