In the 1600s, the Dutch named the land now known as New Zealand for Zeeland, a western province of the Netherlands. The summer rainy season usually brings so much water that Sichuan sends much of its hydropower to cities and provinces as far away as Shanghai.īut an almost complete failure of summer rains this year has meant that many dams now cannot generate enough electricity even for Sichuan’s own needs, forcing factories there to close for up to a week at a time and triggering rolling blackouts in some commercial and residential districts.įallout: Sichuan’s three main rivers feed the Yangtze River, so hydropower cutbacks have also started to affect downstream areas, like the city of Chongqing and adjacent Hubei Province.ĭetails: The central bank cut the rate by 0.15 percentage points yesterday, to 4.3 percent, and said that it was reducing a one-year interest rate by 0.05 percentage points, to 3.65 percent. Sichuan Province, for instance, normally generates more than three-quarters of its electricity from huge dams. The rate cut comes as record-high temperatures and a severe drought have crippled hydropower and prompted the shutdown of many factories in west-central China, an industrial base. The country plans to fully reopen all of its roughly 47,000 schools by November. They feared that schoolchildren could bring the virus to homes crowded with multiple generations of family members, potentially overtaxing a creaky health care system.ĭetails: Schools in the Philippines have long suffered from teacher shortages, and only some schools are currently in-person five days a week. Pandemic: As other countries sent students back to classrooms, government officials and parents hesitated. Even though the country offered online instruction during the pandemic, many students lacked access to computers or the internet. Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser who was catapulted into the spotlight at the start of the pandemic, said he would leave government service by the end of the year.Ĭovid-19 may have only worsened divides. Moderna’s Lawsuits: The vaccine manufacturer sued Pfizer and BioNTech, claiming that its rivals’ Covid-19 shot copied groundbreaking technology that Moderna had developed before the pandemic.Paxlovid Study: The Covid-19 medication Paxlovid reduced hospitalizations and deaths in older patients, but made no difference for patients under 65, new research from Israel found.Boosters: The Food and Drug Administration authorized updated coronavirus booster shots targeting Omicron subvariants, setting up millions of Americans to receive new doses as soon as next week.

Fallout 4 send companion home