Public Notices

CDC extends transportation mask mandate until May 3

Travelers will need to continue to wear protective face masks at airports, on planes, trains, buses and transit hubs, as the CDC is extending the mask requirement for travelers.
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration is extending its face mask requirement for public transit for another 15 days. That means travelers will still need to mask up in airports, planes, buses, trains and at transit hubs until May 3.

The mask travel requirement had been set to expire this coming Monday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is keeping in place its mask order «in order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care system capacity,» according to an agency spokesperson.
The spokesperson also confirmed that the Transportation Security Administration, which handles enforcement of the order, is extending its security directive and emergency amendment for another 15 days.

The decision was made in response to the increasing spread of the omicron subvariant in the U.S. and an increase in the 7-day moving average of cases, which have risen by around 25% over the last two weeks nationally. Certain states are seeing much larger increases in new cases.

The CDC is following the science with this latest decision, says James Hodge, who directs the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University.
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«I believe that a two-week period is just enough to say we’re watching very carefully,» he says. «If we pull this mask mandate, we will have extended numbers of infections — that’s not responsible and that’s counter to the public’s health.«

However, there has been growing pressure on the Biden administration to lift the mask rule.
In a letter to Biden last month, the industry group Airlines for America argued that it was no longer necessary to keep the order in place. Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has also recently announced he’s leading a multi-state lawsuit against the requirement to wear masks on public transit.

While there are many supporters of the mask requirement, some infectious disease experts say it’s time for the U.S. to lift the mandate because cases are much lower than they have been in a long time.

In fact, the CDC’s own metrics show that about 95% of the country is currently designated as having «low» community levels of COVID-19, says Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF.

«It’s really not consistent to have a mask mandate on a plane or a bus versus the whole community,» says Gandhi.

She notes that activities like indoor dining tend to be more risky than flying on planes, which have very good ventilation. «So I think the inconsistency can be perceived as problematic.»
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Public Notices

Japan just found 7,000 islands it didn’t know it had

Japan has recounted its islands – and discovered it has 7,000 more than it previously thought.

Digital mapping by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) recently found there to be 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the figure of 6,852 that has been in official use since a 1987 report by Japan’s Coast Guard.

However, the GSI this week stressed that the new figure reflected advances in surveying technology and the detail of the maps used for the count – it did not change the overall area of land in Japan’s possession.

It said that while there is no international agreement on how to count islands, it had used the same size criterion as the previous survey 35 years ago.

That entailed counting all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters (330 feet).

The new number does not include any artificially reclaimed land.

The islands surrounding Japan have been at the heart of several territorial disputes.

Japan lays claim to the Russian-held southern Kuril islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories, a dispute that dates to the end of World War II, when Soviet troops seized them from Japan.

Japan also says it has a historical claim to the uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which it currently administers, but China has repeatedly challenged that claim.

Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea remain locked in a more than 70-year dispute over the sovereignty of a group of islets known as Dokdo by Seoul and Takeshima by Tokyo in the Sea of Japan, which Korea calls the East Sea.

Public Notices

Yosemite National Park to partially reopen after 3-week closure

Yosemite National Park will begin to reopen Saturday with limited access and hours, the US National Park Service has announced. The park remains closed today.

The popular park, nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains, was closed because of a series of damaging storms that have swept across the region in recent weeks.

Public Notices

Charles and Camilla

Britain’s King Charles III and his wife, Queen Camilla, have been married since 2005. They reportedly met at a polo match in 1970 and became friends when Charles was a prince.

When Charles joined the Royal Navy in 1971, Camilla married cavalry officer Andrew Parker Bowles.

Charles married Diana Spencer in 1981 but then admitted in 1994 that he had been having an extramarital affair with Camilla. Diana confirmed his infidelity and her own the following year.

Camilla got a divorce in 1995, and Charles and Diana divorced in 1996. Camilla all but vanished from public life at the time as public and media support swung behind Diana.

In 1999, Clarence House embarked on a program to reintroduce Camilla to the public with a carefully orchestrated first appearance with Charles outside the Ritz Hotel in London.

Six years later, their decades-long love story culminated in a wedding that had the consent of Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Camilla was confirmed as Charles’ official consort and future queen.