Day: June 12, 2021

DALLAS – The airline industry’s recovery from the pandemic passed a milestone as more than 2 million people streamed through U.S. airport security checkpoints on Friday for the first time since early March 2020.

The Transportation Security Administration announced Saturday that 2.03 million travelers were screened at airport checkpoints on Friday. It was the first time in 15 months that the number of security screenings had surpassed 2 million in a single day.

Airline bookings have been picking up since around February, as more Americans were vaccinated against COVID-19 and – at least within the United States – travel restrictions such as mandatory quarantines began to ease.

The recovery is not complete. Friday’s crowds were only 74% of the volume compared with the same day in 2019. However, the 2.03 million figure was 1.5 million more travelers than on the same day last year, according to the TSA.

The 2 million mark represents quite a turnaround for the travel industry, which was hammered by the pandemic. There were days in April 2020 when fewer than 100,000 people boarded planes in the U.S., and the CEO of Boeing predicted that at least one major U.S. airline would go bankrupt.

Most of the airlines are still losing money. Southwest eked out a narrow first-quarter profit thanks to its share of $64 billion in federal pandemic relief to the industry, and others are expected to follow suit later this year.

The fear of large-scale furloughs has lifted. United Airlines, which lost $7 billion and threatened to furlough 13,000 workers last fall, told employees this week that their jobs were secure even when the federal money runs out in October.

That’s because airlines like United are upbeat about salvaging the peak summer vacation season. International travel and business trips are still deeply depressed, but domestic leisure travel is roughly back to pre-pandemic levels, airline officials say.

The airlines are recalling employees from voluntary leave and planning to hire small numbers of pilots and other workers later this year.

Hotel operators say they, too, have seen bookings improve as vaccination rates rise.

Mike Gathright, a senior vice president at Hilton, said the company’s hotels were 93% full over the Memorial Day weekend. He said the company was “very optimistic” about leisure travel over the summer and a pickup in business travel this fall.

“The vaccine distribution, the relaxed travel restrictions, consumer confidence — all of that is driving occupancy and improvement in our business,” Gathright said.

Prior to the pandemic, TSA screened on average 2 million to 2.5 million travelers per day. The lowest screening volume during the pandemic was on April 13, 2020, when just 87,534 individuals were screened at airport security checkpoints.

By the middle of last month, TSA’s average daily volume for screenings was approximately 65% of pre-pandemic levels.

As the summer travel season approaches, TSA is advising passengers to arrive at airports with sufficient time to accommodate increased screening time, as traveler volumes are expected to approach, and in some cases exceed, pre-pandemic levels at certain airports.

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – The national coordinator of the Biennial of Luanda – Pan-African Forum, Diakumpuna Sita José, this Saturday reaffirmed Angola’s commitment to contributing to the promotion of a culture of peace in Africa.

In an interview to ANGOP, regarding the event, which will take place from October 4th to 8th, in Luanda, the diplomat stated that the country is available to help achieve the African leaders’ objective of pacifying the continent.

He said that the aim of the Biennial is to strengthen the pan-African movement for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence.

“Our basis is the commitment to partnership, which must be assumed by multiple players , such as governments, civil society, artists, sportsmen, private sector agents, scientific communities, as well as non-governmental organizations, among others”, he said.

During the interview, published in full this Saturday, Sita José said that hosting the second edition of the Peace Biennial represents for Angola a strong commitment, in the search for lasting peace for Africa.

According to him, he hopes that the event will support the economic and social development of African peoples.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

KANO, Nigeria: Armed cattle thieves have killed 53 people in northwest Nigeria’s Zamfara state, police and local residents said yesterday, the latest violence to hit the restive region. Scores of motorcycle-riding gunmen called bandits by locals on Thursday through Friday, invaded the villages of Kadawa, Kwata, Maduba, Ganda Samu, Saulawa and Askawa in the Zurmi district, shooting residents, they said.

In an interview to ANGOP, regarding the event, which will take place from October 4th to 8th, in Luanda, the diplomat stated that the country is available to help achieve the African leaders’ objective of pacifying the continent.

He said that the aim of the Biennial is to strengthen the pan-African movement for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence.

“Our basis is the commitment to partnership, which must be assumed by multiple players , such as governments, civil society, artists, sportsmen, private sector agents, scientific communities, as well as non-governmental organizations, among others”, he said.

During the interview, published in full this Saturday, Sita José said that hosting the second edition of the Peace Biennial represents for Angola a strong commitment, in the search for lasting peace for Africa.

According to him, he hopes that the event will support the economic and social development of African peoples.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Since National Geographic celebrated World Oceans Day on 8 June 2021, they now recognise the Southern Ocean as the world’s fifth ocean with the other four being the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic oceans.

“The Southern Ocean has long been recognised by scientists, but because there was never agreement internationally, we never officially recognised it,” says National Geographic Society Geographer Alex Tait.

Since the late 1970s, the National Geographic Society has employed a geographer who oversees changes and tweaks to every map that’s published. Tait has been on the job since 2016. And so, throughout the years, geographers debated whether the waters around Antarctica had enough unique characteristics to deserve their own name, or whether they were simply extensions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.

“It’s sort of geographic nerdiness in some ways,” Tait says. He and the society’s map policy committee had been considering the change for years, watching as scientists and the press increasingly used the term Southern Ocean.

The change, Tait adds, aligns with the Society’s initiative to conserve the world’s oceans, focusing public awareness onto a region in particular need of a conservation spotlight.

“We’ve always labeled it, but we labeled it slightly differently [than other oceans],” Tait says. “This change was taking the last step and saying we want to recognise it because of its ecological separation.”

Southern Ocean defined by its current

While the other oceans are defined by the continents that fence them in, the Southern Ocean is defined by a current.

Scientists estimate that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) was established roughly 34 million years ago, when Antarctica separated from South America. That allowed for the unimpeded flow of water around the bottom of the Earth.

Extending from the surface to the ocean floor, the ACC transports more water than any other ocean current. It pulls in waters from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, helping drive a global circulation system known as the conveyor belt, which transports heat around the planet.

Source: Angola Press News Agency