The U.S. Supreme Court for the third time on Thursday upheld the legality of the country’s chief health insurance law that provides millions of Americans with coverage to help pay their medical costs. The court, in a 7-to-2 decision, rejected a bid by 18 Republican-led states and the administration of former President Donald Trump to upend the 2010 Affordable Care Act. It was the signature legislative achievement of former President Barack Obama, Trump’s immediate predecessor, and is popularly known in the U.S. as Obamacare. The country’s highest court had also rejected legal challenges in 2012 and 2015, with all three decisions keeping in place such politically popular provisions as allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance policies until they turn 26 and ensuring coverage for patients with preexisting health conditions. As originally approved by Congress, the law required people to pay a penalty if they chose to not buy health insurance. But Congress in 2017 set that penalty — the so-called individual mandate — at zero. Republican state attorneys general, and the Trump administration, contended that removing the penalty provision made the whole law unconstitutional. The court did not consider the validity of the claims made against the law but ruled that the states opposed to it did not have legal standing to make the challenge. The majority decision was written by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, and joined by two of the three conservative justices appointed to the court by Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The third Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch, joined Justice Samuel Alito in dissent. President Joe Biden has said he will attempt to add on provisions to the Affordable Care Act, which was approved when he was Obama’s vice president. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra praised the Supreme Court decision, saying it was “a victory for all Americans, especially people with a pre-existing condition or anyone who was worried they could be forced to choose between their health and making ends meet. Health care should be a right — not a privilege — just for the healthy and wealthy.” 
…

The United Nations warns accelerating climate change is causing a dramatic intensification of global drought disasters, which are threatening agricultural production, the world’s safe water supply and other essential aspects of human development.   The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has launched a “Special Report on Drought 2021.”  U.N. researchers say drought has affected more people around the world in the past four decades than any other natural disaster.  The U.N. report warns the impact of the climate-driven drought emergency on the lives and livelihoods of people across the planet will worsen in the coming years.  The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Mami Mizutori says drought has directly affected 1.5 billion people so far this century.  She says most of the world will be living with water stress in the next few years as drought disasters grow.  She says drought is a major factor in land degradation and is responsible for declining yields of major crops.  She adds shifting rainfall patterns and variability pose a risk to the 70 percent of global agriculture that is rainfall-dependent.”A warming planet threatens to multiply the number of people without access to safe water and sanitation, thereby seriously increasing the spread of diseases, the risk of displacement and the potential even for conflict over scarce water resources,” Mizutori said. G-7 Ministers Discuss COVID Vaccines, Climate ChangeForeign ministers of world’s wealthiest democracies are meeting ahead of a summit of the group’s heads of state next month  While droughts always have been part of the human experience, the damage and costs resulting from them are seriously underestimated.  The report estimates the global economic costs arising from drought from 1998 to 2017 of at least $124 billion.The World Health Organization considers drought to be the most serious hazard to livestock and crops in nearly every part of the world.  It says water scarcity impacts 40 percent of the world’s population.  WHO projects as many as 700 million people are at risk of being displaced by 2030 because of drought.Leading co-author of the report Roger Pulwarty agrees the data contained within the report is grim but does not see an apocalyptic picture ahead.  “I do not think that there is in fact this issue surrounding the collapse of civilizations…We are not seeing truly an increase in the frequency of drought,” Pulwarty said. “But we are seeing that where they occur in the different regions in which they do exist, an increase in intensification when they occur and the rapid onset of drought.”   Over the millennia, Pulwarty notes people have found ways to adapt to risks from drought and other natural disasters.  He says lessons learned from over 20 cases around the world – including the Horn of Africa and the Euphrates and Tigris River system in Western Asia  – have been incorporated in the report. However, he says tried and true drought management measures taken in the past must be adapted to meet the challenges of today’s changing nature of drought risk.
…

Adding a crew to China’s new orbiting space station is another major advance for the burgeoning space power.  
Here’s a look at key developments:  What’s The Mission’s Purpose?  
The three-member crew is due to stay for three months in the station’s main living module, named Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony. They will be carrying out science experiments and maintenance, space walks and preparing the facility to receive two additional modules next year.
 
While China concedes it arrived late at the space station game, it says its facility is cutting-edge. It could also outlast the International Space Station, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespan.  
The launch Thursday  also revives China’s crewed space program after a five-year hiatus. With Thursday’s launch, China has now sent 14 astronauts into space since it first achieved the feat in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to do so.  Chinese astronauts, from left, Tang Hongbo, Nie Haisheng, and Liu Boming listen to a journalist’s question during a press conference at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center ahead of the Shenzhou-12 launch from Jiuquan in northwestern China.Why Is China Building The Station?  
As the Chinese economy was beginning to gather steam in the early 1990s, China formulated a plan for space exploration, which it has carried out at a steady, cautious cadence. While China has been barred from participation in the International Space Station, mainly over U.S. objections to the Chinese program’s secretive nature and close military connections, it’s likely the country would have built its own station anyway as it sought the status of a great space power.  
At a news conference Wednesday, China Manned Space Agency Assistant Director Ji Qiming told reporters at the Jiuquan launch center that the construction and operation of the space station will raise China’s technologies and “accumulate experience for all the people.”  
The space program is part of an overall drive to put China on track for even more ambitious missions and provide opportunities for cooperation with Russia and other, mostly European, countries along with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.  Politics And Security  
China’s space program has been a massive source of national pride, embodying its rise from poverty to the world’s second-largest economy over the past four decades. That has helped shore up the power of the Communist Party, whose authoritarian rule and strict limits on political activity have been tolerated by most Chinese as long as the economy is growing.
 
President and head of the party Xi Jinping has associated himself closely with that success, and Ji in his remarks cited Xi as setting the updated agenda for China’s rise to prominence in space. The first mission to the station also coincides with the celebration of the party centenary next month, an important political milestone.  
At the same time, China is modernizing its military at a rapid pace, raising concerns from neighbors, the U.S. and its NATO allies. While China espouses the peaceful development of space on the basis of equality and mutual respect, many recall that China in January 2007 sent a ballistic missile into space to destroy an inactive weather satellite, creating a debris field that continues to be a threat.  Who Are The Astronauts?
Mission commander Nie Haisheng, 56, and fellow astronauts Liu Boming, 54, and Tang Hongbo, 45, are former People’s Liberation Army Air Force pilots with graduate degrees and strong scientific backgrounds. All Chinese astronauts so far have been recruited from the military, underscoring its close ties to the space program.  
For Nie, it is his third trip to space, and for Liu, his second following a mission in 2008 that included China’s first space walk. Tang, who was recruited as one of the second batch of candidates in 2010, is flying in space for the first time.  
Future missions to the station will include women, according to officials, with stays extended to as long as six months and as many as six astronauts on the station at a time during crew changeovers. With China stepping up international cooperation and exchanges, it’s only a matter of time before foreign astronauts join the Chinese colleagues on missions to the station, Ji told reporters Wednesday.  What Else Is China Doing in Space?  
Along with its crewed space program, China has been moving boldly into exploration of the solar system with robotic space ships. It landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, which is conducting a range of surveys, looking particularly for frozen water that could provide clues as to whether the red plant once supported life.  
Earlier, China landed a probe and rover on the moon’s less explored far side, joining the Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, rover that was part of an earlier lunar exploration mission. China also brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s and officials say they want to send Chinese astronauts to the moon and eventually build a research base there.
…