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An effort by Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to use shipping containers to close a 1,000-foot gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall near Yuma, Arizona, suffered a setback when two stacked containers toppled over. 

Claudia Ramos, a correspondent for the digital platform of Univision Noticias in Arizona, posted on her Twitter feed a photo she took Monday morning of the containers on their side. She said they fell on the U.S. side of the border. 

No witnesses have come forward to say what happened Sunday night. 

Ramos said contractors in the area told her that they believed the containers may have been toppled by strong monsoon winds. 

But C.J. Karamargin, a Ducey spokesman, said that he doubted that hypothesis, adding that even though the containers are empty they still weigh thousands of pounds. 

“It’s unlikely this was a weather event,” said Karamargin, suggesting that someone opposed to the wall was to blame. 

The stacked pair of containers were righted by early Monday morning. 

“Clearly we struck a nerve. They don’t like what we are doing, and they don’t want to keep the border open,” the spokesman said. 

Officials with Ducey’s office say they were acting to stop migrants after repeated, unfulfilled promises from the Biden administration to close the gap. 

Federal officials have not commented on the state’s actions, which come without explicit permission on federal land. State contractors began moving and stacking 18.2-meter-long (60-foot-long), 2.7-meter-tall (9-foot-tall) shipping containers early Friday. Two other 305-meter (1,000-foot) gaps also will be closed off. The containers will be topped with 1.2 meters (4 feet) of razor wire. 

Karamargin said that the Border Patrol informed the governor’s office around midnight that the containers were toppled. 

“Those weren’t secured yet,” he said. “This happened before securing the containers to the ground. They will be bolted later and will be immovable.” 
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Rising teenager Emma Raducanu came out on the winning side of a generational clash against tennis icon Serena Williams with a 6-4 6-0 win in their first-round meeting at the Cincinnati Open on Tuesday. 

After a sluggish start, the 23-time Grand Slam champion finally gave the supportive sold-out crowd something to cheer about when she crushed back-to-back aces to cut Raducanu’s lead to 4-3. 

But the English reigning U.S. Open champion fired an ace of her own to snag the first set and followed that up with a break of serve to open the second. 

Raducanu rolled from there, smacking an unreturnable serve on match point to end their first career meeting. 

“I think we all just need to honor Serena and her amazing career,” Raducanu said in an on-court interview. 

“I’m so grateful for the experience of getting to play her and for our careers to have crossed over. Everything she has achieved is so inspirational, and it was a true honor to get to share the court with her.” 

Williams, 40, was world number one and had already won four major titles when Raducanu was born in November 2002. 

Williams won her last major in 2017 while pregnant with her daughter Olympia, who was in attendance. 

With the loss, Williams has just one professional tournament remaining before she drops the curtain on her historic career – the U.S. Open, which begins August 29. 

Osaka out 

Earlier in the day, Naomi Osaka’s U.S. Open preparations suffered another setback as the former world number one was swept aside 6-4 7-5 by China’s Zhang Shuai. 

It was only Osaka’s third tournament back from an Achilles injury, and it has been a stuttering return to action for the twice U.S. Open champion, who also exited in the opening round in Toronto last week, retiring with lower back pain. 

For Zhang, doubles champion in Cincinnati last year, it was her first singles win at the event since 2014. 

“Naomi, she is amazing, but I don’t know she is maybe not really feeling good today,” said Zhang. “But for sure today – not her best today.” 

Gauff hurt, Venus Williams falls 

American teenager Coco Gauff rolled her left ankle late in the first set in her match against qualifier Marie Bouzkova, and she eventually retired from the match while trailing 7-5 1-0. 

The newly crowned world number one in doubles will look to recover ahead of the U.S. Open where she will hope to compete for a first Grand Slam title. 

This year’s major at Flushing Meadows starts August 29. 

Venus Williams was defeated by 14th seed Karolina Pliskova. 

Venus Williams was bidding for her first win over a top-20 ranked opponent since overcoming Kiki Bertens in Cincinnati three years ago. 

 
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With inflation raging near its highest level in four decades, President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed into law his landmark Inflation Reduction Act. Its title raises a tantalizing question: Will the measure actually tame the price spikes that have inflicted hardships on American households? 

Economic analyses of the proposal suggest that the likely answer is no — not anytime soon, anyway. 

The legislation, which was approved by Congress last week, won’t directly address some of the main drivers of surging prices — from gas and food to rents and restaurant meals. 

Still, the law could save money for some Americans by lessening the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly, extending health insurance subsidies and reducing energy prices. It would also modestly cut the government’s budget deficit, which might slightly lower inflation by the end of this decade. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded this month that the changes would have a “negligible” impact on inflation this year and next. And the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model concluded that over the next decade, “the impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.” 

Such forecasts also undercut the arguments that some Republicans, such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, have made that the bill would “cause inflation,” as McCarthy said in a speech on the House floor. 

Biden himself, in speaking of the legislation’s effect on inflation, has referred to potentially lower prices in individual categories rather than to lower inflation as a whole. The president said the bill would “bring down the cost of prescription drugs, health insurance premiums and energy costs.” 

At the same time, the White House has trumpeted a letter signed by more than 120 economists, including several Nobel Prize winners and former Treasury secretaries, that asserts that the law’s reduction in the government’s budget deficit — by an estimated $300 billion over the next decade, according to the CBO — would put “downward pressure on inflation.” 

In theory, lower deficits can reduce inflation. That’s because reduced government spending or higher taxes, both of which help shrink the deficit, drive down demand in the economy, thereby easing pressure on companies to raise prices. 

Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who served as a top economic adviser in the Obama administration, wrote in an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal: “Deficit reduction is almost always inflation-reducing.” 

Yet Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush and later a director of the CBO, noted that the lower deficits won’t kick in until five years from now and won’t be very large over the next decade considering the size of the economy. 

“$30 billion a year in a $21 trillion economy isn’t going to move the needle,” Holtz-Eakin said, referring to the estimated amount of deficit reduction spread over 10 years. 

He also noted that Congress has recently passed other legislation to subsidize semiconductor production in the U.S. and expand veterans’ health care and said that those laws will spend more than the Inflation Reduction Act will save. 

In addition, Kent Smetters, director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, said the law’s health care subsidies could send inflation higher. The legislation would spend $70 billion over a decade to extend tax credits to help 13 million Americans pay for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. 

Those subsidies would free up money for recipients to spend elsewhere, potentially increasing inflation, although Smetters said the effect would likely be very small. 

Though the measure could have the benefit of increasing the savings of millions of households on pharmaceutical and energy costs, those items typically constitute relatively small portions of household budgets. Prescription drugs account for only 1% of the spending in the U.S. consumer price index; spending on electricity and natural gas makes up just 3.6%. 

Starting in 2025, the act will cap the amount Medicare recipients would pay for their prescription drugs at $2,000 a year. It will authorize Medicare to negotiate the cost of some high-priced pharmaceuticals — a long-sought goal that President Donald Trump had also floated. It would also limit Medicare recipients’ out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 a month. Insulin prescriptions averaged $54 in 2020, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

“This is a historic change,” said Leigh Purvis, director of health care costs at the AARP Public Policy Institute. “This is allowing Medicare to protect beneficiaries from high drug prices in a way that was not there before.” 

A study by Kaiser found that in 2019, 1.2 million Medicare recipients spent an average of $3,216 on drug prescriptions. Purvis said recipients who use the most expensive drugs can spend as much as $10,000 or $15,000 a year. 

The legislation authorizes Medicare to negotiate prices of 10 expensive pharmaceuticals, starting next year, though the results won’t take effect until 2026. Up to 60 drugs could be subject to negotiation by 2029. 

Holtz-Eakin argued that while the provision may lower the cost of some Medicare drugs, it would discourage the development of new drugs or reduce new venture capital investment in start-up pharmaceutical companies. 

The Inflation Reduction Act’s energy provisions could also create savings, though the amounts are likely to be much smaller. 

The bill will provide a $7,500 tax credit for new purchases of electric vehicles, though most EVs won’t qualify because the legislation requires them to include batteries with U.S. materials. 

And the legislation also significantly expands a tax credit for homeowners who invest in energy-efficient equipment, from a one-time $500 credit to $1,200 that a homeowner could claim each year. Vincent Barnes, senior vice president for policy at the Alliance to Save Energy, said this would allow homeowners to make new energy-efficient investments over several years. 

But for all Americans, including those who aren’t homeowners, the impact will likely be limited. The Rhodium Group estimates that by 2030, the bill’s provisions will save households an average of up to $112 a year as gas and electricity becomes cheaper as more Americans drive EVs and houses become more energy efficient. 

 
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New York health officials announced in July that an unvaccinated adult man from Rockland County had been diagnosed with polio—the first case of the life-threatening disease in the United States since 2013. The virus that causes polio was later detected in New York City wastewater, and city and state health officials now say the virus is probably circulating in the city.

The virus identified in New York is a vaccine-derived poliovirus. Wild polioviruses were eliminated from most of the world and now circulate only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But vaccine-derived viruses, which emerge when the weakened viruses in the oral polio vaccine mutate and spread in unvaccinated populations, still occasionally cause outbreaks.

VOA spoke with three polio experts about vaccine-derived polioviruses and the oral polio vaccine. Here’s what you need to know.

What are vaccine-derived polioviruses?

Vaccine-derived polioviruses are related to the active viruses in the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

OPV works by infecting cells in the gut with weakened polioviruses, allowing the body to safely develop immunity to polio without the risk of paralysis posed by the real disease.

“[The weakened viruses] would still infect you. They would still replicate in your gut. You will develop a lifelong immunity, but you will not get paralyzed,” said virologist Konstantin Chumakov, a Global Virus Network Center of Excellence director and an adjunct professor at The George Washington University.

“But the [vaccine-derived] virus will still be able to transmit [from person to person],” Chumakov added. “It was considered a big advantage of the vaccine, because basically, you can immunize several kids with one dose.”

This transmission becomes problematic in communities with low vaccination rates. If the virus can spread for a long time, it has many chances to mutate and revert to a dangerous paralytic form.

Why is the oral polio vaccine (OPV) used?

Although OPV is linked to vaccine-derived polioviruses, it also has a number of advantages over the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) — the injected vaccine — which is still used in most of the world.

People who receive OPV cannot be “silent spreaders.” After developing an immune response to the vaccine, they are immune to polio for life. Polioviruses cannot replicate in their gut and infect others.

In contrast, IPV protects against paralysis, but does not prevent the virus from replicating in the gut. People who receive IPV can spread polio, even though they won’t get sick from it.

“In populations where you want to stop the spread, that ‘gut immunity’ that OPV confers is essential,” said Captain Derek Ehrhardt, a polio incident manager at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “If you have just IPV, it’s possible that the child will be protected, but they could still spread [paralytic polio] to their neighbor, their brother, their sister, whomever.”

This made OPV instrumental in the eradication of wild polio from most of the world, including in countries such as the United States that now use IPV exclusively.

OPV also has other advantages.

“We work with oral polio vaccine because it is low cost,” said Richter Razafindratsimandresy, head of the National Reference Laboratory for Poliomyelitis at the Institut Pasteur de Madagascar. “And it is easy to administer, because it is oral — they don’t need to inject the children, and it is not a problem for the parents to accept.”

If OPV prevents silent spread, why are the U.S. and other nations using only IPV?

After the United States and other wealthy countries eliminated wild polio, they stopped using OPV because it carries the risk of creating vaccine-derived polioviruses in undervaccinated communities, and because it has a slight risk of causing paralysis. This happens between roughly two and four times per million births, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Because there are so few cases in the U.S., thanks to the very successful campaigns with OPV, that risk is now seen as unacceptable.

The U.S. and other wealthy countries have robust health care systems and can effectively acquire the more expensive IPV and get it into every arm. So, using IPV means the well-vaccinated populations in these countries are well-protected from paralysis from polio, despite being less protected against catching and spreading polioviruses.

How do vaccine-derived poliovirus cause outbreaks?

Countries with weak vaccination systems are more likely to experience outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus. That’s happened several times in Madagascar, Razafindratsimandresy said.

“[The virus] is not from another country. Because in Madagascar, we have … immunization coverage [that] is very, very low,” he said.

Imported vaccine-derived polioviruses can also cause outbreaks in countries with high vaccination rates, especially if IPV is used instead of OPV.

“Basically, it can transmit from person to person to person without causing any symptoms, because everybody is protected from paralysis,” said Chumakov. “But at some point, the virus can hit an unvaccinated person or a person with immune deficiency, and then it can paralyze this person. And this is exactly what happened in New York.”

Is OPV safe?

“Our vaccines are safe and effective,” said Ehrhardt. “We need to vaccinate our under- and unimmunized children to stop the ongoing spread of these viruses.”

Chumakov said that developing better versions of OPV could reduce risks while also keeping the gut immunity provided by OPV, which he said is important for preventing silent spread. He was previously involved in a GPEI effort to develop a safer oral vaccine for Type 2 polioviruses. Clinical trial data suggest the novel OPV is less likely to revert to a dangerous form.

While the future may bring improved vaccines, vaccinating as many children as possible with existing OPV remains a priority in much of the world.

According to the CDC, global polio vaccination coverage sunk to 81% in 2021, the lowest in a decade. This was largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but not all countries have enough resources for vaccination campaigns even in normal times.

Razafindratsimandresy said that even though Madagascar aims to vaccinate all children with OPV, the country doesn’t have enough personnel and often runs out of vaccine.

“These immunity gaps must be closed for us to stop these diseases,” Ehrhardt said. “If you have polio anywhere, then children everywhere are still at risk.”

 
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