SCIENCE sciencemag.orgPHOTO: JANINE COSTA/REUTERS
Online students face visa woes
IMMIGRATION | Hundreds of thousands
of foreign students attending U.S.
universities are in an uproar over a
proposed government policy that would
force them to leave the country if all their
fall courses are offered exclusively online.
Many foreign students are studying
science, including Ph.D. candidates
who have completed coursework but hope
to remain in the country to finish
dissertations. Hybrid classes with online
and in-person sessions are OK, the
Department of Homeland Security said in
a 6 July notice signaling changes in the
status of international students. But the
ban on online-only classes could force
students already in the United States to
exit the country or transfer to another
institution that offers face-to-face
instruction. Higher education officials
labeled the new policy “mean-spirited”and accused the Trump administration of
using the coronavirus pandemic to expand
its campaign to limit immigration.New satellite fears in astronomy
ASTRONOMY | One company’s plan to
launch a new constellation of communica-
tions satellites is worrying astronomers, who
fear it will spoil the view for ground-based
survey telescopes. The threat had faded
when OneWeb filed for bankruptcy protec-
tion in March, but the U.K. government and
the Indian cellphone operator Bharti Global
last week pledged $1 billion to rescue it.
Astronomers have been working with rival
operator SpaceX to reduce the visibility
of its constellation, already 540 strong; those
measures have not yet been validated. But
OneWeb’s planned fleet of up to 42,000 satel-
lites will be harder to miss because they will
orbit at a higher altitude, 1200 kilometers,
and so will be visible throughout the night.CONSERVATIONGold mining batters forests
A
mazon forests destroyed by gold mining fail to regrow when the miners move on,
researchers report—and these mining operations are expanding. At some survey
sites in Guyana, no young trees had sprouted 3 to 4 years after mining stopped,
the team reported 29 June in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Surface mining for
gold removes the topsoil, leaving behind scant nutrients for plants. A Guyanese
law requires miners to replace the soil, but many don’t comply. Across the Amazon,
an estimated 130 square kilometers are lost to gold mining annually, about 1% of the
total deforestation from agriculture, logging, and other activities across the Amazon.
But regrowth after gold mining was lower than in other disturbed areas, the study
found—and the global economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has driven
up the price of gold, encouraging more mining.Dispatches from the pandemic
Shortage of AIDS drugs looms
The lockdowns to slow the COVID-
pandemic have disrupted the production
and supply of antiretroviral (ARV)
treatments for HIV, threatening years of
declines in AIDS infections and deaths,
according to a report released on 6 July.
A model by the World Health Organization
(WHO) and Joint United Nations
Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)
shows that a shortage of these drugs for
6 months could lead to 500,000 new
AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan
Africa alone. Globally, 38 million people
are living with HIV, and of the 25.4 million
receiving ARVs at the end of 2019, one-
third live in countries with shortages, says
a survey conducted by WHO in the wake
of the modeling exercise. The UNAIDS
report also notes that although HIV
infection rates since 2010 have dropped
by 23% globally, they have jumped by
72% in Eastern Europe and Central
Asia in the same period. “Our progress
towards ending AIDS as a public health
threat by 2030 was already off track
before the COVID-19 outbreak,” the report
states. “Now this crisis has the potential
to blow us even further off course.”Gun sales and violence rise
U.S. firearm purchases and interpersonal
gun violence have increased significantly
during the coronavirus pandemic, a
study has found. Researchers at the
University of California, Davis, used
recent data from the National Instant
Criminal Background Check System to
compare rates of gun purchases from
March through May in the 48 contiguous
states and the District of Columbia with
those expected based on prior state-
specific patterns and seasonal trends
in purchasing since 2011. They estimate
that 2.1 million more firearm purchases
occurred nationally during these three
months than expected from the historical
data—a 64.3% increase. The researchers
also used public reports to calculate
the association between the purchases
and intentional interpersonal firearm
injuries and deaths during the same
period. Based on statistical modeling of
what would have been expected without
the spike in gun purchases, they found
776 more injuries, a 7.8% jump, which
the authors suggest may be due to
pandemic-related stress. The findings
appear in a preprint posted on the
medRxiv server on 4 July.COVID-Illegal gold
mining in Peru
and elsewhere
has stripped
Amazon forests.10 JULY 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6500 123