NASA’s new space telescope has captured its first starlight and taken a selfie of its giant, gold mirror.   All 18 segments of the primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope seem to be working properly 1½ months into the mission, officials said Friday.   The telescope’s first target was a bright star 258 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.   “That was just a real wow moment,” said Marshall Perrin of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.   Over the next few months, the hexagonal mirror …

The COVID-19 infection rate for Africa may be as much as seven times higher than reported, while death counts could be two to three times higher, according to the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa. “We’re very much aware that our surveillance systems problems that we had on the continent, with access to testing supplies, for example,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said Thursday, “have led to an underestimation of the cases.” Public health officials have warned for some time that Africa’s COVID infection and death tolls were likely undercounted. India’s …

Trucker-led protests against coronavirus restrictions in Canada shut down another U.S. border crossing Thursday, as copycat movements gathered steam overseas and Washington called on its northern neighbor to use federal powers to end the blockades. The border obstructions have already impacted business, with the key Ambassador Bridge linking Ontario and Detroit out of service for several days — and major automakers forced to cut back production at several plants as a result. A second crossing in the western province of Alberta has been blocked for days, and on Thursday protesters …

Facing growing pressure from impatient state governors, the Biden administration acknowledged for the first time that it is developing plans to guide the country away from the pandemic’s emergency phase toward a more relaxed national response, including ending the federal recommendation for wearing masks in most indoor settings. “We are internally discussing, of course, what it looks like to be in the phase of the fight against the COVID pandemic where it is not disrupting everyone’s daily lives,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday. “We recognize people …