Month: September 2018

A spate of deaths of young girls from female genital mutilation (FGM) has renewed calls for Somalia to outlaw the tradition. Four girls, ages 10 and 11, from central and northern Somalia have died in the last three months after having been cut, and seven others are in hospitals, activists said. “More and more cases of girls who have died or end up seriously injured after FGM are coming out,” said Hawa Aden Mohamed, director of the Galkayo Education Center for Peace and Development, a local women’s group in the east African country. “These cases confirm what we have been saying all along — that FGM kills and that we need a law to stop it,” Mohamed said. “The harm it causes is blatantly clear.” An estimated 200 million girls and women worldwide have undergone FGM, which involves the partial or total removal of the female genitalia, the United Nations says. One of 28 African countries where the tradition is endemic, Somalia has the world’s highest rates of FGM — 98 percent of women between 15 and 49 have undergone the ritual. Somalia’s constitution prohibits FGM, but efforts to pass legislation to punish offenders have been stalled by parliamentarians afraid of losing voters who view FGM as a part of their tradition. Government and hospital officials were not immediately available to comment on the deaths or hospital admissions. The charity Save the Children said it rescued seven girls — aged between 5 and 8 years old — on Sunday from Somalia’s northern …

European Union regulators have opened an in-depth investigation into whether automakers BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen colluded to limit the development and roll-out of car emission control systems. The EU Commission said Tuesday that it had received information that BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, and VW units Audi and Porsche held meetings to discuss clean technologies aimed at limiting car exhaust emissions.   The probe focuses on whether the automakers agreed not to compete against each other in developing and introducing technology to restrict pollution from gasoline and diesel passenger cars.   “If proven, this collusion may have denied consumers the opportunity to buy less polluting cars, despite the technology being available to the manufacturers,” said EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.   The Commission said its probe was focused on diesel emission control systems involving the injection of urea solution into exhaust to remove harmful nitrogen oxides. The probe follows a report in Der Spiegel magazine last year that the automakers had agreed to limit the size of the tanks holding the urea solution.   The case is another source of diesel trouble for German automakers in the wake of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal.   The Commission said, however, there was no evidence the companies had colluded to develop so-called defeat devices _ computer software that illegally turns off emissions controls. Volkswagen in 2015 admitted using such devices and has set aside 27.4 billion euros ($32 billion) for fines, settlements, recalls and buybacks. Former CEO Martin Winterkorn was criminally charged by U.S. authorities but …

An estimated 6.3 million children died before their 15th birthdays in 2017, or one every five seconds, mostly due to a lack of water, sanitation, nutrition and basic healthcare, according to report by United Nations agencies on Tuesday. The vast majority of these deaths – 5.4 million – occur in the first five years of life, with newborns accounting for around half of the deaths, the report said. “With simple solutions like medicines, clean water, electricity and vaccines” this toll could be dramatically reduced, said Laurence Chandy, an expert with the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF. But without urgent action, 56 million children under five – half of them newborns – will die between now and 2030. Globally, in 2017, half of all deaths in children under five were in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in 13 children died before their fifth birthday. In high-income countries, that number was one in 185, according to the report co-led by UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the World Bank. It found that most children under five die due to preventable or treatable causes such as complications during birth, pneumonia, diarrhoea, neonatal sepsis and malaria. Among older children – aged five to 14 – injuries become a more prominent cause of death, especially from drowning and road traffic. For children everywhere, the most precarious time is the first month of life. In 2017, 2.5 million newborns died in their first month, and a baby born in sub-Saharan Africa or in Southern Asia was nine times …

Republicans and Democrats joined forces to speed legislation combating the misuse of opioids and other addictive drugs toward Senate passage Monday, a rare campaign-season show of unity against a growing and deadly health care crisis.  The measure takes wide aim at the problem, including increasing scrutiny of arriving international mail that may include illegal drugs and making it easier for the National Institutes of Health to approve research on finding nonaddictive painkillers and for pharmaceutical companies to conduct that research. The Food and Drug Administration would be allowed to require drug makers to package smaller quantities of drugs like opioids and there would be new federal grants for treatment centers, training emergency workers and research on prevention methods. Lawmakers’ focus on combating opioids comes amid alarming increases in drug overdose deaths, with the government estimating more than 72,000 of them last year. That figure has grown annually and is double the 36,000 who died in 2008. Besides the sheer numbers, Congress has been drawn to the problem because of its broad impact on Republican, Democratic and swing states alike. California, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania each had more than 4,000 people die from drug overdoses in 2016, while seven other states each lost more than 2,000 people from drugs, according to the most recent figures available. The states with the highest death rates per resident include West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Hampshire, along with the District of Columbia. West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin and Florida’s Sen. Bill Nelson, both Democrats, …

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space transportation company, on Monday named its first private passenger as Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa, the founder and chief executive of online fashion retailer Zozo. A former drummer in a punk band, billionaire Maezawa will take a trip around the moon planned for 2023 aboard its forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket spaceship, taking the race to commercialize space travel to new heights. The first person to travel to the moon since the United States’ Apollo missions ended in 1972, Maezawa’s identity was revealed at an event on Monday evening at the company’s headquarters and rocket factory in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. Maezawa, who is most famous outside Japan for his record-breaking $110 million purchase of an untitled 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, said he would invite six to eight artists to join him on the lunar orbit mission. The billionaire chief executive of electric car maker Tesla, Musk revealed more details of the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, the super heavy-lift launch vehicle that he promises will shuttle passengers to the moon and eventually fly humans and cargo to Mars. The BFR could be conducting its first orbital flights in about two to three years, he said. Musk had previously said he wanted the rocket to be ready for an unpiloted trip to Mars in 2022, with a crewed flight in 2024, though his ambitious production targets have been known to slip. “Its not 100 percent certain we can bring this to flight,” Musk said of the …

A school-based survey shows nearly 1 in 11 U.S. students have used marijuana in electronic cigarettes, heightening health concerns about the new popularity of vaping among teens. E-cigarettes typically contain nicotine, but many of the battery-powered devices can vaporize other substances, including marijuana. Results published Monday mean 2.1 million middle and high school students have used them to get high. Vaping is generally considered less dangerous than smoking, because burning tobacco or marijuana generates chemicals that are harmful to lungs. But there is little research on e-cigarettes’ long-term effects, including whether they help smokers quit.  The rise in teenagers using e-cigarettes has alarmed health officials who worry kids will get addicted to nicotine, a stimulant, and be more likely to try cigarettes. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration gave the five largest e-cigarette makers 60 days to produce plans to stop underage use of their products. Nearly 9 percent of students surveyed in 2016 said they used an e-cigarette device with marijuana, according to Monday’s report in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. That included one-third of those who ever used e-cigarettes. The number is worrying “because cannabis use among youth can adversely affect learning and memory and may impair later academic achievement and education,” said lead researcher Katrina Trivers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Students who said they lived with a tobacco user were more likely than others to report vaping marijuana. It’s unclear whether marijuana vaping is increasing among teens or holding steady. The devices have …

The various species that make up the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom are not the only forms of life on our planet. There is another unique category of life: they are the vast and often strange species that make up the kingdom of fungi. Scientists say there are millions of different fungal species – from mushrooms to molds and yeast. Scientists and policymakers have called for more research, saying we ignore these vital life forms at our peril. Faith Lapidus reports. …

NASA chiefs going back 30 years have come together to mark the space agency’s 60th anniversary. Five former NASA administrators joined current boss Jim Bridenstine in Orlando on Monday. It was the largest gathering ever of NASA heads and included every administrator since 1989. The conference was arranged by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The longest-serving administrator, Daniel Goldin of the 1990s, told Bridenstine there’s more to NASA than human spaceflight and that the science and technology programs can help draw more public support. Richard Truly of the post-Challenger shuttle era agreed, but noted humans need to explore. Bridenstine, meanwhile, ran down NASA’s latest plans for sending astronauts back to the moon. Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin was present for the panel discussion. NASA began operations on Oct. 1, 1958. …

Zimbabwe police Sunday clashed with vendors who were resisting being removed from streets as part of the country’s efforts to fight the cholera outbreak, which has claimed more than two dozen lives in the past two weeks. Vendors were alerting each other of armed riot police and municipality officials coming to confiscate their wares Sunday in Harare. As soon as police officials left, the vendors would resume their business. One of them is 34-year-old Maria Mange, a mother who three children who says unless she gets employed, she will remain selling vegetables and fruits in Harare’s CBD. “I am refusing to leave the streets on the basis that we cause the spread of cholera,” she said. “Our wares are cleaned or boiled before being consumed. It is dirty water which causes cholera, their failure to collect refuse, plus flowing sewage in the streets and blocked sewer pipes. Why concentrate on vendors and not criminals?” Another vendor is Ronald Takura who says he has to find a way to make a livliehood. “No, vendors are not causing the cholera. You are disturbing [our] search for money in our country,” he said. “I do not have a job and I do not have work to do. So do not send us out. I do not understand what is happening in this city. E.D. Mnangagwa, we supported, we do not see what he is doing for us.” He adds in Shona language, Zimbabweans voted for President Emmerson Mnangagwa in the July 30th elections, …

A boat made from recycled plastic, now sailing on London’s river Thames, is a creative way to make an environmental problem part of the solution. Faiza Elmasry tells more about the significance of the Pet Project and its mission. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.]] …

The Queensland state government in Australia is to fund a new program to help combat killer heatwaves and outbreaks of disease caused by climate change. Authorities are even discussing imposing tobacco-style taxes against carbon polluters. The initiative comes as the United Nation chief warned that if the world does not take serious action by 2020, it risks the fallout from “runaway climate change.” The plan to tackle climate-related disease and deaths from heatwaves is part of the Queensland government’s efforts to cut the state’s carbon emissions to zero by 2050. The strategy urges bureaucrats and executives to consider health impacts when assessing mining and energy projects.  It also encourages the government not to subsidize “activities harmful to health and climate stability”. It identifies heat stress among children and the elderly as the main concern for the future. Heatwaves are Australia’s biggest natural hazard, killing more people than droughts, floods and bush fires put together.   Other climate-driven health fears are “food and water insecurity, malnutrition, worsening [and] cardiovascular and respiratory” illnesses. Fiona Armstrong, the head of the Climate and Health Alliance, which helped draw up the plan, said wild conditions can kill. “You only need to look at the example of thunderstorm asthma in Melbourne a couple of years ago to see how these kinds of events, even though they might be predicted, can really take the sector and the community by surprise,” Armstrong said. Thunderstorm asthma can be triggered when storms play havoc with pollen, causing potentially fatal respiratory …

While flu outbreaks, Ebola and HIV typically generate the biggest headlines, scientists say tuberculosis remains the No. 1 infectious disease killer globally, affecting about one quarter of the world’s population. The U.N. General Assembly hopes to draw more attention to the problem by hosting its first-ever, high-level meeting on tuberculosis. The meeting will be at the end of September to bolster global efforts to end the disease and help those affected. VOA’s Jill Craig has more. …

The seas are angry this month. While the remnants of Hurricane Florence soak the Carolinas and Typhoon Mangkhut pounds the Philippines, three more tropical cyclones are spinning in the Western Hemisphere, and one is petering out over Southeast Asia. Experts say some of this extreme tropical weather is consistent with climate change. But some isn’t. And some is unclear. It’s unusual to have so many storms happening at once. But not unheard of. “While it is very busy, this has happened a number of times in the past,” said meteorologist Joel Cline at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mid-September is the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. If there are going to be storms in both hemispheres, Cline said, now is the most likely time. Stronger storms, and a grain of salt Scientists are not necessarily expecting more hurricanes with climate change, however. “A lot of studies actually (show) fewer storms overall,” said NOAA climate scientist Tom Knutson. “But one thing they also tend to simulate is slightly stronger storms” and a larger proportion of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, Knutson said. Florence made landfall as a Category 1 storm but started the week as a Category 4. Knutson and other experts caution that any conclusions linking climate and hurricanes need to be taken with a grain of salt. “Our period of record is too short to be very confident in these sorts of things,” said University of Miami atmospheric scientist Brian McNoldy. While reliable temperature records go back …

Medical workers have lots of experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The current one in North Kivu province is the country’s 10th. Fortunately, they have new tools to fight the deadly virus. A new vaccine has shown it can protect people who’ve come into contact with Ebola victims, and more people have learned techniques to keep the virus from spreading.  But, new problems emerge and old problems persist with every outbreak. Some people still refuse to believe Ebola exists and have hidden infected family members. Traditional burial practices put people at risk. And the location of the current outbreak is a conflict zone with about 100 active armed groups, creating security risks for health workers. As of Sept. 12, 92 people have died from Ebola in the North Kivu outbreak, according to the World Health Organization. Peter Salama, the WHO’s deputy director general in charge of emergencies, says North Kivu’s location poses a huge challenge. The province borders Uganda and Rwanda, and thousands of people cross the border for business or personal reasons each day.  “We hear that some of the cross-border sites such as Kasindi see up to 10- to 20,000 people crossing in either direction every day,” he says. “So it’s an enormous, as you can imagine, exercise to screen that level of population movement across the border.” “Fortunately, we’ve had no confirmed cases in surrounding countries,” he adds. He believes that is a sign that surveillance methods at the border, which include …