Year: 2021

The idea was striking in its ambition: African countries aimed to plant trees in a more than 8,000 kilometer-line spanning the entire continent, creating a natural barrier to hold back the Sahara Desert as climate change swept the sands south. The project called the Great Green Wall began in 2007 with a vision for the trees to extend like a belt across the vast Sahel region, from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, by 2030. But as temperatures rose and rainfall diminished, millions of the planted trees died. Efforts to rein in the desert continue in Senegal on a smaller scale. On the western end of the planned wall, Ibrahima Fall walks under the cool shade of dozens of lime trees, watering them with a hose as yellow chicks scurry around his feet. Just beyond the green orchard and a village is a desolate, arid landscape. The citrus crop provides a haven from the heat and sand that surround it. Outside the low village walls, winds whip sand into the air, inviting desertification, a process that wrings the life out of fertile soil and changes it into desert, often because of drought or deforestation. Only 4% of the Great Green Wall’s original goal has been met, and an estimated $43 billion would be needed to achieve the rest. With prospects for completing the barrier on time dim, organizers have shifted their focus from planting a wall of trees to trying a mosaic of smaller, more durable projects …

Medicare’s “Part B” outpatient premium will jump by $21.60 a month in 2022, one of the largest increases ever. Officials said Friday a new Alzheimer’s drug is responsible for about half of that. The increase guarantees that health care will gobble up a big chunk of the recently announced Social Security cost-of-living allowance, a boost that had worked out to $92 a month for the average retired worker, intended to help cover rising prices for gas and food that are pinching seniors. Medicare officials told reporters on Friday that about half the increase is due to contingency planning if the program ultimately has to cover Aduhelm, the new $56,000-a-year medication for Alzheimer’s disease from pharmaceutical company Biogen. The medication would add to the cost of outpatient coverage because it’s administered intravenously in a doctor’s office and paid for under Part B. The issue is turning into a case study of how one pricey medication for a condition afflicting millions of people can swing the needle on government spending and impact household budgets. People who don’t have Alzheimer’s would not be shielded from the cost of Aduhelm, since it’s big enough to affect their premiums. The new Part B premium will be $170.10 a month for 2022, officials said. The jump of $21.60 is the biggest increase ever in dollar terms, although not percentage-wise. As recently as August, the Medicare Trustees’ report had projected a smaller increase of $10 from the current $148.50. “The increase in the Part B premium for …

In Kansas City, Kansas, educators are opening an after-school mental health clinic staffed with school counselors and social workers. Schools in Paterson, New Jersey, have set up social emotional learning teams to identify students dealing with crises. Chicago is staffing up “care teams” with the mission of helping struggling students on its 500-plus campuses. With a windfall of federal coronavirus relief money at hand, schools across the U.S. are using portions to quickly expand their capacity to address students’ struggles with mental health. While school districts have broad latitude on how to spend the aid money, the urgency of the problem has been driven home by absenteeism, behavioral issues, and quieter signs of distress as many students have returned to school buildings this fall for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic hit. For some school systems, the money has boosted long-standing work to help students cope with trauma. Others have launched new efforts to screen, counsel and treat students. All told, the investments put public schools more than ever at the center of efforts to attend to students’ overall well-being. “In the last recession, with the last big chunk of recovery money, this conversation wasn’t happening,” said Amanda Fitzgerald, the assistant director of the American School Counselor Association. “Now, the tone across the country is very focused on the well-being of students.” Last month, three major pediatric groups said the state of children’s mental health should be considered a national emergency. The U.S. Education Department has pointed to the …

Africa is on the front line of climate change. Nowhere is this more evident than the Lake Chad Basin, which covers almost 8% of the continent and supports tens of millions of people. The United Nations says it has shrunk by 90% since the 1960s because of drought. The resulting competition for resources has caused poverty and conflict. Over 10 million people are dependent on humanitarian assistance. Oladosu Adenike, 27, has witnessed Lake Chad’s tragic transformation firsthand. She is a prominent campaigner on climate change in Africa and started the Nigerian “Fridays for Future” campaign, joining the global movement after meeting Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Adenike is one of several young African delegates who traveled thousands of miles to Glasgow, Scotland, to be part of the COP26 climate summit and to convey their sense of urgency to world leaders. “The peace and stability in this region – in the Lake Chad region, the Sahel – it depends on when we are able to restore the lake and able to say that people can get sustainable livelihoods, for them not to be able to be vulnerable to join armed groups of people. And this will likewise improve democracy in the region,” she told VOA. Adenike is an official Nigerian youth delegate at the COP26 summit and has addressed senior delegates on the need to act fast. But she says she is frustrated by slow progress. “We are still in the talking phase. We have not yet transited into the action phase, …

Several young African climate activists traveled thousands of miles to Glasgow, Scotland, to be part of the COP26 climate summit — and to convey their sense of urgency to world leaders. Henry Ridgwell spoke with some of them about their climate change experiences and what COP26 must deliver to help their communities back home. Camera: Henry Ridgwell. …

A businessman who traveled to space with William Shatner last month was killed along with another person when the small plane they were in crashed in a wooded area of northern New Jersey, state police said. The space tourist, Glen M. de Vries, 49, of New York City, and Thomas P. Fischer, 54, of Hopatcong, were aboard the single-engine Cessna 172 that went down Thursday.  De Vries was an instrument-rated private pilot, and Fischer owned a flight school. Authorities have not said who was piloting the small plane.  The plane left Essex County Airport in Caldwell, on the edge of the New York City area, and was headed to Sussex Airport, in rural northwestern New Jersey. The Federal Aviation Administration alerted public safety agencies to look for the missing plane around 3 p.m. Emergency crews found the wreckage in Hampton Township around 4 p.m., the FAA said.  De Vries, co-founder of a tech company, took a 10-minute flight to the edge of space October 13 aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft with Shatner and two others.  “It’s going to take me a while to be able to describe it. It was incredible,” de Vries said as he got his Blue Origin “astronaut wings” pinned onto his blue flight suit by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.  “We are devastated to hear of the sudden passing of Glen de Vries,” Blue Origin tweeted Friday. “He brought so much life and energy to the entire Blue Origin team and to his fellow crewmates. …

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that Europe remains the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, reporting 2 million new cases last week, the region’s highest number since the pandemic began.  At a briefing in Geneva, the WHO chief said the region also reported nearly 27,000 deaths last week, more than half of all COVID-19 deaths worldwide. Tedros said COVID-19 is surging in countries with lower vaccination rates in Eastern Europe, but also in countries with some of the world’s highest vaccination rates in Western Europe. He said it is a reminder that while vaccines reduce the risk of hospitalization, severe disease and death, they do not replace the need for other precautions. Tedros said that while vaccines reduced transmission of the coronavirus, they do not fully prevent it. On the subject of vaccines, the WHO chief once again spoke about the injustices of COVID-19 vaccine inequities and how wealthy nations are neglecting low-income nations in the distribution of the drugs. Tedros said every day, there are six times more boosters administered globally than primary doses in low-income countries.  He once again urged nations with stockpiled vaccine to donate it to the WHO-managed COVAX global vaccine cooperative to distribute to the developing world. He said that COVAX works when given the chance, having delivered almost 500 million doses to 144 countries and territories.  Tedros said the majority of countries are prepared to distribute vaccines to their people, but they need the doses. He said there are only two …

Scientists in South Africa have discovered the first partial Homo Naledi child’s skull in one of the world’s richest hominin fossil sites. The discovery at a UNESCO World Heritage site near Johannesburg, called “Cradle of Humankind,” reveals that the non-human species performed rituals for their dead thousands of years ago, before humans did. For VOA, Marize de Klerk visited the site and has this report. Camera – Franco Puglisi. …

Scientists in South Africa have announced the discovery of the first partial Homo Naledi child’s skull in one of the world’s richest hominin fossil sites.   The discovery at a UNESCO World Heritage site near Johannesburg, called the “Cradle of Humankind,” revealed that members of the nonhuman species performed rituals with their dead thousands of years before humans did. Lee Berger — project leader of the Rising Star Expedition from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand — and his team searching for Homo Naledi fossils found the partial child’s skull on a remote limestone shelf in the Rising Star Cave. Consisting of 28 fragments and six teeth, the find is being called Fossil Leti — short for the Setswana word “letimela,” meaning “the lost one.” Leti was discovered 12 meters beyond the Dinaledi chamber, where the first fossils belonging to the previously unknown Homo Naledi species were found in 2013. Berger, a paleoanthropologist, said Leti’s solitary location was significant. “She wasn’t dragged in there by a scavenger or carnivore,” he said. “There are no marks of that on her bones. We know she wasn’t washed in there. We can see that from the sediments. We know she didn’t crawl in there because the rest of her body, which would be much stronger than these parts, isn’t there.” Berger surmised that one of the other Homo Naledi moved Leti to that inaccessible shelf. Rare finds Fossilized juvenile hominin skulls like South Africa’s world famous Taung Child and Leti are extremely rare because the remains are so fragile. Homo Naledi remains, in general, are also much more brittle than most other fossils, which have turned to stone. Bernhard Zipfel, curator at University of the Witwatersrand of one of the largest hominid fossil collections …

More than 22 million infants missed their first measles vaccine in 2020, according to a report by the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. WHO said in a statement the 22 million tally was “the largest increase in two decades” and sets the stage for “creating dangerous conditions for outbreaks to occur.” While reports of measles decreased by 80% in 2020, WHO says that figure is misleading because measles surveillance deteriorated with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Evidence suggests we are likely seeing the calm before the storm as the risk of outbreaks continues to grow around the world,” Dr. Kate O’Brien, director of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals said in a statement. “It’s critical that countries vaccinate as quickly as possible against COVID-19, but this requires new resources so that it does not come at the cost of essential immunization programs. Routine immunization must be protected and strengthened; otherwise, we risk trading one deadly disease for another,” she said. WHO said there were “major measles outbreaks” in 26 countries, representing 84% of all reported cases in 2020. “We must act now to strengthen disease surveillance systems and close immunity gaps, before travel and trade return to pre-pandemic levels, to prevent­­ deadly measles outbreaks and mitigate the risk of other vaccine-preventable diseases,” said Dr. Kevin Cain, CDC’s global immunization director. Measles is one of the world’s most contagious human viruses although it is almost entirely preventable through vaccination.        …

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday people have a duty to be inoculated with the COVID-19 vaccine as a way of protecting not only themselves, but others as well. She made the comments in a virtual conversation with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. COVID-19 cases are soaring in Germany. A record high daily count of 50,000 new infections were reported Thursday. A week ago, the daily tally was 33,000 new cases. “The virus is still among us and threatens the health of its citizens,” German Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday. German officials are meeting next week to discuss way to combat the COVID-19 surge.   …

The contagious delta variant is driving up COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Mountain West and fueling disruptive outbreaks in the North, a worrisome sign of what could be ahead this winter in the U.S. While trends are improving in Florida, Texas and other Southern states that bore the worst of the summer surge, it’s clear that delta isn’t done with the United States. COVID-19 is moving north and west for the winter as people head indoors, close their windows and breathe stagnant air. “We’re going to see a lot of outbreaks in unvaccinated people that will result in serious illness, and it will be tragic,” said Dr. Donald Milton of the University of Maryland School of Public Health. In recent days, a Vermont college suspended social gatherings after a spike in cases tied to Halloween parties. Boston officials shut down an elementary school to control an outbreak. Hospitals in New Mexico and Colorado are overwhelmed. In Michigan, the three-county metro Detroit area is again becoming a hot spot for transmissions, with one hospital system reporting nearly 400 COVID-19 patients. Mask-wearing in Michigan has declined to about 25% of people, according to a combination of surveys tracked by an influential modeling group at the University of Washington. “Concern over COVID in general is pretty much gone, which is unfortunate,” said Dr. Jennifer Morse, medical director at health departments in 20 central and northern Michigan counties. “I feel strange going into a store masked. I’m a minority. It’s very different. It’s just a …

A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts pulled up Thursday at the International Space Station, their new home until spring. It took 21 hours for the flight from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the glittering outpost. The one German and three U.S. astronauts said it was an emotional moment when they first spotted the space station 30 kilometers (20 miles) distant — “a pretty glorious sight,” according to Raja Chari, commander of the Dragon capsule.  “Floating in space and shining like a diamond,” noted German astronaut Matthias Maurer. “We’re all very thrilled, very excited.”  The Dragon’s entire flight was automated, with Chari and pilot Tom Marshburn monitoring the capsule systems, ready to take control if necessary. At one point, they reported what looked like a “gnarled knob” or possibly a small mechanical nut floating past their camera’s field of view, but SpaceX Mission Control said it posed no concern. The docking occurred 423 kilometers (263 miles) above the eastern Caribbean.  The station’s welcoming committee consisted of three astronauts instead of the originally planned seven. That’s because SpaceX returned four of the station residents on Monday, after the new arrivals’ launch kept getting delayed.  While Chari, Marshburn, Maurer and NASA astronaut Kayla Barron were adapting to weightlessness — all but Marshburn are space rookies — the previous crew was adjusting to life back on Earth. “Gravity sucks, but getting used to it slowly,” Japanese astronaut Akihoki Hoshide tweeted.  The new crew will spend the next six months at the space station and, …

New York state legalized recreational marijuana use this year, just in time to host the annual Cannabis World Congress & Business Exposition. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera – Michael Eckels. …

The United States and China surprised the COP26 climate summit Wednesday with a joint declaration to develop long-term strategies to try to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius over the next decade. It comes as delegates enter the final hours of negotiation on a deal to slow global warming, as Henry Ridgwell reports. …

An Australian medical tech manufacturer has recalled more than 2 million at-home COVID-19 tests shipped to the United States after finding an increased chance of false positives. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an alert Wednesday that the company, Ellume, had recalled 2.2 million tests since the issue was detected last month. A false positive test result indicates that a person has coronavirus when the person does not.  “The FDA has identified this as a Class I recall, the most serious type of recall,” the agency said in a notice. “Use of these tests may cause serious adverse health consequences or death.” The FDA said it had received 35 reports of false positives and no deaths to date. In early October, Ellume announced a voluntary recall of 195,000 tests after false positive results were reported in some product batches at higher-than-expected rates. At the time, the firm had shipped about 3.5 million tests to the U.S. Ellume said Thursday that the recall was expanded after additional lots were found to be affected. “Ellume has investigated the issue, identified the root cause, implemented additional controls, and we are already producing and shipping new product to the U.S.,” it said in a statement. “We have and will continue to work diligently to ensure test accuracy, in all cases.” Ellume’s rapid at-home coronavirus test last year became the first to receive emergency use authorization in the U.S. Among the tests recalled were those provided to the Department of Defense for distribution to …

The International Space Station will perform a brief maneuver on Wednesday to dodge a fragment of a defunct Chinese satellite, Russian space agency Roscosmos said. The station crewed by seven astronauts will climb 1,240 meters higher to avoid a close encounter with the fragment and will settle in an orbit 470.7 km (292 miles) above the Earth, Roscosmos said. It did not say how large the debris was. “In order to dodge the ‘space junk’, (mission control) specialists … have calculated how to correct the orbit of the International Space Station,” the agency’s statement said. The station will rely on the engines of the Progress space truck that is docked to it to carry out the move. An ever-swelling amount of space debris is threatening satellites hovering around Earth, making insurers leery of offering coverage to the devices that transmit texts, maps, videos and scientific data. The document reaffirms the goals set in Paris in 2015 of limiting warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with a more stringent target of trying to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) preferred because that would keep damage from climate change “much lower.” Highlighting the challenge of meeting those goals, the document “expresses alarm and concern that human activities have caused around 1.1 C (2 F) of global warming to date and that impacts are already being felt in every region.” Small island nations, which are particularly vulnerable to warming, worry that too little …

Governments are poised to express “alarm and concern” about how much Earth has already warmed and encourage one another to end their use of coal, according to a draft released Wednesday of the final document expected at U.N. climate talks. The early version of the document circulating at the negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland, also impresses on countries the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about half by 2030 — even though pledges so far from governments don’t add up to that frequently stated goal. In a significant move, countries would urge one another to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels” in the draft, though it has no explicit reference to ending the use of oil and gas. There has been a big push among developed nations to shut down coal-fired power plants, which are a major source of heat-trapping gases, but the fuel remains a critical and cheap source of electricity for countries like China and India. While the language about moving away from coal is a first and important, the lack of a date when countries will do so limits the pledge’s effectiveness, said Greenpeace International Director Jennifer Morgan, a long-time climate talks observer. “This isn’t the plan to solve the climate emergency. This won’t give the kids on the streets the confidence that they’ll need,” Morgan said. The draft doesn’t yet include full agreements on the three major goals that the U.N. set going into the negotiations — and may disappoint poorer …

U.S.-based drugmaker Pfizer is seeking to make a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine available to all adult Americans 18 years of age and older. Pfizer filed the request Tuesday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, citing a new clinical trial involving 10,000 volunteers who received a third injection of the two-dose vaccine, which it developed in collaboration with German-based BioNTech. According to Pfizer, the preliminary results show the third shot boosted a person’s protection against the virus to about 95%. The request comes just weeks after the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine for Americans 65 and older, adults at a high risk of severe illness, plus front-line workers such as teachers, health care workers and others whose jobs place them at greater risk of contracting COVID-19. The Pfizer booster shot is available for people regardless of whether they initially received the two-shot Moderna vaccine or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which offers less protection than either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Astra-Zeneca’s separate unit British-Swedish drugmaker Astra-Zeneca announced Tuesday that it is creating a separate unit entirely devoted to developing and manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The company’s two-shot vaccine, developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford, had a troubled rollout due to manufacturing delays and confirmation of a link between the vaccine and rare, possibly fatal blood clots, prompting some governments to limit its use among certain age groups. But the AstraZeneca vaccine is cheaper and …

Human Rights Watch warned Wednesday that a new Iranian law aimed at raising the birth rate would put women’s lives at risk by denying them access to reproductive health care. The bill, which is expected to become law later this month, provides various additional benefits to families with children and outlaws sterilization and free distribution of contraceptives in the public health care system unless a pregnancy threatens a woman’s health. “Iranian legislators are avoiding addressing Iranians’ many serious problems, including government incompetence, corruption and repression, and instead are attacking women’s fundamental rights,” said HRW’s senior Iran researcher Tara Sepehri Far. “The population growth law blatantly undermines the rights, dignity and health of half of the country’s population, denying them access to essential reproductive health care and information.” Over the past decade, Iran has shifted its population policy from providing family planning and access to contraception, to seeking to boost population growth by limiting women’s access to sexual and reproductive health care. HRW said that several articles in the new legislation further limit already restricted access to safe abortion.  Currently, abortion can be legally performed during the first four months of pregnancy if three doctors agree that a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life or the fetus has severe physical or mental disabilities that would create extreme hardship for the mother. …

NASA on Tuesday delayed putting astronauts back on the moon until 2025 at the earliest, missing the deadline set by the Trump administration. The space agency had been aiming for 2024 for the first moon landing by astronauts in a half-century.  In announcing the delay, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Congress did not provide enough money to develop a landing system for its Artemis moon program and more money is needed for its Orion capsule. In addition, a legal challenge by Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, stalled work for months on the Starship lunar landing system under development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Officials said technology for new spacesuits also needs to ramp up, before astronauts can return to the moon.  NASA is still targeting next February for the first test flight of its moon rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, with an Orion capsule. No one will be on board. Instead, astronauts will strap in for the second Artemis flight, flying beyond the moon but not landing in 2024, a year later than planned. That would bump the moon landing to at least 2025, according to Nelson.  “The human landing system is a crucial part of our work to get the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface, and we are getting geared up to go,” Nelson told reporters. “NASA is committed to help restore America’s standing in the world.”  Nelson made note of China’s ambitious and aggressive space program, and warned it …