Year: 2021

Activists will take over the UN climate summit in Scotland on Friday, capping off a week of dizzying government speeches and pledges with a student march, youth-led presentations, and a giant iceberg shipped from Greenland to Glasgow’s River Clyde to dramatize the plight of the Arctic. UK organizers decided to hand the day over to civic groups in an acknowledgement of how young campaigners like Vanessa Nakate of Uganda and Greta Thunberg of Sweden have raised public understanding of climate change, and a nod to their stance that today’s youth must live with consequences of state decisions. “We’re expecting lots of people to come and join us in the streets and not only youth but also adults supporting youth, and adults that want climate action,” said Isabelle Axelsson, 20, an activist with Thunberg’s climate movement Fridays For Future, which is organizing the march. The COP26 talks in Glasgow aimed to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions – mainly from fossil fuels – to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Crossing that threshold could trigger a cascading climate crisis, scientists say. The COP26 summit has so far yielded deals to phase out coal, reduce deforestation and curb methane, but a clear picture has yet to emerge on what these voluntary initiatives would add up to in terms of moderating temperature rises. The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said on Thursday that emissions cut pledges made so far – if all implemented – could …

Seats are once again packed at professional baseball games in South Korea. Just as in pre-pandemic times, fans can drink beer and eat fried chicken. They can clap their hands, stomp their feet, and wave inflatable noisemakers to support their team. What they are not allowed to do, though, at least not yet, is shout or sing fight songs, a key feature of Korean baseball crowds. “If you shout a lot, the virus will leak through your mask,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum pleaded with fans on a radio show this week, after crowds were seen as being too vocally supportive of their teams during tense playoff games. It is a microcosm of how life is going in South Korea: basically, things are returning to normal, but they are not quite there yet. Although South Korea never locked down during the coronavirus pandemic, it was never fully open either, especially as the country has battled a fourth wave of infections since July. However, starting this week, the government rolled out the first step of its “living with COVID-19” plan. Bigger crowds can now gather in Seoul. Restaurants and cafes, including those that serve alcohol, are no longer subject to a nighttime curfew. Sports fans have returned to stadiums and arenas. Barring setbacks, South Korea will phase out all social distancing rules by the end of February, two years after the country experienced one of the world’s first COVID-19 outbreaks. South Korea’s COVID-19 approach has unquestionably been a success so far. It …

A documentary about the impact of climate change in Africa is a highlight of the annual French film festival in Los Angeles this year. The festival, “City of Light, City of Angels,” draws filmmakers from Paris and fans from Los Angeles. Mike O’Sullivan reports on the documentary “Marcher sur L’eau” (released in English as “Above Water”), which is causing a buzz. …

The “end of coal” is in sight, according to Britain — the host of the COP26 climate summit — after dozens of countries pledged to stop using coal and end the financing of fossil fuels. But as Henry Ridgwell reports from the Glasgow summit, weaning economies off coal won’t be easy — even for Britain itself. Camera: Henry Ridgwell …

Congressional Democrats this week proposed an addition to U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate and social spending legislation that would allow Medicare, the federal government’s health care program for older Americans, to negotiate with drugmakers over the cost of certain prescription medications. U.S. consumers pay higher prices for prescription medications than almost any of their peers in the developed world, a fact that generations of politicians and advocates have struggled in vain to change. If passed, the proposal working its way through Congress would make a dent, though a relatively small one, in that long-standing problem. The plan being discussed would give Medicare officials the ability to negotiate pricing on a sliver of the thousands of prescription medications on the market in the United States, beginning with about 10 drugs and capped at 20. Liberal members of Congress at first had hoped to grant Medicare authority to negotiate the prices of up to 250 costly drugs every year. Though small, the number of drugs that would be covered by the proposal represents a disproportionate amount of the annual “spend” on drugs by Medicare patients. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation released this year determined that the 10 top-selling drugs covered under Medicare Part D accounted for 16% of net total spending in 2019. The top 50 drugs — representing just 8.5% of all drugs covered under the program — accounted for 80% of spending. The top 10 drugs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation include “three cancer medications, four diabetes …

Belinda Kaziwisi of Mount Darwin, Zimbabwe, about 200 kilometers north of Harare, is among the Zimbabwean mothers seeing the benefits that have grown from money provided by UNICEF. “What I see has changed for the better is that from when I got pregnant until up to the delivery of my child, I didn’t pay anything,” Kaziwisi said, her healthy baby in her arms. “When I delivered, I was given soap, cotton and other things for free. It was all nice compared with what used to happen before.” With funding from UNICEF, the Zimbabwe government has hired health workers who encourage pregnant mothers in rural villages to seek assistance from the country’s health institutions to avoid complications. “We encourage pregnant mothers to come to clinics,” said Letty Chindundu, one of the health workers. “We tell them: When you get to the third month of your pregnancy, please go to the clinic. Health workers there will tell you what to do. The journey to delivery of your baby becomes easy. Even your baby will be taken care of while in the tummy, since there are now so many diseases. If they do not come to clinic, the baby may be delivered with ailments. That’s how we encourage them to come to clinic — when they [become] pregnant.” Dr. Tajudeen Oyewale, the UNICEF representative in Zimbabwe, said that having health workers in rural villages and funding the country’s health sector are paying off. “[According to] the latest results of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, …

Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, UNICEF’s director of health programs, has been in Zimbabwe for a week to assess the progress of country’s maternal, newborn and children’s health systems nearly 10 years after the U.N. agency injected millions of dollars into them. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Mount Darwin, Zimbabwe. Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe. …

Britain could revive domestic production of super strong magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines with government support, to cut its reliance on China and achieve vital cuts in carbon emissions, two sources with direct knowledge said.  A government-funded feasibility study is due to be published on Friday, laying out the steps Britain must take to restart output of rare earth permanent magnets, the sources said.  A magnet factory would help Britain, hosting the COP26 U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, meet its goal of banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and slashing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.  British production of the magnets vanished in the 1990s when the industry found it could not compete with China. But with the huge growth in demand, the government is keen to secure enough supply.  Last month, the government set out plans to achieve its net zero strategy, which includes spending $1.15 billion to support the roll out of electric vehicles (EVs) and their supply chains.  The study outlines how a plant could be built by 2024 and eventually produce enough of the powerful magnets to supply 1 million EVs a year, the sources who have read the report said.  “We’re looking to turn the tide of shipping all this kind of manufacturing to the Far East and resurrect U.K. manufacturing excellence,” one of the sources said.  The government’s Department for Business declined to comment on details regarding a possible magnet factory because the report has not been released.  …

When Islamic State militants took over territory in Syria and Iraq, fighters from around the world joined them, often bringing children too young to know where they were going or why. Now, years later with these fighters in captivity, many of their children remain in Syria, locked up and abandoned by their home countries. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Tal Marouf in northeastern Syria. …

Regularly cursed at and sometimes physically assaulted by patients, nurses in the U.S. have had enough. As VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, the pandemic is accelerating a longstanding problem of violence against frontline health care workers. A warning: some images in this report may be disturbing. …

A New Zealand research project is looking at ways to produce hydrogen in Antarctica to reduce carbon emissions.   A four-month New Zealand project is investigating whether hydrogen could be generated, used and stored at Scott Base, its Antarctic research facility, to reduce its reliance on carbon-based fuels.  Those fuels are currently used for transportation, cooking and heating.  A special grade fuel is shipped in on ice-breakers.   Surplus power from wind turbines at Scott Base could be used to generate green hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cells that produce electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen atoms.   The hydrogen initiative is a collaboration between Antarctica, New Zealand, a government scientific body, and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.  The project started in August and will finish this month.  The project faces some obstacles, including geographic isolation and extreme weather. Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent. In 1983, a temperature of minus 89.2 degrees was recorded.  Brendon Miller, a consultant chemical engineer, says it is an ambitious plan.   “We would like to demonstrate that we can use hydrogen effectively as an energy source to replace fossil fuels. It is a very challenging environment to do it in Antarctica. But, actually, there are some things going for it because the alternates like batteries are quite awkward to use for long-term storage particularly at very cold temperatures,” Miller said.   New Zealand’s work in Antarctica focuses in large part on global warming.    Experts have said the world’s southernmost continent was very sensitive to rising temperatures, and it also influenced the global climate system.  Earlier this year, the New Zealand government said it would spend  $200 million to guarantee the future of its scientific hub at Scott …

The COVID-19 pandemic shortened life expectancy around the globe last year, according to a new international study. A team of researchers led by University of Oxford public health professor Nazur Islam examined changes to life expectancy in 37 upper-middle- and high-income countries, using the years between 2005 and 2019 as a benchmark, and compared the ages of the deceased to their life expectancies. The study, published this week in the scientific journal BMJ, found that Russia had the highest drop in life expectancy, where men lost 2.33 years and women 2.14 years. In second place was the United States, with men losing 2.27 years and women 1.61 years, followed by Bulgaria with men losing 1.96 years and women 1.37 years. A total of 31 nations saw declines in life expectancy. According to the researchers, these countries’ populations lost about 28 million additional years of life. Six nations — Denmark, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea and Taiwan — were the only nations of those studied where life expectancy either increased or remained the same. The researchers say most countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were not included in the study due to a lack of data, meaning the true toll from the pandemic was likely even higher. The pandemic has claimed more than 5 million lives since the first cases were detected in central China in late 2019, with the United States the world leader in COVID-19 deaths with 750,430, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Meanwhile, vaccinations of children between 5 and 11 years of age began in earnest across the United States Wednesday, just …

No in-person school. Isolation from friends. Lost rites of passage like graduation ceremonies. The COVID-19 pandemic upended the lives of many children in the United States. “A lot of children’s joy comes from being with friends or from play, and from social interaction. When you ask kids, ‘What’s making you happy?’ 90% of the time, it’s being around friends or doing things with friends,” says Elena Mikalsen, head of the Psychology Section at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio in Texas. “That was kind of taken away during the pandemic. … For the longest time, all kids had was the academics and no joy.”  A recent report finds that the uncertainty and disruption caused by COVID-19 has negatively affected the emotional and mental health of about one-third of America’s youth. So much so that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), along with other children’s health organizations, has declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. “Elevated symptoms of anxiety, depression or stress,” says Nirmita Panchal, a senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonprofit organization focusing on national health issues. “There’s also been a number of changes in behavior that parents have reported with some children having a poor appetite and difficulty sleeping. For others, it may be fear or irritability and clinginess.” Panchal co-authored the report, which found that 8% of children between the ages of 3 and 17 currently have anxiety. That number rises to 13% among adolescents ages 12 to 17. “During the pandemic, children, just like everybody else, have experienced a number of …

Over the past few years, the so-called healing crystals trend has resurfaced in the wellness industry, even though the stones have no scientifically proven health benefits. Karina Bafradzhian has the story. …

Maintaining the unique environment of the Galápagos Islands and protecting the surrounding marine resources is testing Ecuador. China’s industrial fishing fleet threatens the islands, but China is a key trading partner. Jaime Moreno has this report. Video: Nelson Abril …

The Galápagos Islands off the Pacific coast of Ecuador teem with marine life including endangered species. Overfishing by China’s fleet threatens the islands. Jaime Moreno has this report. Video: Nelson Abril …

The COP26 climate summit is taking place against the backdrop of an ongoing global pandemic. As richer nations begin to reopen, thanks to rapid vaccination programs, most people in developing countries are still waiting for their first dose, despite global pledges to distribute more vaccines. Analysts say distrust between richer and poorer nations could hamper climate negotiations at the COP26 summit.  In most high-income countries, more than 70% of the population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. But in low-income countries, the figure is less than 4%, according to figures from the University of Oxford.  “If this level of vaccine inequity remains in place, 5 million people will die unnecessarily next year,” said Robert Yates, director of the global health program at Chatham House.    At the G-7 summit in June, leaders of the world’s richest nations pledged to share 1 billion vaccine doses with poorer countries — half from the United States. In total, the U.S. has now pledged to share 1.1 billion doses through 2022. Yet, while many Western nations are offering a third booster shot for fully vaccinated adults, most people in developing nations still await their first dose. As negotiations on combating climate change continue at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, trust between poorer and richer nations is fragile, Yates said.  “You can very much see countries, particularly in the South, saying, ‘Well, why should we cooperate with you on this issue which is happening now but is going to get worse …

The COP26 climate summit is taking place against the backdrop of an ongoing global pandemic. As richer nations begin to reopen thanks to rapid vaccination programs, most people in developing countries are still waiting for their first dose. Henry Ridgwell reports from the summit in Glasgow on whether distrust between richer and poorer nations could hamper climate negotiations.  Camera: Henry Ridgwell     Produced by: Kimberlyn Weeks …

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on other nations to “step up cooperation” and act on climate targets, but offered no new commitments in a statement to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, known as COP26. “Visions will come true only when we act on them. Parties need to honor their commitments, set realistic targets and visions, and do their best according to national conditions to deliver their climate action measures,” said Xi, who is not attending the talks in person. China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter.  China has been facing an energy shortage that sparked widespread power outages over two-thirds of the country in late September. This was one of China’s worst power shortages in a decade. The outages affected factories, leading to concerns about disruptions to global supply chains. China, meanwhile, said it has increased its production of coal — a fossil fuel — to ease the power crunch. The Chinese leader’s long-anticipated statement shows that China cannot abandon fossil fuels during a power crunch without more infrastructure, analysts said.  Households may lack heating, while manufacturing could suffer due to the power shortage, said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I am a little disappointed that President Xi Jinping didn’t really go ahead and answer some of the key questions that many of us have had,” Nakano said. “I wonder if the power crunch that China is facing at the moment has really gotten in the Chinese leadership’s way …