Month: January 2022

Midday queues snake out to the street in an upmarket Shanghai neighborhood, but it’s not lunch at the city’s hottest restaurant that people are lining up for — it’s cosmetic “micro-procedures”, which are surging in popularity in China.     The “lunchtime facelift” and other “medical aesthetics” procedures are booming as a new generation of Chinese consumers grapple with the pressure to look good on social media as well as in person.    Kayla Zhang has never actually gone under the knife for cosmetic reasons, but she’s had laser treatments, injections and a thread lift — a barbed string inserted under the skin and pulled up to “lift” the face.   “I’m not changing my nose or my eyes, which would be an extreme change in my looks,” the 27-year-old told AFP, adding that she’s seeking a “better version” of herself rather than “a totally new face.”     Already popular in the West because they are less invasive and more affordable than traditional cosmetic surgery, micro-procedures — from laser facials and fillers to thread lifts — are fast becoming the norm in China’s cities where disposable incomes have jumped in the past decade.     The Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics estimates, overall, the cosmetic industry will grow to $46 billion this year compared to around $6.5 billion in 2013.  Micro-procedures are now an expanding segment of that market, while traditional surgery’s growth rates slow, according to data from consulting firm Frost and Sullivan.    Changing values  But a government crackdown looms over the boom.    The ruling …

After launching its next-generation space telescope, NASA scientists mark major milestones in its progress.  Plus, a new spaceplane arrives at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. Camera: YouTube NASA/ REUTERS/ SIERRA SPACE  Produced by: Arash Arabasadi …

Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, six former health advisers for U.S. President Joe Biden are urging a different approach to fighting it. Writing Thursday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the advisers wrote three articles urging Americans to learn to live with the virus in a “new normal” as opposed to trying to eradicate it. “Without a strategic plan for the ‘new normal’ with endemic COVID-19, more people in the U.S. will unnecessarily experience morbidity and mortality, health inequities will widen, and trillions will be lost from the U.S. economy,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Michael Osterholm and Dr. Celine Gounder, who served on Biden’s transition COVID-19 advisory board in 2020, wrote in one of the articles. The former officials called for building a “modern data infrastructure” and more public health workers, including school nurses, among other things. “Two years into the pandemic, the U.S. is still heavily reliant on data from Israel and the U.K. for assessing the effectiveness and durability of COVID-19 vaccines and rate of vaccine breakthrough infections,” they wrote. They called for better access to cheap and rapid testing, as well as more monitoring of air and wastewater to get ahead of potential outbreaks. They also called for vaccine mandates and the development of variant-specific vaccines. Moreover, they called for a rebuilding of trust in the nation’s public health institutions, calling the initial response to the pandemic “seriously flawed.” The three officials wrote that rather than living in “a perpetual state of emergency,” the …

A team of scientists is sailing to “the place in the world that’s the hardest to get to” so they can better figure out how much and how fast seas will rise because of global warming eating away at Antarctica’s ice.  Thirty-two scientists on Thursday are starting a more than two-month mission aboard an American research ship to investigate the crucial area where the massive but melting Thwaites glacier faces the Amundsen Sea and may eventually lose large amounts of ice because of warm water. The Florida-sized glacier has gotten the nickname the “doomsday glacier” because of how much ice it has and how much seas could rise if it all melts — more than two feet (65 centimeters) over hundreds of years.  Because of its importance, the United States and the United Kingdom are in the midst of a joint $50 million mission to study Thwaites, the widest glacier in the world by land and sea. Not near any of the continent’s research stations, Thwaites is on Antarctica’s western half, east of the jutting Antarctic Peninsula, which used to be the area scientists worried most about.  “Thwaites is the main reason I would say that we have so large an uncertainty in the projections of future sea level rise, and that is because it’s a very remote area, difficult to reach,” Anna Wahlin, an oceanographer from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said Wednesday in an interview from the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, which was scheduled to leave …

The World Health Organization says a new coronavirus variant recently detected in France is nothing to be concerned about right now. Scientists at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Foundation in the city of Marseille say they discovered the new B.1.640.2 variant in December in 12 patients living near Marseille, with the first patient testing positive after traveling to the central African nation of Cameroon. The researchers said they have identified 46 mutations in the new variant, which they labeled “IHU” after the institute, that could make it more resistant to vaccines and more infectious than the original coronavirus.  The French team revealed the findings of a study in the online health sciences outlet medRxiv, which publishes studies that have not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal. Abdi Mahmud, a COVID-19 incident manager with the World Health Organization, told reporters in Geneva earlier this week that, while the IHU variant is “on our radar,” it remains confined in Marseille and has not been labeled a “variant of concern” by the U.N. health agency. Meanwhile, an international team of health care advocates and experts is calling for 22 billion doses of mRNA vaccine to be administered around the world this year to stop the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant.  The team is urging the production of an additional 15 billion doses of mRNA vaccine, more than double the projected 7 billion doses. The report says mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna have demonstrated the best protection against several …

World tennis No.1 Novak Djokovic has had his visa canceled by Australian authorities and is facing deportation. He had received a COVID-19 vaccination exemption to defend his title at the Australian Open but has reportedly failed to provide proper evidence to border officials. The Serbian is the defending Australian Open champion, and a nine-time winner of the event, but the government said Thursday he’s no longer welcome. He was detained at Melbourne airport Wednesday for several hours before border force officials announced that he had not met immigration regulations and would be deported. Djokovic’s father had claimed his son was being held “captive.” Serbian President Aleksander Vucic said he was a victim of “harassment.” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is standing firm, though. “On the issue of Mr. Djokovic, rules are rules and there are no special cases,” Morrison said. “That is the policy of the government, and it has been our government’s strong border protection policies and particularly in relation to the pandemic that has ensured that Australia has had one of the lowest death rates from COVID anywhere in the world. Entry with a visa requires double vaccination or a medical exemption. I am advised that such an exemption was not in place and as a result he is subject to the same rule as anyone else.” With his visa revoked, Djokovic is now an “unlawful non-citizen” in Australia and is being held in immigration detention, where his movements are restricted after he was driven from Melbourne airport …

World tennis No.1 Novak Djokovic has had his visa canceled by Australian authorities and is facing deportation. He had received a COVID-19 vaccination exemption to defend his title at the Australian Open but has reportedly failed to provide proper evidence to border officials. The Serbian is the defending Australian Open champion, and a nine-time winner of the event, but the government said Thursday he’s no longer welcome. He was detained at Melbourne airport Wednesday for several hours before border force officials announced that he had not met immigration regulations and would be deported. Djokovic’s father had claimed his son was being held “captive.” Serbian President Aleksander Vucic said he was a victim of “harassment.” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is standing firm, though. “On the issue of Mr. Djokovic, rules are rules and there are no special cases,” Morrison said. “That is the policy of the government, and it has been our government’s strong border protection policies and particularly in relation to the pandemic that has ensured that Australia has had one of the lowest death rates from COVID anywhere in the world. Entry with a visa requires double vaccination or a medical exemption. I am advised that such an exemption was not in place and as a result he is subject to the same rule as anyone else.” With his visa revoked, Djokovic is now an “unlawful non-citizen” in Australia and is being held in immigration detention, where his movements are restricted after he was driven from Melbourne airport …

Omicron may not cause as much lung damage as the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus, according to new lab studies. That, plus vaccination, may help explain why patients with omicron are not being hospitalized or dying as often as patients infected with previous variants. But omicron is still killing an average of 1,200 people each day in the United States, about equal to the peak of the second COVID-19 wave in July and August of 2020. “If it’s milder compared to delta; delta was horrible,” said Joe Grove, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. “This has not necessarily just turned into the common cold all of a sudden. It is still something that we should be concerned about.” Plus, experts caution, omicron’s ferocious infectiousness means the less virulent virus can still do a lot of damage, especially among the unvaccinated who are elderly or have preexisting conditions. Lighter on the lungs A set of new studies in lab animals and petri dishes found that omicron did not infect lung tissue as much as previous variants. And it didn’t cause as much damage or inflammation when it did. Omicron had no problem infecting tissues in the nose and throat. A preference for the upper airway might help explain why omicron is so infectious, Grove said. “It’s going to be more easily coughed or sneezed out and spread more easily,” Grove said. “But I am speculating here.” The lab results are promising, but what happens in …

Exactly two years after the World Health Organization issued an alert about “a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause” in the central Chinese city of Wuhan that evolved into the global COVID-19 pandemic, the world is now struggling under the weight of the fast-moving omicron variant of the coronavirus that sparked the disease.  In Brazil, a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by the omicron variant has prompted authorities in Rio de Janeiro to cancel its iconic Carnival street festival for the second consecutive year.  Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes announced the cancellation Tuesday during a speech carried live online. Paes said the “nature” and “democratic aspect” of Carnival makes it impossible to control the potential spread of the virus.  But Paes said the traditional procession of Rio’s samba schools into the city’s Sambadrome stadium will take place next month, as authorities will impose mitigation efforts to inhibit the spread of the virus among spectators. In Hong Kong, chief executive Carrie Lam on Wednesday announced a two-week ban on flights from eight nations to blunt a possible fifth wave of COVID-19 infections driven by omicron. The ban on incoming flights from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United States takes effect Sunday. Authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese financial hub are keeping about 2,500 passengers of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship on board the vessel after discovering that nine passengers were close contacts of an omicron cluster in the city. The Spectrum of the Seas returned …

Influential government advisers are strongly urging that teens as young as 12 get COVID-19 boosters as soon as they’re eligible, a key move as the U.S. battles the omicron surge and schools struggle with how to restart classes amid the spike.  All Americans 16 and older are encouraged to get a booster, which health authorities say offers the best chance at avoiding the highly contagious omicron variant. Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration authorized an extra Pfizer shot for kids ages 12 to 15, as well — but that wasn’t the final hurdle.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes recommendations for vaccinations and on Wednesday, its advisers voted that a booster was safe for the younger teens and should be offered to them once enough time — five months — has passed since their last shot. And while the CDC last month opened boosters as an option for 16- and 17-year-olds, the panel said that recommendation should be strengthened to say they “should” get the extra dose.  CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky will weigh the panel’s advice before making a final decision soon.  Vaccines still offer strong protection against serious illness from any type of COVID-19, including the highly contagious omicron variant, especially after a booster. But omicron can slip past a layer of the vaccines’ protection to cause breakthrough infections. Studies show a booster dose at least temporarily revs up virus-fighting antibodies to levels that offer the best chance at avoiding symptomatic infection, even from …

Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line on Wednesday canceled sailings amid rising fears of omicron-related coronavirus infections that have dampened the nascent recovery of the pandemic-ravaged cruise industry. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. called off its Spectrum of the Seas cruise for January 6 after nine guests on its January 2 trip were identified as close contacts to a local Hong Kong COVID-19 case. The contacts have tested negative, but the cruise ship will return to Kai Tak Cruise Terminal in Hong Kong on January 5 to test all guests and crew who must take a second test on January 8, the company said. A similar decision to cancel trips by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. was made against the backdrop of the United States reporting the highest daily tally of any country for new coronavirus infections on Monday. “Due to ongoing travel restrictions, we’ve had to modify a few sailings and unfortunately have had to cancel,” the 17-ship strong cruise operator said, with the embarkation dates for a few canceled sailings as far out as late April. The cruise line, which requires everyone on board to be vaccinated, has also had to cut short a 12-day round trip from Miami on its Norwegian Pearl ship, citing “COVID-related circumstances.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had last week advised people to avoid cruise travel after launching investigations into onboard cases on more than 90 ships. The health agency starts a scrutiny if at least 0.1% of the guests test …

TRANSCRIPT The Inside Story: Crossing the Frontier Episode 21 – January 6, 2022   Show Open Graphics:   Voice of KANE FARABAUGH, VOA Correspondent:   All Systems go, Falcon 9 Blasts off into space. With high expectations, changing the trajectory of U.S. space exploration. And signaling a new era in the aerospace industry.       Kelly DeFazio, Lockheed Martin Orion Site Director:   We’re going to take humans farther then we’ve ever gone before.     KANE FARABAUGH: A return to the moon. More trips to Mars. And increased competition from China.       Rocky Kolb, Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor:   China is gaining rapidly on the U.S.     KANE FARABAUGH:   On The Inside Story: Crossing the Frontier.     The Inside Story:     Unidentified launch announcer:   Ok and here we go. 10. 9. 8. 7.6.5.4.3.2.1. Ignition!  And liftoff! Liftoff of Falcon 9 and IXPE. A new set of x-ray eyes to view the mysteries of our skies!     KANE FARABAUGH:   Hi, I’m Kane Farabaugh reporting from Cape Canaveral, Florida, where launches again are becoming a more frequent occurrence, thanks to the commercialization of space transportation in recent years, and a new initiative by NASA to return astronauts to the moon and eventually get them to Mars. It’s a dramatic turnaround from just a decade ago at the end of the Space Shuttle program, when the industry here in Florida realized it needed to diversify to be competitive nationally and globally.   …

President Joe Biden has directed his administration to buy an additional 10 million courses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill, Paxlovid, bringing the total to at least 20 million courses, as part of his strategy to combat omicron. He addressed the American public Tuesday as COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surge to record levels following the holidays. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report. …

Illinois farmer Jack McCormick planted 350 acres of barley and radishes last fall as part of an off-season crop that he does not intend to harvest. Instead, the crops will be killed off with a weed killer next spring before McCormick plants soybeans in the same dirt.  The barley and radishes will not be used for food, but Bayer AG will pay McCormick for planting them as the so-called cover crops will generate carbon offset credits for the seeds and chemicals maker.  The purpose of cover crops is to restore soil, reduce erosion and to pull climate-warming carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The carbon trapped in roots and other plant matter left in the soil is measured to create carbon credits that companies can use to offset other pollution.  The practice shows how the agriculture industry is adapting as a result of climate change. Farmers no longer make money merely by selling crops for food and livestock feed – they may also be paid for the role crops can play in limiting planet-warming emissions.  More and more U.S. farmers are planting cover crops, from grasses like rye and oats to legumes and radishes. While some are converted into biofuels or fed to cattle, most are not harvested because their value is greater if they break down in the soil.  Cover crops are a pillar of regenerative agriculture, and they are generally seen by environmentalists as an improvement over traditional agriculture. It is an approach to farming that aims to …

On the 40th anniversary of a famous skin cancer campaign, research has revealed that a high number of young Australians are not using sun protection.  Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. A new multi-million-dollar awareness campaign hopes to repeat the success of the ‘Slip Slop Slap’ advertisement of the early 1980s.   “Sid the seagull” the voice of the advertisement’s jingle, urged Australians to protect themselves from the sun with a shirt, sunscreen and a hat. It is an enduring message that has educated generations of people since it was released 40 years ago.  But the government believes rates of skin cancer are too high. The disease kills about 1,300 Australians each year. Research has shown that more than a quarter of Australians do not use any protection from the sun’s ultra-violet radiation.  Heather Walker, from the charity, the Cancer Council, says teenagers need to be reminded of the sun’s dangers.  “We do have a lot of work to do particularly in the secondary school setting and with young adults. But encouragingly, older adults are using sun protection more. So, it does seem to be a dip in the lifecycle and then people do come back to sun protection, which is really encouraging. But the other group that needs a reminder in particular is men. So, in Australia twice as many men as women die from melanoma and that is a huge disparity,” Walker said. Now, Australia is launching the first national skin cancer campaign …

A community health service in Africa’s largest urban slum is helping poor people get affordable emergency services during the COVID pandemic.  The Kibera community emergency response team in Nairobi is offering a $1 monthly fee for access to emergency services, including an ambulance.  Victoria Amunga has more from Nairobi. Camera:  Robert Lutta …

Conservationists are blaming climate change, land clearing and pesticides for the population crash of one of Australia’s most famous insects. Once a common sight, bogong moths have become rare in recent years. They are now recognized as endangered by the world’s leading scientific authority on vulnerable species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  The bogong moth is native to Australia. The mass migration of billions of the small insects has long been a spectacular sight in eastern Australia.    Scientists say the moths are guided by the stars and the earth’s magnetic fields.   They fly up to 1,000 kilometers from Queensland to the mountains of Victoria to shelter in caves from the heat of summer. In the caves, it was once estimated there were as many as 17,000 moths per square meter.   But Jess Abrahams, a nature campaigner from the Australian Conservation Foundation says bogong moth numbers have collapsed.    “It is a dramatic decline, and this population crash has been caused by climate change-fueled extreme drought in their breeding grounds in western Queensland. There has also been land clearing over many years, use of pesticides as well and the consequence is a huge crash in numbers and the flow-on affects to other species is of huge concern. This should be an alarm bell because we are in the midst of an extinction crisis. We are seeing (a) million species globally at risk of extinction and literally these things are disappearing before our very eyes,” Abrahams said.   The decline of the bogong moth has a cascading effect on other species. They were a major source of food for another critically endangered animal, the mountain pygmy-possum. Fewer than 2,000 of Australia’s only hibernating marsupials are thought to be left …

As the COVID-19 omicron variant surges across the United States, top federal health officials are looking to add a negative test along with its five-day isolation restrictions for asymptomatic Americans who catch the coronavirus, the White House’s top medical adviser said Sunday.  Dr. Anthony Fauci said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now considering including the negative test as part of its guidance after getting significant “pushback” on its updated recommendations last week.  Under that Dec. 27 guidance, isolation restrictions for people infected with COVID-19 were shortened from 10 days to five days if they are no longer feeling symptoms or running a fever. After that period, they are asked to spend the following five days wearing a mask when around others.   The guidelines have since received criticism from many health professionals for not specifying a negative antigen test as a requirement for leaving isolation.   “There has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested,” Fauci said. “Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that, and I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.”  Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said the U.S. has been seeing almost a “vertical increase” of new cases, now averaging 400,000 cases a day, with hospitalizations also up.  “We are definitely in the middle of a very severe surge and uptick in cases,” he said. “The acceleration …

World-renowned Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter Richard Leakey, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humankind evolved in Africa, died on Sunday at the age of 77, the country’s president said. The legendary paleoanthropologist remained energetic into his 70s despite bouts of skin cancer, kidney and liver disease.  “I have this afternoon… received with deep sorrow the sad news of the passing away of Dr. Richard Erskine Frere Leakey,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement late Sunday. Born on December 19, 1944, Leakey was destined for paleoanthropology — the study of the human fossil record — as the middle son of Louis and Mary Leakey, perhaps the world’s most famous discoverers of ancestral hominids. Initially, Leakey tried his hand at safari guiding, but things changed when at 23 he won a research grant from the National Geographic Society to dig on the shores of northern Kenya’s Lake Turkana, despite having no formal archaeological training.  In the 1970s he led expeditions that recalibrated scientific understanding of human evolution with the discovery of the skulls of Homo habilis (1.9 million years old) in 1972 and Homo erectus (1.6 million years old) in 1975. A TIME magazine cover followed of Leakey posing with a Homo habilis mock-up under the headline “How Man Became Man.” Then in 1981, his fame grew further when he fronted “The Making of Mankind,” a seven-part BBC television series.  Yet the most famous fossil find was yet to come: the uncovering of an extraordinary, near-complete Homo erectus skeleton during …

France has lowered the age of its mask mandate to 6-year-old children, officials announced Saturday. The news comes just days before schools reopen Monday, following the winter holiday break. While the mandate requires children to wear masks in indoor public places, the mandate will also include outside locations in cities like Paris and Lyon where an outside mandate is already in place. The wildly contagious omicron variant, French authorities said Saturday, has resulted in four consecutive days of over 200,000 new infections. The chief executive of Britain’s National Health Service Confederation told the BBC Saturday that the surge in COVID cases fueled by omicron may force hospitals to ban visitors. “It’s a last resort. But, when you’re facing the kind of pressures the health service is going to be under for the next few weeks, this is the kind of thing managers have to do,” Matthew Taylor said. Europe has surpassed 100 million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began nearly two years ago, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Worldwide, nearly 290 million cases have been recorded. Nearly 5 million of Europe’s cases were reported in the last seven days, with 17 of the 52 countries or territories that make up Europe setting single-day new case records thanks to the omicron variant, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday. More than 1 million of those cases were reported in France, which has joined the U.S., India, Brazil, Britain and Russia to become the sixth country to confirm more …