Month: March 2022

Companies would be required to disclose the greenhouse gas emissions they produce and how climate risk affects their business under new rules proposed Monday by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a drive across the government to address climate change.  Under the proposals adopted on a 3-1 SEC vote, public companies would have to report on their climate risks, including the costs of moving away from fossil fuels, as well as risks related to the physical impact of storms, drought and higher temperatures caused by global warming. They would be required to lay out their transition plans for managing climate risk, how they intend to meet climate goals and progress made, and the impact of severe weather events on their finances.  The number of investors seeking more information on risk related to global warming has grown dramatically in recent years. Many companies already provide climate-risk information voluntarily. The idea is that, with uniform required information, investors would be able to compare companies within industries and sectors.  “Companies and investors alike would benefit from the clear rules of the road” in the proposal, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said.  The required disclosures would include greenhouse gas emissions produced by companies directly or indirectly — such as from consumption of the company’s products, vehicles used to transport products, employee business travel and energy used to grow raw materials.  The SEC issued voluntary guidance in 2010, but this is the first-time mandatory disclosure rules were put forward. The rules were opened to …

The European Commission is set to delay the publication of proposals on sustainable farming and nature that were expected this week, with the impact of the war in Ukraine on food supply leading some countries to question the European Union’s environmental push.  The EU’s “Green Deal” is overhauling all sectors, including agriculture, which produces roughly 10% of EU greenhouse gas emissions. Brussels has targets that include halving chemical pesticide use by 2030 and is drafting laws to make them a reality.  The EC was due to have made public on Wednesday two new proposals — binding targets to restore nature and a more sustainable pesticides law.  However, EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski on Monday said that the EU would not discuss pesticides at its meeting this week, meaning that the proposal’s publication would be pushed back. He did not comment on the nature restoration plan.  Earlier, EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides told national agriculture ministers in Brussels that the bloc had to shift to sustainable pesticide use but that the Ukraine crisis did not give the “political space” for a proper discussion now.  The EC will put forward measures to deal with the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has driven up prices of wheat and barley, and raised fears of shortages.  Russia and Ukraine make up more than 30% of global trade in wheat and more than 50% for sunflower oils, seeds and meals.  One proposal would be to allow cultivation on land lying fallow, …

Tuesday, March 22, marks the 29th annual World Water Day. This year’s focus is groundwater, which provides freshwater to much of the world. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports. …

    Malawi Sunday launched a polio vaccination campaign after the country in February confirmed its first case, 30 years after it eradicated the disease. UNICEF, the World Health Organization and other partners of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are leading the campaign, which targets over 20 million children in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania by July.  The vaccine rollout comes after it was confirmed last month that a 3-year-old girl was paralyzed by wild poliovirus in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.     Until February, Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The southern African country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the whole continent achieved the same status. UNICEF says over 9 million children are to be vaccinated in the first round of the mass campaign in Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi. UNICEF said the mass immunization will also target children previously vaccinated. “We need to vaccinate children who have been vaccinated before because it takes multiple doses of the polio doses to get fully immunized as regards to polio and every additional dose gives children extra protection,” says Rudolf Schwenk, UNICEF’s representative in Malawi.  Schwenk says if some children are not immunized during the campaign, starting Monday the risk of polio will remain not only in Malawi but in neighboring countries as well. So far, UNICEF has procured over 36 million doses of polio vaccine for the first two rounds of immunizations of children in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. In Malawi, the U.N. children’s …

Botswana will allow unvaccinated travelers into the country, provided they produce a negative COVID-19 test result. That’s a reversal from last month, when the nation started denying entry to travelers who were partially vaccinated or unvaccinated and not willing to get a free shot. Botswana Ministry of Health spokesperson Christopher Nyanga said in a statement the decision to allow the unvaccinated into the country was meant to ensure smooth entry for travelers. “I wish to indicate that these changes now allow partially vaccinated or unvaccinated people to enter the country, if they comply with the required testing requirements,” he said. “It is only when one is not fully vaccinated and is also not willing to undergo COVID-19 testing at the port of entry, that they will be charged and fined or taken to a court of law.” There was confusion over what determined a fully vaccinated person. In Botswana, the vaccine validity period is 180 days, while Europe gives the same vaccines a 270-day validity period. Nyanga says the vaccine validity discord was taken into consideration when dropping the vaccine mandate. “Due to discordant periods for taking booster shots between Botswana and other countries, and for purposes of smoothening international travel, the definition of being fully vaccinated in Botswana will no longer include a booster shot,” he said. “Having completed the primary vaccine series will be considered sufficient for one to be allowed entry, without the need to present a negative PCR test result.” Cindy Kelemi , director of the …

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Sunday she plans to review COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, just days after acknowledging that many financial institutions were “losing patience” with coronavirus policies in the financial hub. The Chinese-ruled city has some of the most stringent COVID-19 rules in the world, with a ban on flights from nine countries including Australia and Britain, and hotel quarantine of up to two weeks for incoming travelers. The city has also imposed a ban on gatherings of more than two people, while most public venues are closed, including beaches and playgrounds, face masks are compulsory and there is no face-to-face learning for students. Saturday, authorities reported a three-week low of 16,597 new COVID-19 cases, down from more than 20,000 a day earlier. The coronavirus outbreak has swept through elderly care homes and paralyzed many parts of the city. In recent weeks, streets in the heart of Hong Kong’s financial center have been eerily quiet, restaurants and bars shuttered or empty, and supermarket shelves bare as people snapped up groceries amid fears of a city-wide lockdown. Many businesses across the city have been forced to shut, including gyms, restaurants, and bars, while others say they are living on borrowed time and need restrictions to ease immediately in order to survive. Hong Kong has seen a net outflow of around 50,000 people so far this month, compared with more than 71,000 in February and nearly 17,000 in December before the fifth wave hit. While Hong Kong is officially …

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw more Americans drinking heavily or using illicit drugs — but apparently not smoking. U.S. cigarette smoking dropped to a new all-time low in 2020, with 1 in 8 adults saying they were current smokers, according to survey data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adult e-cigarette use also dropped, the CDC reported. CDC officials credited public health campaigns and policies for the decline, but outside experts said tobacco company price hikes and pandemic lifestyle changes likely played roles. “People who were mainly social smokers just didn’t have that going on any more,” said Megan Roberts, an Ohio State University researcher focused on tobacco product use among young adults and adolescents. What’s more, parents who suddenly were home with their kids full-time may have cut back. And some people may have quit following reports that smokers were more likely to develop severe illness after a coronavirus infection, Roberts added. The CDC report, based on a survey of more than 31,000 U.S. adults, found that 19% of Americans used at least one tobacco product in 2020, down from about 21% in 2019. Use of cigars, smokeless tobacco and pipes was flat. Current use of electronic cigarettes dropped to 3.7%, down from 4.5% the year before. Cigarettes were the most commonly used tobacco product, with 12.5% of adults using them, down from 14%. Health officials have long considered cigarette smoking — a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease and stroke …

The world is at a ‘dangerous moment’ in the fight against diseases like polio, a senior World Health Organization official said, as efforts begin to immunize 23 million children across five African countries after an outbreak in Malawi. In February, Malawi declared its first case of wild poliovirus in 30 years, when a 3-year old girl in the Lilongwe district was paralyzed as a result of her infection. The case raised alarm because Africa was declared free of wild polio in 2020 and there are only two countries in the world where it is endemic: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan marked a year without cases in January 2022. “This is a dangerous moment,” Modjirom Ndoutabe, polio coordinator for WHO Africa, told Reuters in a phone interview from Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo. “Even if there is one country in the world with polio, all the other countries are in big trouble.” Ndoutabe said the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns had slowed efforts to vaccinate children against other diseases such as polio, and also hit surveillance. According to the Gavi vaccine alliance, childhood immunization services in the 68 countries it supports dropped by 4% in 2020, representing 3.1 million more “zero-dose” children likely unprotected from childhood diseases like polio, diphtheria and measles, and 3 million more under-immunized children than in 2019. “This is a tragedy,” Seth Berkley, chief executive of Gavi, said in an interview with Reuters. “The challenge is getting that back up.” In Malawi, where polio vaccine coverage is high – …

The Biden administration is in danger of cutting short its efforts to help vaccinate the world because U.S. lawmakers had slashed global pandemic response funds from the omnibus spending bill that President Joe Biden signed into law earlier this week. The $1.5 trillion spending bill did not include $15.6 billion requested for COVID-19 response, of which $5 billion had been marked by the White House to fight the coronavirus around the world. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA during a briefing Friday that the administration did not have an alternative plan for delivering the 700 million doses of vaccines remaining from the 1.2 billion doses it had pledged. “We need additional funding to continue to be the arsenal of vaccines,” she said. “There is not a secret fund that we have not told you about to continue to provide the type of free programs we have in the United States or to provide the level of international assistance that we would like to continue to provide.” A White House official confirmed that the 1.2 billion doses of vaccines had been purchased. The lack of funding, however, will devastate America’s ability to ensure recipient countries can effectively deploy them, and to provide tests, therapeutics, oxygen and humanitarian aid to countries still struggling to manage the pandemic. The pandemic response fund was stripped following Republican lawmakers’ refusal to add new coronavirus spending unless it was offset by spending cuts elsewhere. In early March, 36 Republican senators sent a letter (( )) …

A trio of Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, the first new faces in space since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine. Russian space corporation Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off successfully from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan in their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft at 8:55 p.m. Friday (11:55 a.m. EDT). They smoothly docked at the station just over three hours later, joining two Russians, four Americans and a German on the orbiting outpost. The blastoff marked the first space crew launch since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The war has resulted in canceled spacecraft launches and broken contracts. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin has warned that the U.S. would have to use “broomsticks” to fly into space after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to U.S. companies. Many worry, however, that Rogozin is putting decades of a peaceful off-planet partnership at risk, most notably at the International Space Station. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson played down Rogozin’s comments, telling The Associated Press: “That’s just Dmitry Rogozin. He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us,” “The other people that work in the Russian civilian space program, they’re professional,” Nelson told the AP on Friday. “They don’t miss a beat with us, American astronauts and American mission control. Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues.” NASA astronaut …

As COVID-19 infection and death rates begin to increase in some countries that have begun to relax their COVID-related restrictions, the director-general of the World Health Organization issued a reminder of what the pandemic has taught the world so far. Speaking Thursday at the Thailand International Health Expo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “The COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful demonstration that health is not a luxury, but a human right; not a cost, but an investment; not simply an outcome of development, but the foundation of social, economic and political stability and security.” Tedros called on “all countries, manufacturers and partners to work with” the United Nations agency “on enhancing vaccine manufacturing, knowledge sharing and technology transfer.” And the WHO leader said that “Although several countries have lifted restrictions, the pandemic is far from over – and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.” Meanwhile, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency, President Xi Jinping has urged the Politburo Standing Committee, the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to, “Strive to achieve the greatest prevention and control effect with the smallest cost and minimize the impact of the pandemic on economic and social development.” China is currently experiencing its biggest wave of COVID-19 infections since the outbreak in Wuhan, where the pandemic is reported to have begun in late 2019. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday that there are more than 465 million global COVID cases and more than 6 million global COVID deaths. …

Conservative Republican lawmakers on Thursday revived a proposal to weaken Kansas’ vaccination requirements for children enrolling in school and day care and to make it easier for people to get potentially dangerous treatments for COVID-19. The Senate health committee approved a bill that would allow parents to get a no-questions-asked religious exemption from requirements to vaccinate their children against more than a dozen diseases, including measles, whooping cough, polio and chickenpox. The measure also would limit pharmacists’ ability to refuse to fill prescriptions for the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and other drugs for off-label uses as COVID-19 treatments. The bill goes next to the full Senate for debate. The Republican majority there also is considering a proposal to greatly limit the power of the state’s public health administrator to deal with infectious diseases and another to ban all mask mandates during future pandemics. “When you put them all together, it’s a lot of negative bills,” said Democratic Sen. Cindy Holscher, of Overland Park. The measure approved Thursday would require schools to grant an exemption to parents who say vaccinations violate their religious or strongly held moral or ethical beliefs without investigating those beliefs. A law enacted in November granted a similar, broad exemption to workers seeking to avoid COVID-19 vaccine mandates. “It allows the day care-aged kids’ parents and school-aged kids’ parents to enjoy the same freedom of religion that everyone else would,” said Sen. Mark Steffen, a Hutchinson Republican. But Sen. Kristen O’Shea, of Topeka, broke with fellow Republicans in …

Moderna Inc sought emergency use authorization with U.S. health regulators for a second COVID-19 booster shot late Thursday, as a surge in cases in some parts of the world fuels fears of another wave of the pandemic. The U.S. biotechnology company said its request covered all adults over the age of 18 so that the appropriate use of an additional booster dose of its vaccine, including for those at higher risk of COVID-19 due to age or comorbidities, could be determined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and health care providers. Moderna’s request is significantly broader than Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE’s application that was filed earlier this week with U.S. regulators for a second booster shot for people aged 65 and older. Moderna, without specifically commenting on the effectiveness of a fourth shot, said its submission was partly based on data recently published in the United States and Israel following the emergence of the omicron variant. FDA did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. U.S. health officials, including top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, have raised the prospect of a fourth shot, especially for older people and to prepare for the possibility of another surge in cases. CDC data has shown that vaccine efficacy wanes over time and a third shot helps restore it. It, however, has not released comprehensive data based on age or health status to back the case. The news was first reported by The …

NASA’s new eye in the sky snapped a pic of a star and its ancient galactic buddies.  Plus, a spacewalk amid another week of heightened global tensions, and rolling out the next lunar rover.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …

African health groups have warned that the COVID pandemic has led to a rise in drug and alcohol abuse on the continent, but a gap in data is making it hard to monitor. In South Africa, a Soweto-based nonprofit is scrambling to help youth to stay clean and sober. Substance abuse — particularly alcohol consumption — has been on the rise in Africa for years, according to the World Health Organization. The coronavirus pandemic that resulted in job losses and school closures has now amplified the problem. The Ikageng children’s charity in Soweto says as many as 10 young people contact them daily suffering from addiction. Lydia Motloung, the acting program manager says that “during the lockdowns, they used to go and drink and some they were left in the houses alone, the parents are at work. And they start having the house parties and introduced to the alcohol, end up into crystal meth, which is very common around here, especially with schoolchildren.” While Ikageng monitors the rise of addiction in the young people they’re helping, Motloung says national statistics on drug and alcohol abuse are sorely lacking. “We normally get the statistics for COVID, you get the statistics for HIV, but we will never had any statistics for drugs and substance. I think if we can have that plan, the government can have that plan. … And then start funding the organization that are working with drugs and substance so that they fight it as they’re fighting for HIV …

Until recently, fans of NFTs have lacked ways to show off their digital collections. Matt Dibble looks at a company bringing NFTs into the physical world.        …

A week-long measles vaccination campaign is underway in Afghanistan where the World Health Organization (WHO) says the extremely contagious viral disease has killed 142 children and infected 18,000 since the start of the year. “This measles immunization campaign is part of the national response measure to stop the spread of the outbreak, save lives of the young children and reduce the burden on health systems,” a WHO statement quoted its representative in Afghanistan, Luo Dapeng, as saying on Monday. The WHO-funded campaign, kicked off Saturday, is supporting the de facto Taliban health authorities in the management of the vaccination. Thousands of health workers have been tasked to inoculate more than 1.2 million children under five against the disease across 49 Afghan districts in 24 provinces. Afghanistan has experienced measles resurgence since January 2021. Authorities have since reported 48,366 infections and 250 deaths from the viral disease. The low routine measles immunization coverage of 66% and longer interval since the measles follow-up campaign in 2018 have resulted in the accumulation of the high number of children under five years old with no measles immunization, said WHO. Dapeng appealed to parents to bring their children in for vaccination against the life-threatening but preventable disease, urging everyone in the war-ravaged country to ensure the safety of Afghan health workers. Last month, eight polio vaccinators, including four women, were shot dead during a door-to-door vaccination campaign against the crippling disease in two northern Afghan provinces. “The rise in measles cases in Afghanistan is especially …

From the three-light traffic signal, refrigerated trucks, automatic elevator doors, color monitors for desktop computers, to the shape of the modern ironing board, the clothes wringer, blood banks, laser treatment for cataracts, home security systems and the super-soaker children’s toy, many objects and services Americans use every day were invented by Black men and women. These innovators were recognized for their inventions, but countless other inventors of color have gone largely unrecognized. Others are completely lost to history. “There were some instances where Black inventors would compete with Alexander Graham Bell, with Thomas Edison, where their inventions were really just as good and just as transformative, but they just did not have access to the capital,” says Shontavia Johnson, an entrepreneur and associate vice president for entrepreneurship and innovation at Clemson University in South Carolina. “They did not have access to all these different systems that the United States puts in place to support inventors.” Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the lightbulb, but it was Lewis Latimer, the son of formerly enslaved people, who patented a new filament that extended the lifespan of lightbulbs so they wouldn’t die out after a few days. Latimer got a patent for his invention in 1882, something countless Black innovators in the generations before him were unable to do. Free Black citizens could obtain patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but enslaved Black people could not. Slavery wasn’t abolished until 1865, with the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. …

Chinese health authorities reported nearly 3,400 COVID-19 cases on Sunday, double the previous day, forcing lockdowns on virus hotspots as the country contends with its gravest outbreak in two years. A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down several northeastern cities, as almost 19 provinces battle clusters of the omicron and delta variants. The city of Jilin has been partially locked down, with hundreds of neighborhoods sealed up, an official announced Sunday, while Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, was fully closed off. China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has maintained a strict ‘zero-COVID’ policy enforced by swift lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing when clusters have emerged. But the latest flare-up, driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant and a spike in asymptomatic cases, is challenging that approach. Zhang Yan, an official with the Jilin provincial health commission, admitted Sunday that local authorities’ virus response so far had been lacking. “The emergency response mechanism in some areas is not robust enough, there is insufficient understanding of the characteristics of the omicron variant… and judgment has been inaccurate,” he said at a government press briefing. Residents of Jilin have completed six rounds of mass testing, local officials said. On Sunday the city reported over 500 cases of the omicron variant. The neighboring city of Changchun — an industrial base of 9 million people — was locked down Friday. The smaller cities of Siping and Dunhua, …

Western sanctions against Russia could cause the International Space Station to crash, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos warned Saturday, calling for the punitive measures to be lifted. According to Dmitry Rogozin, the sanctions, some of which predate Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, could disrupt the operation of Russian spacecraft servicing the ISS. As a result, the Russian segment of the station — which helps correct its orbit — could be affected, causing the 500-ton structure to “fall down into the sea or onto land,” the Roscosmos chief wrote on Telegram. “The Russian segment ensures that the station’s orbit is corrected (on average 11 times a year), including to avoid space debris,” said Rogozin, who regularly expresses his support for the Russian army in Ukraine on social networks. Publishing a map of the locations where the ISS could possibly come down, he pointed out that it was unlikely to be in Russia. “But the populations of other countries, especially those led by the ‘dogs of war’, should think about the price of the sanctions against Roscosmos,” he continued, describing the countries who imposed sanctions as “crazy.” Rogozin similarly raised the threat of the space station falling to earth last month while blasting Western sanctions on Twitter. On March 1, NASA said it was trying to find a solution to keep the ISS in orbit without Russia’s help. Crews and supplies are transported to the Russian segment by Soyuz spacecraft. But Rogozin said the launcher used for take-off had been “under …