Month: November 2022

An unmanned U.S. military space plane landed early Saturday after spending a record 908 days in orbit for its sixth mission and conducting science experiments. The solar-powered vehicle, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Its previous mission lasted 780 days. “Since the X-37B’s first launch in 2010, it has shattered records and provided our nation with an unrivaled capability to rapidly test and integrate new space technologies,” said Jim Chilton, a senior vice president for Boeing, its developer. For the first time, the space plane hosted a service module that carried experiments for the Naval Research Laboratory, U.S. Air Force Academy and others. The module separated from the vehicle before de-orbiting to ensure a safe landing. Among the experiments was a satellite dubbed the FalconSat-8 that was designed and built by academy cadets in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory. It was deployed in October 2021 and still remains in orbit. Another experiment evaluated the effects of long-duration space exposure on seeds. “This mission highlights the Space Force’s focus on collaboration in space exploration and expanding low-cost access to space for our partners, within and outside of the Department of the Air Force,” said Gen. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations. The X-37Be has now flown over 1.3 billion miles and spent a total of 3,774 days in space. …

Australian researchers have identified 1,500 additional locations across the country that could be used as pumped storage hydropower facilities. They have said it should reduce Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels. Academics at the Australian National University have said pumped storage hydropower is a “low-cost, mass storage option” that could help Australia reach its emissions reduction targets. Emeritus Professor Andrew Blakers at the university’s College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics told VOA the process involves transferring water between two reservoirs or lakes at different elevations. He said water is pumped to the higher reservoir when there are plentiful supplies of wind and solar energy. The water is then released at night, or at other times when it is not windy or sunny, maximizing the use of the stored energy in the reservoirs. “We have two reservoirs; one at the top of a hill and the other down in a valley connected with a pipe or tunnel,” he said. “On sunny and windy days, the pump turbine pumps water uphill to the upper reservoir and then in the middle of the night the water is allowed to come back down through the turbine to recover the energy that was stored. So, the same water goes up and down between the two reservoirs for 100 years. So, if you want large-scale storage, you go to pumped hydro.” Researchers studied the area near every reservoir in Australia looking for a potential site for another reservoir that could be used as pumped storage hydropower. They …

The 10 women gathered on yoga mats in a New Orleans suburb, the lights dimmed. “I’d like to invite you to close your eyes,” instructor Stephanie Osborne said in a soothing voice from the front of the room. The only other noises were the hum of the air conditioner and the distant sounds of children playing in a nearby field. For the next hour the women focused on various mindfulness exercises designed to help them deal with the stress of everyday life. The six-week mindfulness program in Slidell, Louisiana, is the brainchild of Kentrell Jones, the executive director of East St. Tammany Habitat for Humanity, who was concerned about the health of her colleagues and others affected by Hurricane Ida, which ripped through this region east of New Orleans last year. Participants meet for an hour once a week for six weeks beginning with the inaugural session this fall and plans for future sessions next year. Prospective participants, who had to be living in the parish during Hurricane Ida, filled out a survey asking them questions such as whether they had struggled with lack of sleep or had problems paying bills or having to relocate since the hurricane. They don’t have to be clients of Habitat for Humanity’s housing programs, although some are. Jones said the organization’s clients have struggled with being displaced from their homes, trying to complete repairs while dealing with insurance and living through another hurricane season in which the calendar is filled with anniversaries of previous …

As Ugandan farmer Bonaventura Senyonga prepares to bury his grandson, age-old traditions are forgotten and fear hangs in the air while a government medical team prepares the body for the funeral — the latest victim of Ebola in the East African nation. Bidding the dead goodbye is rarely a quiet affair in Uganda, where the bereaved seek solace in the embrace of community members who converge on their homes to mourn the loss together. Not this time. Instead, 80-year-old Senyonga is accompanied by just a handful of relatives as he digs a grave on the family’s ancestral land, surrounded by banana trees. “At first we thought it was a joke or witchcraft but when we started seeing bodies, we realized this is real, and that Ebola can kill,” Senyonga told AFP. His 30-year-old grandson Ibrahim Kyeyune was a father of two girls and worked as a motorcycle mechanic in central Kassanda district, which together with neighboring Mubende is at the epicenter of Uganda’s Ebola crisis. Both districts have been under a lockdown since mid-October, with a dawn-to-dusk curfew, a ban on personal travel and public places shuttered. The reappearance of the virus after three years has sparked fear in Uganda, with cases now reported in the capital, Kampala, as the highly contagious disease makes its way through the country of 47 million people. In all, 53 people have died, including children, out of more than 135 cases, according to the latest Ugandan health ministry figures. ‘Ebola has shocked us’ In …

The U.N. climate talks in Egypt have reached the halfway mark, with negotiators still working on draft agreements before ministers arrive next week to push for a substantial deal to fight climate change. The two-week meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh started with strong appeals from world leaders for greater efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help poor nations cope with global warming. Scientists say the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere needs to be halved by 2030 to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. The 2015 pact set a target of ideally limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century but left it up to countries to decide how they want to do so. Here is a look at the main issues on the table at the COP27 talks: What about the U.S. and China? The top U.S. negotiator suggested that a planned meeting Monday between U.S. President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping of China on the sideline of the Group of 20 meeting in Bali could also provide an important signal for the climate talks as they go into the home stretch. With impacts from climate change being felt across the globe, there’s been a push for rich polluters to donate more cash to help developing countries shift to clean energy and adapt to global warming; increasingly there are also calls for compensation to pay for climate-related losses. China is the biggest polluter by far right now, but …

As Uganda struggled to control the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, Health Ministry officials said Friday the cases are gradually stabilizing. This comes after media reports that some leaked documents show the disease could claim 500 lives by next April. The country has recorded 137 Ebola cases and 54 deaths since the outbreak began in September. Ugandan Health Ministry officials have gone on the defense in the face of reports that the deadly Ebola Sudan virus disease is spiraling out of control. Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, Uganda’s health minister, told reporters Friday that the country’s cases are gradually stabilizing, as shown by trends in the last week. An article in the British daily newspaper, The Telegraph, this week reported that leaked donor documents said the ministry had projected 250 deaths by the end of this year and 500 Ebola deaths by next April. Aceng said the outbreak is being monitored closely and cases are being followed. She said cases in Kampala and other areas are under quarantine, apart from Kasanda district, which has made it easy for authorities to control the epidemic. The government has placed the two districts most affected by the Ebola outbreak — Kasanda and Mubende — under quarantine for another 21 days, although Mubende is not reporting new cases. The government also is ordering an early closure of primary schools countrywide. “We have never done any modeling for this Ebola outbreak. Not Ministry of Health, not the scientific advisory committee, not the National Planning Authority. …

On a beach in Senegal with so much plastic trash that much of the sand is covered, one man is trying to raise awareness about the dangers of plastics — by wearing many of the bags, cups and other junk that might just as soon be part of trash piles.  Environmental activist Modou Fall, who many simply call “Plastic Man,” wears his uniform — “it’s not a costume,” he emphasizes — while telling anybody who will listen about the problems of plastics. As he walks, strands and chunks of plastic dangle from his arms and legs, rustling in the wind while some drags on the ground. On Fall’s chest, poking out from the plastics, is a sign in French that says, “No to plastic bags.”  A former soldier, the 49-year-old father of three children says that plastic pollution, often excessive from people who chuck things wherever without a second thought, is an ecological disaster.  “It’s a poison for health, for the ocean, for the population,” he said.  On this recent day, Fall traverses Yarakh Beach in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. But it could have been any number of other places: Fall has taken his message national, visiting cities across the west African country for years. In 2011, during World Environment Day, he started as Plastic Man.  He founded an environmental association, called Clean Senegal, that raises awareness via education campaigns and encourages reuse and recycling.  As he walks, kids on the beach shout: “Kankurang! Kankurang is coming!”  Part of …

Heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Nicole covered the eastern United States from Georgia to the Canadian border Friday while hundreds of people on a hard-hit stretch of Florida’s coast wondered when, or if, they could return to their homes. As Nicole’s leftovers pushed northward, forecasters issued multiple tornado warnings in the Carolinas and Virginia, although no touchdowns were reported immediately. Downgraded to a depression, Nicole could dump as much as 20 centimeters of rain over the Blue Ridge Mountains, forecasters said. Plus, there was a chance of flash and urban flooding as far north as New England. Wrecks added to the notoriously bad traffic in Atlanta as rain from Nicole fell across the metro area during rush hour, and a few school systems in mountainous north Georgia canceled classes. The situation was a lot worse in eastern Florida. One roughly 24-kilometer-long area of the coast was severely eroded, with multiple seawalls destroyed. Much of the destruction was blamed on unrepaired seawalls bashed during Ian, which killed more than 130 people and destroyed thousands of homes. In Wilbur-by-the-Sea, workers tried to stabilize remaining sections of land with rocks and dirt as waves washed over pieces of lumber and concrete blocks that once were part of homes. Parts of otherwise intact buildings hung over cliffs of sand created by pounding waves that covered the normally wide beach. Dozens of hotel and condominium towers as tall as 22 stories were declared uninhabitable in Daytona Beach Shores and New Smyrna Beach after …

The United States will keep in place the public health emergency status of the coronavirus pandemic, allowing millions of Americans to still receive free tests, vaccines and treatments until at least April of next year, two Biden administration officials said Friday. The possibility of a winter surge in COVID-19 cases and the need for more time to transition out of the public health emergency (PHE) to a private market were two factors that contributed to the decision not to end the emergency status in January, one of the officials said. The public health emergency was initially declared in January 2020, when the pandemic began, and has been renewed each quarter since. But in August, the government began signaling it planned to let it expire in January. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has promised to give states 60 days’ notice before letting the emergency expire, which would have been on Friday if it did not plan on renewing it again in January. The agency did not provide such notice, the second official said. Health experts believe a surge in COVID-19 infections in the United States is likely this winter, one official said. “We may be in the middle of one in January,” he said. “That is not the moment you want to pull down the public health emergency.” Hundreds still dying every day Daily U.S. cases were down to an average of nearly 41,300 as of Wednesday, but an average of 335 people a day are still dying …

Beijing closed city parks and imposed other restrictions as the country faces a new wave of COVID-19 cases, even as millions of people remained under lockdown Friday in the west and south of China. The country reported 10,729 new cases on Friday, almost all of them testing positive while showing no symptoms. More than 5 million people were under lockdown Friday in the southern manufacturing hub Guangzhou and the western megacity Chongqing. With the bulk of Beijing’s 21 million people undergoing near daily testing, another 118 new cases were recorded in the sprawling city. Many city schools switched to online classes, hospitals restricted services and some shops and restaurants were shuttered, with their staff taken to quarantine. Videos on social media showed people in some areas protesting or fighting with police and health workers. “It has become normal, just like eating and sleeping,” said food service worker Yang Zheng, 39. “I think what it impacts most is kids because they need to go to school.” Demands for testing every 24-48 hours are “troublesome,” said Ying Yiyang, who works in marketing. “My life is for sure not comparable to what it was three years ago,” said Ying. Family visits outside of Beijing can be difficult if the smartphone app that virtually all Chinese are required to display does not green-light travel back to the capital, Ying said. “I just stay in Beijing,” Ying said. Numerous villages on the capital’s outskirts that are home to blue-collar workers whose labor keeps the city …

President Joe Biden is headed to Egypt for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), where he will discuss US climate crisis strategies. But environmental campaigners say wealthy nations need to focus on meeting their $100 billion pledge to cover climate change losses. Anita Powell reports. …

The moon gave us a show we won’t again see for another three years. Plus, the U.K. is set for its first satellite launch, and NASA’s Artemis program is poised for another try. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …

People who have had COVID-19 more than once are two or three times more likely to have a range of serious health problems than those who have only had it once, the first major study on the subject said Thursday. Multiple infections have surged as the pandemic rumbles on and the virus mutates into new strains, but the long-term health effects of reinfection have not been clear. The U.S. researchers said their new study published in the Nature Medicine journal was the first to look at how reinfection increases the risk of health problems from acute cases as well as long COVID. The researchers analyzed the anonymous medical records of 5.8 million people in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ national health care database. More than 443,000 had tested positive for COVID-19 at least once between March 1, 2020, and April this year. Nearly 41,000 of that group had COVID more than once. More than 93% had a total of two infections, while 6% had three, and nearly 1% had four. The other 5.3 million never contracted COVID-19. When the researchers compared the health outcomes of the different groups, they found that “people who got reinfected have an increased risk of all sorts of adverse health problems,” Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the study’s senior author, told AFP. People with repeat infections were twice as likely to die prematurely and three times more likely to be hospitalized with illness than those who had not …

China Wednesday said it would not pay into a climate loss and damage fund for developing nations, after small island nations cited its responsibility as a high carbon emitter at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, COP27. Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, on behalf of the Association of Small Island States, Tuesday called for major greenhouse gas emitters China and India to chip in for a fund to compensate poor countries for the consequences of climate change. It was the first time developing nations have included China and India among countries financially accountable for emissions. Beijing would support such a mechanism, but would not pay cash into the loss and damage fund, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said Wednesday. Xie added that China does is not obliged to contribute but reiterated the country’s alignment with developing nations in seeking such fund from developed countries. Despite being the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter China has long been categorized as a developing nation and is put into the same group with developing countries at COP for climate discussions. Developing countries have long urged wealthier nations to deliver on promises of $100 billion a year for climate mitigation and adaptation, but rich nations were found to fall short on that pledge, according to an OECD report. The pressure from developing nations for China to pay for loss and damage reflects a “diluted view” of the argument that historic emitters should pay the most, according to Scott Moore, director of China …

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on Wednesday announced the creation of a carbon offset plan meant to help developing countries speed their transition away from fossil fuels. Kerry launched the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) with the intention of funding renewable energy projects and accelerating clean energy transitions in developing countries. The United States will develop the program with the Bezos Earth Fund and Rockefeller Foundation, with input from the public and private sectors which would operate through 2030 and possibly be extended to 2035. Kerry said Chile and Nigeria were among the developing countries to have shown early interest in the ETA, and that Bank of America, Microsoft, PepsiCo and Standard Chartered Bank had voiced interest in “informing the ETA’s development”. “Our intention is to put the carbon market to work to deploy capital to speed the transition from dirty to clean power specifically, to retire unabated coal-fired power and accelerate the buildout of renewables,” he said at the event launch on Wednesday. Kerry added that the carbon credits used in the program would be “high quality” and meet “strong safeguards”. The U.S. climate envoy acknowledged widespread criticism of voluntary carbon offset schemes raised by environmental groups and a task force created by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which on Tuesday recommended that carbon credits be used sparingly by companies and governments to avoiding undermining their net-zero emission plans. Kerry said Guterres was supportive of the U.S.-led carbon market initiative provided there were safeguards to it. The two had met …

Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday. The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. There have been numerous job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic. Zuckerberg as well said that he had made the decision to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic ended. “Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” Meta, like other social media companies, enjoyed a financial boost during the pandemic lockdown era because more people stayed home and scrolled on their phones and computers. But as the lockdowns ended and people started going outside again, revenue growth began to falter. An economic slowdown and a grim outlook for online advertising — by far Meta’s biggest revenue source — have contributed to Meta’s woes. This summer, Meta posted its first quarterly revenue decline in history, followed by another, bigger decline in the fall. Some of the pain is company-specific, while some is tied to broader economic and technological forces. Last week, Twitter …

NASA again rescheduled its long-delayed uncrewed mission to the Moon on Tuesday as Tropical Storm Nicole churned toward the east coast of Florida, officials said. A launch attempt, which had been scheduled for November 14, will now take place on November 16, Jim Free, a senior official at the U.S. space agency, said on Twitter. It is the third delay of the highly anticipated launch in as many months. “Our people are the most important aspect of our mission,” wrote Free, who is NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development. “Adjusting our target launch date for #Artemis I prioritizes employee safety and allows our team to tend to the needs of their families and homes.” The Atlantic Ocean storm was expected to develop into a hurricane Wednesday near the Bahamas, before making landfall in Florida either later that evening or early Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said. A hurricane warning has been issued near the Kennedy Space Center, where the rocket — NASA’s most powerful ever — is to blast off. With Nicole gaining strength, “NASA … has decided to retarget a launch for the Artemis I mission for Wednesday, November 16, pending safe conditions for employees to return to work, as well as inspections after the storm has passed,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday evening. NASA added that a launch occurring during a two-hour window that opens at 1:04 a.m. EST (0604 GMT) on November 16 would result in a splashdown on Friday, December 11. A back-up …

The Horn of Africa’s record drought has dried up wide areas of land and vegetation, left millions of livestock dead and threatened the survival of both wildlife and people. In Kenya, to reduce the impact of drought, a Dutch conservation group is helping ethnic Maasai to restore parched lands through rainwater harvesting. But with a failed rainy season forecast for the fifth time in a row, some are asking whether conservation efforts will be enough. Reporter Juma Majanga has more from Amboseli Kenya. Videographer: Juma Majanga …

The Ugandan government says it will end the school year earlier than planned because of an Ebola outbreak that has affected 23 students, including eight children who died. Millions of Ugandan students in primary and secondary schools will be affected by the decision to end the semester two weeks early, due to the ongoing Ebola virus outbreak. Joyce Moriku Kaducu, the state minister for education, announced the closure on Tuesday. “Pre-primary, primary and secondary schools will close for Term 3 holidays on Friday, 25th November 2022,” Kaducu said. According to the Ministry of Education, Ebola cases were found at five schools in the Kampala, Wakiso and Mubende districts.     Kaducu said the Cabinet of President Yoweri Museveni made the decision to close schools nationwide based on concerns that crowded schools will increase infection rates for the virus.  The schools with affected children have been cordoned off and are being asked to decontaminate their facilities so children can safely return after the new year. The decision to end the school term early is a disappointment to many families.  Ugandan schools were closed for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic before reopening earlier this year. …