Month: December 2022

Hollywood Cat is no longer. The Los Angeles area’s most famous mountain lion, an aged wild male feline sighted around the city’s Griffith Park, was euthanized Saturday, wildlife officials said. For years, it was known to prowl around the hillside “Hollywood” sign visible around much of Los Angeles, a fitting setting for a celebrity cat. It earned the nickname Hollywood Cat, but the mountain lion — estimated to be around 11 years old  — is officially called P-22. State and federal wildlife officers decided earlier this month to capture it due to its erratic behavior, perhaps associated with being struck by a vehicle. Veterinarians found “significant trauma” to its head, right eye and internal organs, California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. The experts also found underlying health issues, including “irreversible kidney disease, chronic weight loss, extensive parasitic skin infection over his entire body and localized arthritis.” “The most difficult, but compassionate choice was to respectfully minimize his suffering and stress by humanely ending his journey,” the statement said. “Mountain lion P-22 has had an extraordinary life and captured the hearts of the people of Los Angeles and beyond.” Euthanizing the cougar was a punch to the gut for game experts who had grown to love the animal. “This really hurts,” said Chuck Bonham, director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, when he announced P-22’s death, according to USA Today. “It’s been an incredibly difficult several days.” ‘Our favorite celebrity’  Congressman Adam Schiff, who represents part of …

Uganda on Saturday lifted a two-month lockdown on two districts at the epicenter of the country’s Ebola epidemic, amid cautious hope that the outbreak could end soon. Since authorities declared an Ebola outbreak Sept. 20, the East African nation has registered 142 confirmed cases and 56 deaths, with the disease spreading to the capital, Kampala. The two central districts at the heart of the outbreak, Mubende and Kassanda, were placed under lockdown by President Yoweri Museveni on Oct. 15. But on Saturday, Vice President Jessica Alupo announced that the government was “lifting all movement restrictions and curfew in Mubende and Kassanda districts with immediate effect.” The two hotspots were under a dusk-to-dawn curfew, with markets, bars and churches closed as well as personal travel banned. “The lifting of the restrictions is based on the fact that currently there is currently no transmission, no contact under follow-up, no patients in the isolation facilities, and we are progressing well,” Alupo said in a televised address delivered on behalf of Museveni. Ugandan authorities said last month that new cases were falling, and the last confirmed patient with the disease was discharged from hospital Nov. 30. Alupa warned however that the government remained on “high alert” for any resurgence in cases. The announcement came after local leaders in the two districts appealed last month for the lockdown to be lifted and implored the central government to provide aid to citizens hit hard by the curbs on business. The outbreak has been caused by the …

Negotiators at a United Nations biodiversity conference Saturday have still not resolved most of the key issues around protecting the world’s nature by 2030 and providing tens of billions of dollars to developing countries to fund those efforts. The United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, is set to wrap up Monday in Montreal and delegates were racing to agree on language in a framework that calls for protecting 30% of global land and marine areas by 2030, a goal known as “30 by 30.” Currently, 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas globally are protected. They also have to settle on amounts of funding that would go to financing projects to create protected areas and restore marine and other ecosystems. Early draft frameworks called for closing a $700 billion gap in financing by 2030. Most of that would come from reforming subsidies in the agriculture, fisheries and energy sectors but there are also calls for tens of billions of dollars in new funding that would flow from rich to poor nations. “From the beginning of the negotiations, we’ve been seeing systematically some countries weakening the ambition. The ambition needs to come back,” Marco Lambertini, the director general of WWF International said, adding that they needed a “clear conservation target” that “sets the world on a clear trajectory towards delivering a nature positive future.” Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, expressed more optimism. Guilbeault told The Associated Press Saturday morning that he has heard “few people talk …

Outside a funeral home in eastern Beijing, dozens of people were bundled up in parkas and hats against the freezing temperatures Friday evening as workers in full protective suits wheeled out coffins one by one. When an employee with a clipboard shouted the name of the dead, a relative trundled up to the coffin to examine the body. One of the relatives told The Associated Press their loved one had been infected with COVID-19. Deaths linked to the coronavirus are appearing in Beijing after weeks of China reporting no fatalities, even as the country is seeing a surge of cases. That surge comes as the government last week dramatically eased some of the world’s strictest COVID-19 containment measures. On Wednesday, the government said it would stop reporting asymptomatic COVID-19 cases since they’ve become impossible to track with mass testing no longer required. That halt in reporting made it unclear how fast the virus is spreading. Social media posts, business closures and other anecdotal evidence suggest huge numbers of infections. It’s also unclear how many people are dying from the virus. An AP reporter who visited the Dongjiao Funeral home was told by relatives that at least two people cremated there had died after testing positive. Health authorities had designated Dongjiao and one other funeral home to cremate those who die after testing positive, according to a relative of one of the dead. The woman said her elderly relative had fallen ill in early December, tested positive, and died Friday morning …

he World Health Organization warns billions of people who lack access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene are at risk of deadly infectious diseases. The finding appears in the WHO and U.N.-Water’s Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report issued this week. Data collected from 121 countries show billions of people are facing a health crisis and states must act urgently to improve water, sanitation and hygiene, known as WASH. The report, the most comprehensive to date, finds most countries are not on track to achieve the U.N. sustainable development goal of providing water and sanitation for all by 2030. Bruce Gordon is unit head, water, sanitation, hygiene and health at the WHO. While dramatic acceleration is needed, he says only 25 percent of countries are on track to meet their target for sanitation and only 45 percent for drinking water. ((GORDON ACT))   “This is against the backdrop of a tremendous amount of disease from diarrhea linked to ingestion of poor water, the root cause of poor sanitation. Lack of hand hygiene that impacts also on respiratory infections. And so, almost 2 million people are dying every year because of poorly managed water, sanitation and hygiene.”   ((END ACT))   Gordon says countries need to recommit to the targets they have made to save those lives. He notes a major opportunity to do that will occur during an historic U.N. water and sanitation conference in March. For the first time in 50 years, he says, …

The World Health Organization says climate change is behind an unprecedented surge in the number of cholera outbreaks around the world this year. At least 30 countries have reported outbreaks of the deadly disease this year, about a third higher than normally seen. Philippe Barboza, WHO’s team leader for cholera and epidemic diarrheal diseases, said most of the large cholera outbreaks have coincided with adverse climate events and have been visibly and directly affected by them. “Very severe droughts like, for example, in the Horn of Africa, in the Sahel but also in other parts of the world,” he said. “Major floods, unprecedented monsoons, succession of cyclones. So, most again, most of these outbreaks appear to be fueled by the result of the climate change.” No quick reprieve is in sight. The World Meteorological Organization predicts the so-called La Nina climate phenomenon will last through the end of this year. The pattern, which cools the surface of ocean waters, is expected to continue well into 2023. That will result in prolonged droughts and flooding and increased cyclones. Consequently, health officials warn large cholera outbreaks are likely to continue and spread to wider areas over the next six months. Barboza said preventing disease outbreaks will be a challenge. He said a global shortage of vaccine has forced the WHO to temporarily suspend its two-dose strategy and switch to a single dose approach. That allows many more people to be vaccinated against cholera. However, he said it shortens the period of immunity …

Russian and NASA engineers were assessing a coolant leak on Thursday from a Soyuz crew capsule docked with the International Space Station that could have been caused by a micrometeorite strike. Dramatic NASA TV images showed white particles resembling snowflakes streaming out of the rear of the vessel for hours. The coolant leak forced the last-minute cancellation of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday and could potentially impact a return flight to Earth by three crew members. Leak posed no danger Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos and the U.S. space agency said the leak on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft did not pose any danger to the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station. “The crew members aboard the space station are safe, and were not in any danger during the leak,” NASA said. It said ground teams were evaluating “potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft.” “NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action,” NASA said. The TASS news agency quoted Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who heads the crewed space flight program for Roscosmos, as saying that the leak could have been caused by a tiny meteorite striking Soyuz MS-22. “The cause of the leak may be a micrometeorite entering the radiator,” TASS quoted Krikalev as saying. “Possible consequences are changes in the temperature regime.” “No other changes in the telemetric parameters of either the Soyuz spacecraft or the (ISS) station on the Russian or American segments have been …

The United States is monitoring for new coronavirus variants as it braces for a potential outbreak of COVID-19 infections following Beijing’s easing of strict controls that kept the pandemic at bay in China. “We have a very robust surveillance program that we use for travelers as people come in, in terms of identifying people who are infected, tracking variants,” Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus response coordinator, told VOA during a briefing with reporters on Thursday. “And if there are new variants that emerge, I’m confident that we will be able to identify them.” Jha said the monitoring mechanism includes testing wastewater in the U.S. and through partners abroad. China changes its approach On Wednesday, Beijing announced major changes to its national pandemic response, moving away from its strict zero-COVID approach, which relied heavily on lockdowns and prompted protests across the country. The new guidelines no longer mandate health QR codes to enter public places and allow patients with mild cases to quarantine at home instead of in crowded government facilities. A major COVID-19 outbreak in China would have unpredictable effects on the virus, said Xi Chen, Yale University professor of public health. “The world’s most populous country includes a large number of immunocompromised people who can harbor the virus for months,” he told VOA.  Those conditions, he said, “may produce variants of concern.” However, Chen noted there may be a reduced risk of new variants spinning out of a Chinese outbreak. “China has stuck with zero-COVID so long that its population …

A week after China dramatically eased its three-year-long zero-COVID policy of lockdowns and near-daily PCR testing, the country is experiencing its biggest wave of COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began in 2020. But Ray Yip, an American epidemiologist and a former director of the China branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Professor Jin Dong-Yan, a virologist in the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Biochemistry, say the relatively mild nature of omicron, China’s high vaccination rate and people voluntarily staying home, could help China avoid a huge increase in deaths. Yip, who is also a former head of the China office for UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jin, a respected virologist, explained to VOA’s Cindy Sui why the situation in China may not be as bad as feared. These December 14 and 15 interviews have been edited for length and clarity. VOA: What is going on in China’s hospitals? Yip: Most hospitals in big cities right now are overrun, but they are overrun from basically people with symptoms that don’t have to go to the hospital, like fever and runny nose. The truth is, COVID is like any flu. Unless you’ve developed respiratory failure and you need to have higher-level care, you get better on your own. You just drink a lot of fluid and stay in bed. But in China, most people, most parents, believe every time your child or your family member has anything not well, you rush them …

China raced to vaccinate its most vulnerable people on Thursday in anticipation of waves of COVID-19 infections, with some analysts expecting the death toll to soar after it eased strict controls that had kept the pandemic at bay for three years.  The push comes as the World Health Organization also raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion population was not adequately vaccinated and the United States offered help in dealing with a surge in infections. Beijing last Wednesday began dismantling its tough ‘zero-COVID’ controls, dropping testing requirements and easing quarantine rules that had caused mental stress for tens of millions and battered the world’s second largest economy. The pivot away from President Xi Jinping’s signature “zero-COVID” policy followed unprecedented widespread protests against it. But, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to phase out its stringent regime.  “There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” Ryan told a briefing in Geneva. “The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease.” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday China has “institutional advantages” to fight COVID. “We will certainly be able to smoothly get through the peak of the epidemic,” he told a regular news briefing in response to White House national security spokesperson John Kirby saying that the U.S. was ready to help if China requested it. There …

National Health Service nurses in Britain will strike on Thursday in their first-ever national walkout as a bitter dispute with the government over pay ramps up pressure on already-stretched hospitals at one of the busiest times of year. An estimated 100,000 nurses will strike at 76 hospitals and health centers on Thursday, canceling thousands of non-urgent operations, such as hip replacements, and tens of thousands of outpatient appointments in Britain’s state-funded NHS. Britain is facing a wave of industrial action this winter, with strikes crippling the rail network and postal service, and airports bracing for disruption over Christmas. Inflation running at more than 10%, trailed by pay offers of around 4%, is stoking tensions between unions and employers. Of all the strikes though, it will be the sight of nurses on picket lines that will be the standout image for many Britains this winter. “It is deeply regrettable some union members are going ahead with strike action,” health minister Steve Barclay said. “I’ve been working across government and with medics outside the public sector to ensure safe staffing levels — but I do remain concerned about the risk that strikes pose to patients.” Considered a national treasure The widely admired nursing profession will shut down parts of the NHS, which since its founding in 1948 has developed national treasure status for being free at the point of use, hitting health care provision when it is already stretched in winter and with backlogs at record levels due to COVID delays Barclay …

What’s a dust devil sound like on Mars? A NASA rover by chance had its microphone on when a whirling tower of red dust passed directly overhead, recording the racket. It’s about 10 seconds of not only rumbling gusts of up to 25 mph (40 kph), but the pinging of hundreds of dust particles against the rover Perseverance. Scientists released the first-of-its-kind audio Tuesday. It sounds strikingly similar to dust devils on Earth, although quieter since Mars’ thin atmosphere makes for more muted sounds and less forceful wind, according to the researchers. The dust devil came and went over Perseverance quickly last year, thus the short length of the audio, said the University of Toulouse’s Naomi Murdoch, lead author of the study appearing in Nature Communications. At the same time, the navigation camera on the parked rover captured images, while its weather-monitoring instrument collected data. “It was fully caught red-handed by Persy,” said co-author German Martinez of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. A 1-in-200 chance Photographed for decades at Mars but never heard until now, dust devils are common at the red planet. This one was in the average range: at least 400 feet (118 meters) tall and 80 feet (25 meters) across, traveling at 16 feet (5 meters) per second. The microphone picked up 308 dust pings as the dust devil whipped by, said Murdoch, who helped build it. Given that the rover’s SuperCam microphone is turned on for less than three minutes every few days, Murdoch …

A South African researcher has developed a way to remove contaminants from water used in mining that could help clean up the dirty industry. The award-winning ion exchange method not only cleans the water but captures polluting metals that can then be re-purposed. At a Johannesburg laboratory, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand have developed a way to clean acid mine drainage (AMD). AMD is the runoff of pollutants like sulfuric acid and heavy metals that secrete into waterways, affecting wildlife and rural mining communities. AMD is often found at gold and coal mines, which are plentiful in South Africa. Tamlyn Naidu is a post-doctoral research fellow involved in the project. “What we wanted to do is minimize environmental impact for a lot of these communities that are afflicted by AMD. They have been born into mining communities, they work in mining communities, they’re either scared to report it or to complain about it, because this is their livelihood,” she said. The ion exchange filtration system that Naidu and her colleagues have developed uses countless polystyrene beads, each the size of a pinhead, which the water passes through. Unlike a coffee filter, which physically blocks coffee grounds from passing through with water, the beads grab the contaminants in the water chemically. The passing water, which can be scaled up to clean 1,000 liters an hour, then comes out clear. “This project though, does something extra. It also wants to extract from the water valuable materials. So what has been …

Fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo’s military and rebels has since March displaced nearly 400,000 people, with most IDP camps in Nyiragongo territory, where health centers are struggling to cope. Ruth Omar Esther visited a medical center in Nyiragongo and has this report. …

New Zealand on Tuesday passed into law a unique plan to phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes. The law states that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after January 1, 2009. It means the minimum age for buying cigarettes will keep going up and up. In theory, somebody trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need ID to show they were at least 63 years old. But health authorities hope smoking will fade away well before then. They have a stated goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025. The new law also reduces the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco from about 6,000 to 600 and decreases the amount of nicotine allowed in tobacco that is smoked. “There is no good reason to allow a product to be sold that kills half the people that use it,” Associate Minister of Health Dr. Ayesha Verrall told lawmakers in Parliament. “And I can tell you that we will end this in the future, as we pass this legislation.” She said the health system would save billions of dollars from not needing to treat illnesses caused by smoking, such as cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and amputations. She said the bill would create generational change and leave a legacy of better health for youth. Lawmakers voted along party lines in passing the legislation 76 to 43. The libertarian ACT party, which opposed the bill, said …

The Department of Energy planned an announcement Tuesday on a “major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of several sites worldwide where researchers have been trying to develop the possibility of harnessing energy from nuclear fusion.  It’s a technology that has the potential to one day accelerate the planet’s shift away from fossil fuels, which are the major contributors to climate change. The technology has long struggled with daunting challenges.  Here’s a look at exactly what nuclear fusion is, and some of the difficulties in turning it into the cheap and carbon-free energy source that scientists believe it can be.  What is nuclear fusion?  Look up, and it’s happening right above you — nuclear fusion reactions power the sun and other stars.  The reaction happens when two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus. Because the total mass of that single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei, the leftover mass is energy that is released in the process, according to the Department of Energy.  In the case of the sun, its intense heat — millions of degrees Celsius — and the pressure exerted by its gravity allow atoms that would otherwise repel each other to fuse.  Scientists have long understood how nuclear fusion has worked and have been trying to duplicate the process on Earth as far back as the 1930s. Current efforts focus on fusing a pair of hydrogen isotopes — deuterium and tritium — according to the Department …