Year: 2022

Located on the rooftops of commercial skyscrapers, apartment buildings and warehouses, micro solar plants are starting to play a larger role in America’s quest for a green electrical grid. Aron Ranen reports from New York City. …

Black women and Native American women are more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women in America, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vice President Kamala Harris has made maternal health a key piece of her domestic policy agenda. For Wanda Irving, whose daughter died after giving birth, a national response can’t come fast enough. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has the story. Camera: Saqib Ul Islam, Adam Greenbaum, Mike Burke …

The United Nations AIDS program says progress is stalling on ending HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis by 2030 and action is needed to get it back on track. The UNAIDS program issued its assessment in a new report pointing to recent data that showed 1.5 million people were newly infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That is over a million more new infections than the global estimate set by the United Nations. The report found that in the span of a year, the AIDS pandemic took one life every minute, around 650,000 deaths. Mary Maby, the director for impact with UNAIDS, called those deaths preventable. She notes effective HIV treatment and tools to prevent, detect, and treat opportunistic infections are available but are not provided equitably across the world. Among those disproportionately affected by new infections, she says, are young women and adolescent girls. “Adolescent girls and young women are three times as likely to acquire HIV as adolescent boys and young men in sub-Saharan Africa. While men are less likely than women to obtain anti-retroviral therapy or achieve viral suppression, this leads to continued new infections in their female partners,” said Maby. The report finds new HIV infections have been rising for several years in eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East, North America, and Latin America. It says new infections are rising in Asia and the Pacific, the world’s most populous region. Officials say the rise is particularly alarming as infections in the region …

When images beamed back to Earth by NASA’s largest, most powerful space telescope were released earlier this month, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio shared one of them on Twitter accompanied by a Bible verse: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” The Webb telescope is orbiting the sun nearly two million kilometers from Earth. The observatory is on a mission to locate the universe’s first galaxies using extremely sensitive infrared cameras. The initial images released to the public provided the first-ever glimpse of ancient galaxies lighting up the sky. The reaction to Rubio’s post was inundated with remarks like, “You do realize you can only see that due to science?” And, “If only you were scientifically literate enough to understand all of the ways that this image disproves your mythology.” Reason versus superstition? The skeptical comments are emblematic of the long-standing, ongoing debate about whether science and religion can be reconciled. “There are a gazillion religions, each one making a different set of claims about reality, not just about the nature of God, but about history, about miracles, about what happened. And they’re all different, so they can’t all be true,” says Jerry A. Coyne, an evolutionary biologist and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. Coyne, who likens religion to superstition, wrote a book called, “Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible.” “The incompatibility is that both science and religion make statements about what is true in the universe,” Coyne says. “Science has a way of verifying them …

On the 32nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the U.S. remains one of a handful of countries that have not ratified the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — an international treaty the U.S. legislation inspired.   The ADA, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990, prohibits discrimination based on disability in public accommodations, employment, transportation and community living, and provides recourse for people with disabilities who faced discrimination.     “It’s hard for the newer generation to imagine the injustices suffered before the ADA,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday in a House Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus event to celebrate the ADA’s anniversary. Biden, who is still in isolation from his COVID-19 diagnosis, delivered his remarks virtually.   “If you’re disabled, stores can turn you away, and employers can refuse to hire you. If you use a wheelchair, there was no accommodation to take the bus or train to school or to work. America simply wasn’t built for all Americans,” Biden said.  The administration on Tuesday announced $1.75 billion to make it easier for people with disabilities to get on board the nation’s public transportation systems, including $343 million to help agencies retrofit train and subway stations built prior to the disabilities act.  During the caucus event, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats will not give up trying to ratify the CRPD. A National Security Council spokesperson told VOA the administration “would certainly support its ratification.”  However, …

Aid workers say deep poverty and harsh living conditions lead to hopelessness among Idlib’s youth …

The World Health Organization is urging people who may have been exposed to or at risk of monkeypox to get vaccinated against the disease as a preventive measure.  Since it declared monkeypox a global health threat last week, the WHO says the disease has continued to spread around the world, with cases topping 16,000 in at least 75 countries.  The WHO says the outbreak is mainly concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners. It warns against stigmatizing a whole group of people, as this could cause the outbreak to accelerate exponentially by driving the disease underground.  The WHO technical leader on monkeypox, Rosamund Lewis, says the outbreak can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups. She says mass vaccination is not required, but the WHO recommends vaccination for those who have been exposed or are at risk.  “When someone is vaccinated, it takes several weeks for the immune response to be generated by the body. So, it is not something you can be vaccinated one day and be protected the next. You need to give it some time,” Lewis said. “So, the folks we are recommending to be vaccinated right now are anyone who has exposure, a contact with someone who may have been confirmed to have monkeypox. And so, that could be family members. It could be other close contacts.”  She says even children are not immune from getting the disease. Between 80 and 90 cases of monkeypox in …

Russia said Tuesday it will pull out of the International Space Station after 2024 to build its own orbiting outpost. The country’s space chief made the announcement during a meeting with President Vladmir Putin. Yuri Borisov, CEO of state space agency Roscosmos, said during the meeting that Russia plans to fulfill a promise to its partners before fully stepping away. “Of course, we will comply with all our commitments to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said during the meeting. “I think we will have started work on the Russian space station by that time.” Moscow has made it clear that creating a Russian space station is one of its main priorities. The U.S. space agency has not been made specifically aware of Russia pulling out of the International Space Station, a senior NASA official told the Reuters news agency. NASA and the other partners involved in the International Space Station hope to continue their partnership through 2030, but Russia has been unwilling to commit to anything past 2024. The announcement comes at a time of heightened tensions between the West and Moscow due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also comes just a month after NASA and Roscosmos agreed to continue using Russian rockets to deliver astronauts to the space station. …

White House ramping up monkeypox testing, treatment and vaccines …

Regional authorities, medical professionals and residents of Ethiopia’s Afar region say they are in dire need of medical aid with hundreds of hospitals and health centers destroyed by conflict. The World Health Organization says it is struggling to fulfill the country’s needs as crises around the world intensify. Henry Wilkins reports from Berhale, Ethiopia. …

A report Monday in the British newspaper The Guardian said a growing number of people in the Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda are registering in health centers for non-communicable diseases, or NCDs, that are usually seen in older people and in urban areas. Examples cited in the paper included a hypertensive 6-year-old, a 2-year-old with respiratory problems, a 40-year-old woman with kidney failure who became hypertensive during a pregnancy, and a 20-year-old woman, diagnosed with diabetes after falling into a coma. The report says while the number of people with NCDs at Mahama is at 5% of the total caseload, the figures are rising every month. Mahama houses 58,000 of the country’s 127,000 refugees, The Guardian reported. Dieudonne Yiweza, senior regional public health officer for East and Horn of Africa at the U.N. refugee agency told the publication, “Before, we said NCDs affect urban settings. Now, they are attacking refugee settings . . . Now, they are affecting children and young people. For refugees, this is a challenging situation.” Yiweza said it is not uncommon to encounter children as young as 10 or 15 who have suffered strokes. Contributing factors to the NCDs in young people, Yiweza said, include poor housing, a limited diet that often lacks protein, and trauma.   …

Virtually all the contiguous United States experienced above normal temperatures in the past week, with more dangerously hot weather forecast.  The U.S. heat wave followed record heat that killed hundreds if not thousands of people and sparked wildfires in Europe. Following is an explanation of what is causing the heat waves, according to scientists. What is a heat wave? A heat wave has no single scientific definition. Depending on the climate of a region, it can be determined by a certain number of days above a specific temperature or percentile of the norm. Arctic warming and jet stream migration The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the globe as a whole, meaning there is ever less difference between northern temperatures and those closer to the equator. That is resulting in swings in the North Atlantic jet stream, which in turn leads to extreme weather events like heat waves and floods, according to Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Heat domes Warmer oceans contribute to heat domes, which trap heat over large geographical areas. This weekend the heat dome is stretching from the southern plains of the Oklahoma/Arkansas area all the way to the eastern seaboard, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. Scientists have found the main cause of heat domes is a strong change in ocean temperatures from west to east in the tropical Pacific Ocean during the preceding winter. “As prevailing winds move the hot air east, the northern shifts of …

China on Sunday launched the second of three modules to its permanent space station, in one of the final missions needed to complete the orbiting outpost by year’s end. A live feed on state broadcaster CCTV showed the 23-ton Wentian (“Quest for the Heavens”) laboratory module launching on the back of China’s most powerful rocket, the Long March 5B, at 2:22 p.m. (0622 GMT) from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan. Space agency staff, seen on the live feed observing the progress of the launch from a control room, cheered and applauded when the Wentian separated from the rocket about 10 minutes after the launch. The launch was “a complete success”, CCTV reported shortly after. China began constructing the space station in April 2021 with the launch of the Tianhe module, the main living quarters, in the first of 11 crewed and uncrewed missions in the undertaking. The Wentian lab module, 17.9 meters long, will be where astronauts can carry out scientific experiments, along with the other lab module yet to be launched – Mengtian (“Dreaming of the Heavens”). Wentian features an airlock cabin that is to be the main exit-entry point for extravehicular activities when the station is completed. It will also serve as short-term living quarters for astronauts during crew rotations on the station, designed for long-term accommodation of just three astronauts. Mengtian is expected to be launched in October and, like Wentian, is to dock with Tianhe, forming a T-shaped structure. The …

Maverick’s next wingman could be a drone. In the movies, fighter pilots are depicted as highly trained military aviators with the skills and experience to defeat adversaries in thrilling aerial dogfights. New technologies, though, are set to redefine what it means to be a “Top Gun,” as algorithms, data and machines take on a bigger role in the cockpit — changes hinted at in “Top Gun: Maverick.” “A lot of people talk about, you know, the way of the future, possibly taking the pilot out of the aircraft,” said 1st Lt. Walker Gall, an F-35 pilot with the U.S. 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath in England. “That’s definitely not something that any of us look forward to.” “I’d like to keep my job as long as possible, but I mean, it’s hard to argue with newer and newer technology,” he said. “And if that’s the way of the future, that’s what it is. But I’m just here to enjoy it while I can.” The future for fighter pilots was on display this week at the Farnborough International Airshow near London, one of the world’s biggest aviation, defense and aerospace expos. Defense contractors outlined how artificial intelligence and other technologies will be used in the newest warplanes as global military delegations browsed mockups of missiles, drones and fighter jets. At stake are many billions of dollars as countries update military fleets or pump up defense procurement budgets amid rising geopolitical tensions. The original “Top Gun” movie released in 1986 …

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus used his authority Saturday to declare Monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern. The action comes after an Emergency Committee convened to review the situation was unable to reach consensus. When the Emergency Committee last met a month ago, more than 3,000 cases of monkeypox in 47 countries had been reported to the WHO.  Since then, the outbreak has grown, with more than 16,000 cases reported in 75 countries. Five deaths from the disease also have been reported. As happened the last time it met, the committee again was unable to reach consensus on whether monkeypox posed a global health threat.  WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he has evaluated the information under consideration and has determined there is a clear risk of further international spread of the disease. “So, in short, we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations,” said Tedros. “For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern.”  Tedros says the WHO believes monkeypox poses a moderate risk globally and in all regions, except in the European region, where it assesses the risk as high.  Although there is a potential for further international spread, he says the danger of interference with international traffic remains low for now. The monkeypox virus is spread from …

Members of a World Health Organization (WHO) expert group are split over whether the monkeypox outbreak represents a global health emergency, but the agency’s director-general may still issue the maximum alert on Saturday, two sources close to the decision told Reuters. The committee, which met Thursday, provides advice to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is responsible for making the final decision over whether to declare a global health emergency. In the past, Tedros has always gone with the committee’s recommendation, but the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was seriously considering declaring the agency’s highest level of alert despite the lack of a majority opinion due to his concern about the urgency of the situation. The WHO is due to hold a news conference at 1300 GMT on Saturday to announce his ultimate decision.   The label – a “public health emergency of international concern” – currently only applies to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing efforts to eradicate polio. In recent weeks, pressure has been increasing from scientists and public health experts for the WHO and national governments to take more action on monkeypox. There have now been more than 14,000 cases reported, and five deaths, from 71 WHO member states. When the committee first met at the end of June, there were only about 3,000 cases. The WHO alert serves to raise the alarm and can also unlock funding and global efforts to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments. There are already effective treatments and …

Two children have been diagnosed with monkeypox in the U.S., health officials said Friday. One is a toddler in California and the other an infant who is not a U.S. resident but was tested while in Washington, D.C., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The children were described as being in good health and receiving treatment. How they caught the disease is being investigated, but officials think it was through household transmission. Other details weren’t immediately disclosed. Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, but this year more than 15,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. In the U.S. and Europe, most infections have happened in men who have sex with men, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus. In addition to the two pediatric cases, health officials said they were aware of at least eight women among the more than 2,800 U.S. cases reported so far. While the virus has mostly been spreading among men who have sex with men, “I don’t think it’s surprising that we are occasionally going to see cases” outside that social network, the CDC’s Jennifer McQuiston told reporters Friday. Officials have said the virus can spread through close personal contact, and via towels and bedding. That means it can happen in homes, likely through prolonged or intensive contact, said Dr. James Lawler, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “People don’t crawl on each other’s beds unless …

The spread of monkeypox in the U.S. could represent the dawn of a new sexually transmitted disease, though some health officials say the virus that causes pimple-like bumps might yet be contained before it gets firmly established. Experts don’t agree on the likely path of the disease, with some fearing that it is becoming so widespread that it is on the verge of becoming an entrenched STD — like gonorrhea, herpes and HIV. But no one’s really sure, and some say testing and vaccines can still stop the outbreak from taking root. So far, more than 2,400 U.S. cases have been reported as part of an international outbreak that emerged two months ago. Health officials are not sure how fast the virus has spread. They have only limited information about people who have been diagnosed, and they don’t know how many infected people might be spreading it unknowingly. They also don’t know how well vaccines and treatments are working. One impediment: Federal health officials do not have the authority to collect and connect data on who has been infected and who has been vaccinated. With such huge question marks, predictions about how big the U.S. outbreak will get this summer vary widely, from 13,000 to perhaps more than 10 times that number. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the government’s response is growing stronger every day and vaccine supplies will soon surge. “I think we still have an opportunity to contain this,” Walensky …

India and Namibia have signed an agreement to bring cheetahs to the forests of the South Asian country, where the large cat became extinct 70 years ago. According to the agreement signed Wednesday, eight African cheetahs will be transferred from Namibia to India in August for captive breeding at the Kuno National Park (KNP) wildlife sanctuary, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Indian officials said that as part of the “ambitious” project, 12 more African cheetahs from South Africa are expected to be brought to the park, though a formal agreement between the two countries has not yet been signed. The KNP wildlife sanctuary is the new Indian home for African cheetahs, complying with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines, including a specific focus on site quality, abundant prey base and vast swaths of grasslands. “The main goal of cheetah reintroduction project is to establish viable cheetah metapopulation in India that allows the cheetah to perform its functional role as a top predator,” a statement from the Indian Environment Ministry said. The arrival of the cheetahs is expected to coincide with India’s 75th Independence Day celebrations on August 15, 2022. After signing the agreement in New Delhi with Namibia’s Deputy Prime Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav tweeted: “Completing 75 glorious years of Independence with restoring the fastest terrestrial flagship species, the cheetah, in India, will rekindle the ecological dynamics of the landscape.” In another tweet, he said, “Cheetah reintroduction in India has a …

Ukrainian therapist Svitlana Kutsenko thought she was making progress with her patients — army veterans recovering from mental trauma suffered during fighting with Russia in 2014. Then, war erupted again. Now, five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kutsenko says the situation looks bleaker than ever. Many of her patients have returned to the front lines, while ordinary citizens scarred by the horrors of life in wartime are now seeking treatment. “Sometimes it’s bearable, sometimes it’s not,” Kutsenko, who lives in Kyiv, told The Associated Press. “Some people are suffering from huge fear — fear of death, fear of their relatives’ death and some are pretty angry about what’s going on and they want to somehow take this anger under control.” Kutsenko was among 20 Ukrainian mental health professionals who spent the past two weeks in Israel receiving training on how to treat trauma cases. Israel, which has gone through several wars with its Arab neighbors and has a large population of Holocaust survivors, has deep experience in treating psychological or mental trauma. But in Ukraine, awareness for recognizing and treating mental trauma remains relatively low. And despite a conflict with Russia that has been ongoing since 2014, the country is not equipped to deal with the numbers of people affected by the Russian invasion. Kutsenko said that there is a great difference between treating patients struggling to come to terms with events from the past and helping people who are under fire cope with grief and fear in real time. …