Year: 2022

Millions of Beijing residents queued up for another round of COVID-19 tests Sunday as China’s capital seeks to trace and isolate every infection to contain a small but stubborn outbreak — and avoid a Shanghai-type prolonged lockdown. Strict COVID curbs in Beijing, Shanghai and dozens of other major cities across China are taking a psychological toll on its people, weighing on the world’s second-largest economy and disrupting global supply chains and international trade. But Chinese authorities are unwavering in their commitment to stamp out the coronavirus, rather than live with COVID like many countries that are easing or ditching virus measures. Last week the authorities threatened action against critics of the zero-COVID policy. Most of the 25 million people in the commercial hub of Shanghai, China’s most populous city, had been confined to their housing compounds for more than a month. Many complain of not being able to get food or to access emergency health care or other basic services. Parts of Shanghai have seen their risk levels officially downgraded to the point where government rules would in theory allow them to leave their residences. But while some were allowed out for brief walks or grocery trips, most were still stuck behind the locked gates of their compounds, causing widespread frustration and occasionally leading to rare altercations with hazmat-suited authorities. Beijing was desperate to avoid such drama, relentlessly working to track and isolate infections. On Sunday, residents lined up for another round of tests in the Chaoyang, Fangshan and Fengtai …

In a bid to protect coastal communities from climate change and encourage investment, African nations are increasingly turning to mangrove restoration projects, with Mozambique becoming the latest addition to the growing list of countries with large scale mangrove initiatives. Mozambique follows efforts across the continent — including in Kenya, Madagascar, Gambia and Senegal — and is touted as the world’s largest coastal or marine ecosystem carbon storage project. Known as blue carbon, carbon captured by these ecosystems can sequester, or remove, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a faster rate than forests, despite being smaller in size. Mozambique’s mangrove restoration project — announced in February alongside its UAE-based partner Blue Forest Solutions — hopes to turn 185,000 hectares (457,100 acres) in the central Zambezia and southern Sofala provinces into a forest which could capture up to 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide, according to project leaders. “Blue carbon can be utilized not only to sequester tons of carbon dioxide but to also improve the lives of coastal communities,” Vahid Fotuhi, the Chief Executive officer of Blue Forest, told the Associated Press. “There are around one million hectares of mangroves forests in Africa. Collectively they’re able to sequester more carbon dioxide than the total annual emissions of a country like Croatia or Bolivia.” He added these projects would create green jobs and promote biodiversity. Africa’s major mangrove forests have been decimated in recent decades due to logging, fish farming, coastal development, and pollution, leading to increased blue carbon emissions and greater exposure …

The U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, reports the war in Ukraine is having a devastating impact on children, with tens of thousands requiring psychological and social care. Millions of children in Ukraine have suffered from more than two months of relentless bombing and shelling, a lack of food, the inability to go to school, and the loss of other essential services.  This psychological trauma, says UNICEF, has created a child protection crisis of extraordinary proportions. U.N. agencies report more than 6,800 civilian casualties, including more than 3,300 killed. Some 7.7 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine and more than 5.7 million others have sought refuge in neighboring countries, including nearly two-thirds of all children in Ukraine. Before Russia invaded Ukraine February 24, more than 90,000 children were living in institutions, orphanages, boarding schools, and other care facilities—nearly half of them are children with disabilities. Speaking from the western city of Lviv, Aaron Greenberg, UNICEF’s Regional Child Protection Adviser for Europe and Central Asia Region, said tens of thousands of these children have been returned to families. Unfortunately, he said, many children are not receiving the care and protection they require, especially children with disabilities. “The war has impacted all children’s psychosocial well-being. All of them,” he said. “Children have been uprooted from their homes, separated from caregivers, and directly exposed to war. Children have been shaken by bomb explosions and the blaring sirens of missile alert systems…. And, most importantly, many children have witnessed or experienced physical and sexual violence.” …

The third long-duration astronaut team launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) safely returned to Earth early Friday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida to end months of orbital research ranging from space-grown chilies to robots. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying three U.S. NASA astronauts and a European Space Agency (ESA) crewmate from Germany parachuted into calm seas in darkness at the conclusion of a 23-hour-plus autonomous flight home from the ISS. The splashdown, at about 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) was carried live by a joint NASA-SpaceX webcast. The Endurance crew, which began its stay in orbit on Nov. 11, consisted of American spaceflight veteran Tom Marshburn, 61, and three first-time astronauts — NASA’s Raja Chari, 44, and Kayla Barron, 34, and their ESA colleague Matthias Maurer, 52. Camera shots from inside the crew compartment showed the astronauts strapped into their seats, garbed in helmeted white-and-black spacesuits. It took splashdown-response teams less an hour to reach the capsule bobbing in the water, hoist it onto the deck of a recovery vessel and open the hatch to let the astronauts out for their first breath of fresh air in nearly six months. The return from orbit followed a fiery re-entry plunge through Earth’s atmosphere generating frictional heat that sent temperatures outside the capsule soaring to 1,930 degrees Celsius. Two sets of parachutes billowed open above the capsule in the final stage of descent, slowing its fall to about 24 kph before the craft hit …

With the coronavirus killing an estimated 15 million people worldwide, including nearly 1 million in the United States, the Biden administration, despite a lack of funding for domestic and international pandemic response, is set to mobilize a global effort to end the acute phase of COVID-19. The U.S. will co-host the second Global COVID-19 Summit on May 12, following the first in September 2021. The virtual summit will mark a shift from a crisis management strategy to the more sustainable approach of building resilient public health systems. “The virus — after omicron particularly — has shown us that we have to evolve our strategy,” a senior administration official told VOA. The goal, the official said, is to reduce transmission, deaths and hospitalizations rather than eradicate the virus. The summit will focus on “supporting locally led solutions” toward global goals, which include getting shots into arms, enhancing access to tests and treatments, and generating sustainable financing for future pandemic preparedness. “We cannot have just one solution, which might fit all of these different situations,” Dr. Thierno Baldé of the World Health Organization’s Africa regional office told VOA. “The reality is to try to understand that, and therefore to have the most appropriate solution constructed commonly, with different countries, with different partners.” To galvanize international support, the U.S. will co-host the event together with CARICOM (Caribbean Community) chair Belize; Group of Seven president Germany; Group of 20 President Indonesia, and African Union chair Senegal. No pandemic funding The U.S., however, will bring no …

With the U.S. entering a new COVID-19 phase marked by more testing, prevention and treatment options, President Joe Biden will next week convene another summit of global leaders to discuss next steps in the battle against the pandemic — but without the funding he says he needs to continue to fight it overseas. VOA’s White House correspondent Anita Powell and White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara report from Washington. …

There is renewed interest nuclear energy in Europe driven in part by climate goals but also the war in Ukraine – especially as the European Union moves to cut all energy ties with Russia. But tapping nuclear power remains expensive, time consuming and deeply controversial. For VOA, Lisa Bryant takes a look at the debate from Paris. Camera: Lisa Bryant …

The Global Network, an alliance of humanitarian and developmental agencies, says around 193 million people globally experienced extreme hunger last year, with more than half a million on the brink of famine in Ethiopia, southern Madagascar, South Sudan, and Yemen. The network, which includes the European Union, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Food Program, is calling for action to tackle the life-threatening crisis.   Authors of the report warn the crisis is set to worsen this year. They say the key drivers of food insecurity — conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic — are pushing increasing numbers of people into poverty. The executive director of the World Food Program, David Beasley, calls it a perfect storm. He says whatever progress has been made in feeding the destitute is being lost because of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and now Ukraine.  “As we look around the world, 276 million people marching towards starvation,” he said. “And now we have got the breadbasket of the world being turned into breadlines. Who would have ever thought that we would see this in our time, our lifetime. Mass migration taking place out of Ukraine. And it is going to devastate the food security situation around the world.”  He notes Ukraine and Russia together produce 30 percent of the world’s wheat, 20 percent of the world’s maize, and up to 80 percent of sunflower seed oil. He says those supplies are not moving out of Ukraine because Russia has blockaded Black Sea ports.  “If we …

South African health officials are urging COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Aspen to keep its plant in the Eastern Cape province open. This follows a Reuters article quoting Aspen’s senior director saying they may have to shut down as there have been no orders for their rebranded COVID vaccine. A South African-owned subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Aspen struck a deal with American company Johnson & Johnson in March to package, price, sell and distribute its vaccine in Africa. This vaccine was rebranded as Aspenovax. The move was hailed by many as there had been much concern about Africa’s reliance on imported vaccines which were often costly and at times in short supply. But there have been no orders for Aspenovax.  South Africa’s National Health Department Spokesperson Foster Mohale said the lack of orders is due to low vaccination rates not only at home, but globally. “Vaccine hesitancy is one of the factors which contribute to these low vaccination rates or demand for more vaccines which also affect the production. Because obviously we understand that they are in a business, they can’t keep on producing vaccines when they know that the demand for vaccines is very low. So, we understand the situation where they are, and we sympathize with them,” he said. Mohale said for now, South Africa has enough vaccines. He adds that in March, 100,000 vaccines expired. And more are due to expire in June and July. However, he said that Aspen’s vaccine plant is important because no one knows what …

A body inside a barrel was found over the weekend on the the newly exposed bottom of Nevada’s Lake Mead as drought depletes one of the largest U.S. reservoirs. Officials say the discovery could be the first of more grim finds.  “There is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS-TV on Monday.  The lake’s level has dropped so much that the uppermost water intake at drought-stricken Lake Mead became visible last week. The reservoir on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam has become so depleted that Las Vegas is now pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead, which also stretches into Arizona.  Personal items found inside the barrel indicated the person died more than 40 years ago in the 1980s, Spencer said.  He declined to discuss a cause of death and declined to describe the items found, saying the investigation is ongoing.  Police plan to reach out to experts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to analyze when the barrel started eroding. The Clark County coroner’s office will try to determine the person’s identity.  Boaters spotted the barrel Sunday afternoon. National Park Service rangers searched an area near the lake’s Hemenway Harbor and found the barrel containing skeletal remains.  Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry …

Health officials are still trying to identify the cause of cases of acute and severe hepatitis that have infected scores of children in 16 countries, mainly in Europe. Over 170 cases of acute severe hepatitis in children aged between 1 month and 16 years have been reported from 16 countries, 12 in Europe.  Most cases have been found in Britain.  Other infections have been reported from the United States, Canada, Israel, and Japan. The World Health Organization reports 17 children have required liver transplantation and one child has died.  Hepatitis in children sometimes can lead to chronic liver disease and liver failure. Philippa Easterbrook is a scientist at the WHO’s program of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections.  She said the origin of these infections in children remains unknown.  She said investigations have shown that none of the children have the common viral causes of hepatitis A, B, C or E. “The questionnaires have not identified any common exposure—be it to a toxin or a particular food and no strong travel history.  And importantly, very few of the children have received COVID vaccinations.  So, there does not appear to be a link with COVID vaccine,” she said. Easterbrook says one line of inquiry is to see whether there is a possible link to adenovirus.  This is a common infection in children, which can cause respiratory illness, gastroenteritis, conjunctivitis and bladder infection. She said a few cases of unexplained hepatitis in children occur every year in most countries.  She said …

Many Chinese are marking a quiet May Day holiday this year as the government’s zero-COVID approach restricts travel and enforces lockdowns in multiple cities. All restaurants in Beijing are closed to dine-in customers from Sunday through the end of the holiday on Wednesday, open only for takeout and delivery. Parks and tourist attractions in the Chinese capital are limited to 50% of their capacity. The Universal Studios theme park in Beijing, which opened last year, said it had shut down temporarily. The pandemic situation varies across the vast nation of 1.4 billion people, but the Transport Ministry said last week that it expected 100 million trips to be taken from Saturday to Wednesday, which would be down 60% from last year. Many of those who are traveling are staying within their province as local governments discourage or restrict cross-border travel to try to keep out new infections. China is sticking to a strict zero-COVID policy even as many other countries are easing restrictions and seeing if they can live with the virus. Much of Shanghai — China’s largest city and a finance, manufacturing and shipping hub — remains locked down, disrupting people’s lives and dealing a blow to the economy. The major outbreak in Shanghai, where the death toll has topped 400, appears to be easing. The city recorded 7,872 new locally transmitted cases on Saturday, down from more than 20,000 a day in recent weeks. Outside of Shanghai, only 384 new cases were found in the rest of mainland …

Satellites have detected methane emissions from belching cows at a California feedlot, marking the first time emissions from livestock – a major component of agricultural methane – could be measured from space. Environmental data firm GHGSat this month analyzed data from its satellites and pinpointed the methane source from a feedlot in the agricultural Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, California in February. This is significant, according to GHGSat, because agricultural methane emissions are hard to measure, and accurate measurement is needed to set enforceable reduction targets for the beef-production industry. GHGSat said the amount of methane it detected from that single feedlot would result in 5,116 tons of methane emissions if sustained for a year. If that methane were captured, it could power over 15,000 homes, it said. Agriculture contributes 9.6% to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and about 36% of methane emissions, mostly from livestock. The Biden administration late last year announced its plan to crack down on methane emissions from the U.S. economy. The EPA unveiled its first rules aimed at reducing methane from existing oil and gas sources that require companies to detect and repair methane leaks. The Agriculture Department rolled out a voluntary incentive program for farmers. At last year’s climate talks, more than 100 countries pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% and to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Much of this reduction would need to come from the livestock industry, according to the U.N. food agency, which said …

Meteorologists warn the extreme heat gripping India and Pakistan is likely to have many cascading effects on human health, ecosystems, agriculture, water, energy, and the economy.  For the past few days, hundreds of millions of people have been sweltering under temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius in widespread areas of India and Pakistan. The intense heat is predicted to continue until May 2 and then subside. The World Meteorological Organization says both India and Pakistan regularly experience excessively high temperatures in the pre-monsoon period, especially in May. While heatwaves do occur in April, it says they are less common. WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis said national meteorological and hydrological departments in both countries are implementing measures that have been successful in saving lives in the past few years. “A lot of work has been taken on heat health action plans specifically and in particular to protect the most vulnerable, and the most vulnerable in urban areas where the impact of the heat tends to be magnified,” she said. “So, we do hope that mortality from this ongoing event will be limited.” Nullis said large swaths of Pakistan are experiencing daytime temperatures between five and eight degrees Celsius above normal for this time of year. She said the extreme heat will have a punishing impact on Pakistan’s mountainous regions of Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “The Pakistan Meteorological Department is warning that the unusual heat has the risk of speeding up the melting of snow and ice, and this might trigger what …

Beijing residents will need clear COVID tests to enter public spaces, officials said Saturday, announcing fresh virus controls at the start of a Labor Day holiday muted by creeping infections in the capital. The five-day break is typically one of China’s busiest travel periods, but the country’s worst COVID resurgence since early in the pandemic is expected to keep people home. Faced with the highly transmissible omicron variant, Chinese officials have doubled down on their zero-COVID policy, quashing virus clusters through mass testing and lockdowns. Despite mounting economic costs and public frustration, the capital city announced it would further restrict access to public spaces after the holiday period. Starting May 5, a negative COVID test taken within the past week will be needed to enter “all kinds of public areas and to take public transport,” according to a notice on the city’s official WeChat page. For activities such as sporting events and group travel, participants will also need to show a negative COVID test taken within 48 hours, along with proof of “full vaccination,” according to the new rules. China reported more than 10,700 domestic COVID cases on Saturday, with most in economic engine Shanghai. The eastern metropolis has been sealed off for around a month after becoming the epicenter of the latest outbreak. Cases are trending downwards, yet frustration and anger is boiling in the city of 25 million where many have been ordered to stay at home for several weeks. Shanghai officials said on Saturday that its new …

Chris Mei has been stuck in his Shanghai flat for a month save for PCR testing and occasional volunteer work delivering food to neighbors. That will change in a couple of days when he boards his flight for a long-scheduled trip home to Portland, Oregon. He uses Zoom to do factory inspections for his 2-year-old import-export firm, Shanghai Fanyi Industry, but he can’t complete all the orders for clients overseas. He’s locked down like most of the 26 million people in the city, along with some of the factories where he normally sources goods, such as artificial plants and solar lights. “In terms of how’s business, it’s definitely affected us,” Mei said. “Clients abroad always have deadlines, especially for some of our products.” He continued, “For example, for a shipment that recently went out, we had a portion of the order canceled due to the fact that the factory, they were on lockdown as well, so we basically could only produce what they could, and then the remaining part of the order basically passed the client’s deadline in South America.” Leaving a city in lockdown has become an expensive, multistep process. Mei, a U.S. citizen, applied for permission to leave Shanghai by getting a pass from his neighborhood committee. He then found a driver with special permission to take him to the airport during lockdown – for about six times the usual price of that ride. Shanghai’s residents have been ordered to stay home since early April in response to …

A blindfold calms the large black and white augur buzzard as two men glue a prosthetic leg into an insert on her body to replace the one that she lost. The female is one of many injured birds of prey that turn up at Simon Thomsett’s Kenyan rehabilitation center, most of which, like her, have been crippled by electrocution. The problem has progressively grown as Kenya has upgraded its electricity network, replacing wooden poles with steel-reinforced concrete, which can be conductive, and hanging inadequately insulated power lines between them, conservationists say. That and the lack of deterrent markers along the cables are pushing Kenya’s already dwindling bird of prey populations closer to disappearance. “Thirty years ago, the birds were coming in being hit by cars, diseased… or hitting things like clothes lines or …windows,” said Thomsett before/after helping to fit the prosthetic. “Now we … the vast majority is electrocution.” Many are killed outright by the shock, both via direct collision with power lines or from perching. Kenya’s population of augur buzzards, historically one of its most common birds of prey has plunged 91% over 40 years due to electrocution, habitat loss, and poisoning, according to a February study by Thomsett and others published in Biological Conservation. Over the same period, hooded vulture are down 88% and long-crested eagles by 94%, the study said. The government-run Kenya Power and Lighting Company did not respond to requests for comment. In some parts of South Africa, bird flight diverters have successfully been …

A San Francisco area-based nonprofit is working to send easily operated, simply maintained and low-cost incubators to Ukraine.  After learning that 260,000 women in Ukraine are pregnant, with many now giving birth in bomb shelters or without access to modern medical care, Embrace Global is working to send 3,000 of its incubators to war ravaged areas of the country. Co-founder and CEO Jane Chen launched the initiative at the recent TED 2022 conference in Vancouver.  The company was already sending 200 incubators with UNICEF. While traditional incubators require continuous electricity, these devices, which look like small sleeping bags, can be charged like a cellphone with electricity or a heater that works off hot water. The charge lasts up to eight hours. “The core technology is a pouch of a waxlike substance called a phase change material,” Chen said. “And so this, once melted, can maintain the exact same temperature of 98 degrees, human body temperature, for up to eight hours at a stretch, and it can be reheated thousands of times.” Far less expensive Each device costs $300 to $400, substantially cheaper than the $20,000 cost of a basic traditional incubator, which also requires continuous electricity and trained personnel. The low-cost incubators require virtually no training and are designed to be very simple to use. Chen developed the device while attending Stanford University and after then spending four years in India, where the devices have been distributed to 12 states.  She said the war in Ukraine was creating a new …

A Colorado prison inmate who worked at a poultry farm culling infected birds has become the first person in the U.S. to test positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment confirmed the case Thursday. H5N1 has been spreading rapidly among birds in the U.S. since February but does not appear to pose a significant threat to people because humans need to be in close contact with infected birds. The virus has been seen among commercial birds in 29 states and among wild birds in 34 states. More than 35 million chickens and turkeys have been destroyed in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus. The infected man, who is younger than 40, reported fatigue for several days and made a full recovery. “The inmate was part of a prison work crew composed of inmates nearing release, which had been working at the farm before a case of bird flu was confirmed there on April 19,” said Lisa Wiley, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections. In December 2021, a British man with 20 pet ducks was infected with the virus. …