Month: January 2023

England will ban a range of single-use plastic items such as cutlery, plates and bowls starting in October to limit soaring plastic pollution, Britain’s environment department said Saturday.  The decision follows a public consultation by the government in which 95% of respondents were in favor of the bans, the department said in a statement.  “We all know the absolutely devastating impacts that plastic can have on our environment and wildlife,” Environment Secretary Therese Coffey said. “These new single-use plastics bans will continue our vital work to protect the environment.”  Most plastics can remain intact for centuries and damage oceans, rivers and land where millions of tons end up as waste each year. The United Nations says decades of overuse of single-use plastics has caused a “global environmental catastrophe.”  The government said it is estimated England uses 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery, most of which are plastic, a year as well as 721 million such plates, but only 10% end up being recycled.  England’s ban will also include single-use plastic trays, balloon sticks and some types of polystyrene cups and food containers.  A ban on supplying plastic straws and stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds came into force in England in 2020.  Anti-plastic campaign group A Plastic Planet welcomed the latest bans but called for further limitations, especially on sachets.  “The plastic sachet, the ultimate symbol of our grab and go, convenience-addicted lifestyle, should be the next target … 855 billion sachets are used annually, never to be recycled,” Sian Sutherland, …

A Swiss company says it has certifiably extracted CO2 from the air and permanently stored it in the ground — for the first time on behalf of paying customers, including Microsoft. Climeworks, a startup created in 2009 by two Swiss engineers, said its facility in Iceland had successfully removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and injected it into the ground, where it would very gradually be transformed into rock. The potential for scaling up remains to be proved. In its announcement on Thursday, Climeworks said its process had been certified in September by DNV, a Norwegian independent auditor, marking the first time carbon had been permanently captured on behalf of paying corporate clients. Climeworks counts companies including Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify among the clients who have bought into its future carbon removal services, to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. The startup said it hoped “to lead as an example for peers, customers and policy makers alike that are committed to climate action.” The Paris Agreement, adopted by nearly all the world’s nations in 2015, called for the rise in the Earth’s average temperature to be limited at 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say would keep the impact of climate change at manageable levels. Many businesses, including fossil fuel companies, rely heavily on carbon offset schemes based on afforestation to compensate for continuing carbon emissions. But there has been growing interest in the newest carbon dioxide removal method, of which Climeworks is the industry leader: a chemical process known as …

It was an anomaly detected in the storm of a nuclear reactor so puzzling that physicists hoped it would shine a light on dark matter, one of the universe’s greatest mysteries.  However, new research has definitively ruled out that this strange measurement signaled the existence of a “sterile neutrino,” a hypothetical particle that has long eluded scientists.   Neutrinos are sometimes called “ghost particles” because they barely interact with other matter — around 100 trillion are estimated to pass through our bodies every second.  Since neutrinos were first theorized in 1930, scientists have been trying to nail down the properties of these shapeshifters, which are one of the most common particles in the universe.  They appear “when the nature of the nucleus of an atom has been changed,” physicist David Lhuillier of France’s Atomic Energy Commission told AFP.  That could happen when they come together in the furious fusion in the heart of stars like our sun, or are broken apart in nuclear reactors, he said.  There are three confirmed flavors of neutrinos: electron, muon and tau.  However, physicists suspect there could be a fourth neutrino, dubbed “sterile” because it does not interact with ordinary matter at all.  In theory, it would answer only to gravity and not the fundamental force of weak interactions, which still hold sway over the other neutrinos.  The sterile neutrino has a place ready for it in theoretical physics, “but there has not yet been a clear demonstration that it exists,” he added.  Dark matter candidate   …

The effects of the war in Ukraine are extending beyond Moscow and Kyiv, and may be impacting not only people but also wildlife. VOA’s Bilal Hussain reports from Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir. VOA Mandarin Service contributed to this report. …

The World Health Organization has issued an alert warning against the use of two Indian cough syrups blamed for the deaths of at least 20 children in Uzbekistan. WHO said the products, manufactured by India’s Marion Biotech, were “substandard” and that the firm had failed to provide guarantees about their “safety and quality.” The alert, issued Wednesday, comes after Uzbekistan authorities said last month at least 20 children died after consuming a syrup made by the company under the brand name Doc-1 Max. India’s health ministry subsequently suspended production at the company and Uzbekistan banned the import and sale of Doc-1 Max. The WHO alert said an analysis of the syrup samples by the quality control laboratories of Uzbekistan found “unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and /or ethylene glycol as contaminants.” Diethylene glycol and ethylene are toxic to humans when consumed and can prove fatal. “Both of these products may have marketing authorizations in other countries in the region. They may also have been distributed, through informal markets, to other countries or regions,” WHO said. The products were “unsafe and their use, especially in children, may result in serious injury or death,” it said. Marion Biotech officials could not be reached immediately for comment. It is the second Indian drugmaker to face a probe by regulators since October, when the WHO linked another firm’s medicines to a spate of child deaths in Gambia. Maiden Pharmaceuticals was accused of manufacturing several toxic cough and cold remedies that led to the deaths …

After three years of isolation and financial struggles in Chinese soccer, the country is reopening its borders and economy to the outside world. With it, frustrated fans, financially challenged clubs and unpaid players in the Chinese Super League might receive some long-awaited good news. The 2022 season was unrecognizable from the 2019 edition, the last before COVID-19 hit. Then the league had an average attendance of over 24,000, the highest in Asia, and a number of big-name foreign imports. From 2020 onwards, Beijing’s “zero-COVID” policy, designed to stamp out the virus, meant that teams mostly played in empty stadiums at centralized venues. Players were stuck in bio-secure bubbles for months on end and international stars, unable to enter the country, were released from contracts. It also meant little ticket, broadcast or sponsorship revenue for clubs. In 2021, defending champion Jiangsu FC folded and several other clubs have struggled to pay players. Opening up the country may not mean a return to the carefree spending of the previous decade, but it is a prerequisite to starting the journey back to pre-pandemic levels. It is reported that clubs will play home and away games in the 2023 season. “It almost feels like there has been no league in the past three years with delays, months without games and strange schedules,” Shanghai Shenhua supporter Wang Yi told The Associated Press. “Some fans have lost interest, but I think that will change when we can all get together at the stadium again.” Due to …

A Chinese company presented a cloned horse to the public Thursday that is the first of its kind born in the country and approved for equestrian sport. The cloning of competition and thoroughbred horses has been practiced in several countries since the early 2000s, particularly for genetic improvements. Born last June from a surrogate mother, Zhuang Zhuang was produced by the Beijing laboratory Sinogene and is a clone of a horse imported from Germany. The black animal is the first from the “warmblood” group of breeds to be born in China and to be officially approved by the China Horse Industry Association. Warmbloods are generally light horses with a lively temperament. Equestrian sports, especially show jumping, have been making strides in China in recent years. But a shortage of high-performance horses and a lag in breeding technologies are limiting growth. “I spoke with [Chinese] riders who participate in the Olympics. All of them have more than one horse, usually two or three. Each horse costs from a few million to 10 million yuan [$1.5 million],” Mi Jidong, CEO of Sinogene, told AFP. “Cloning can help reduce the price of breeding and raising horses.” Producing competitive horses in China by cloning should make it less dependent on costly imported animals to supply Chinese equestrian sports. The world’s first cloned horse was born in Italy in 2003. Chinese animal cloning companies have made significant progress in recent years, with technologies now relatively mature for sheep, cows, pigs, dogs and cats. …

Last year was one of the the warmest on record, according to data released Thursday by two U.S. government agencies, and was marked by numerous instances of severe weather around the globe, many of which are exacerbated by global warming. The Earth’s average global surface temperature was 0.86 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average in 2022, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This made it the sixth-warmest year on record by NOAA’s reckoning, and the fifth-warmest by NASA’s. (The discrepancy between the two is the result of a measurement difference of a tiny fraction of a degree.) The high temperatures in 2022 were particularly remarkable because of the presence of a major weather phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean called La Niña, which drove global temperatures down by approximately 0.06 degrees, Gavin A. Schmidt, chief of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a conference call with journalists. Russell Vose, chief of the analysis and synthesis branch at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, said the individual rankings of specific years are less important than the overall trend of a warming planet. Each of the past eight years has been among the eight hottest years on record. “It’s clear that each of the past four decades has been warmer than the decade that preceded it,” said Vose. “There’s really been a steady rise in temperature since at least the 1960s.” He added, “It’s certainly warmer now than at …

Guan Yao, who lives in California, never thought that on his last video chat with his grandmother in Beijing he would watch her die. He had installed a tiny robot camera in his grandmother’s home some time ago so they could be in constant contact after he moved to the U.S. in 2016. She took to the device, holding it almost as if it provided the comfort of his touch. Guan was video chatting with her throughout the last four hours of her life on December 22. The 85-year-old had tested positive for COVID-19 and had had a fever for days. Two days before dying, she finally got a bed in a hospital. Guan watched her blood oxygen saturation level suddenly turn from a low of 70 to a question mark. The doctor announced her death after an electrocardiogram. “Her final death certificate said kidney failure because she had kidney disease before,” Guan told VOA Mandarin from his home in the Los Angeles area. “Not COVID.” On the same day, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued an epidemic report stating that “there were no new deaths of COVID.” Before his grandmother died, Guan, 39, an IT professional, had already lost four relatives in his extended family since December 14: his father-in-law, his father, an uncle and another elderly female relative. Among them, only Guan’s grandmother and uncle had tested positive for COVID-19. The others died before getting tested. His father-in-law died of asthma. His father had heart …

German police Thursday continued efforts to clear hundreds of climate protesters occupying the western village of Luetzerath to prevent the demolition of the town for the expansion of a coal mine. Police began moving in Tuesday after a regional German court Monday rejected the last legal effort by the protesters to stop the demolition of the town located in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Utility company RWE wants to extract coal beneath Luetzerath, which it says is necessary to ensure energy security in Germany. The company reached a deal with the regional government last year that allows the village to be destroyed in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038. But the protesters — some of whom have occupied the town for as long as two years — say bulldozing the village to expand the nearby Garzweiler coal mine would result in huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The government and the utility company argue that the coal is needed to ensure Germany’s energy security. Though reports say many protesters have left voluntarily, there were reports of minor clashes with police that include rock throwing and fireworks. The Reuters news agency, quoting a local police spokesman, reported two people were detained and another three are in custody since the operation started. Removing those who do not want to leave will not be an easy task, as the village has several houses and buildings where the protesters have holed up or have taken positions on rooftops. A …

For years, 51-year-old Rodney Stotts says he was living a dead-end life. Today, he is a different person, teaching young people about birds of prey and the importance of protecting the environment. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar …

The World Health Organization said Wednesday it is calling on China to provide more information about its surge in COVID-19 cases. “WHO still believes that deaths are heavily underreported from China, and this is in relation to the definitions that are used but also to the need for doctors and those reporting in the public health system to be encouraged to report these cases and not discouraged,” Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies director, told reporters. Ryan did praise China’s efforts to increase the number of designated beds in intensive care units and in using antivirals early in the course of treatment. A lack of extensive data from China has led a number of countries to require testing for Chinese travelers. “In the absence of data, countries have made a decision to take a precautionary approach and (WHO has) said that that is understandable in the circumstances,” Ryan said. Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.  …

The race is on to save the ecologically crucial wetlands surrounding the final 160 kilometers of the Mississippi River, America’s most iconic waterway. “We are losing our communities, our culture, our fisheries, and our first line of defense against the hurricanes that threaten us,” said Kim Reyher, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. Adjacent to New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish is disappearing at an alarming rate. In recent decades, nearly 700 square kilometers of land have been consumed by the Gulf of Mexico because of the devastating combination of sinking land and rising sea levels. The parish includes wetlands that are home to thousands of Louisianans and many species of wildlife deemed critical to the ecology — and economy — of the region. In December, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed off on the state’s ambitious $2.2 billion plan to divert sediment from the Mississippi River and, it is hoped, protect and restore the vanishing region, which contributes to Louisiana’s robust seafood and energy sectors. “The most fortunate thing about the situation we find ourselves in,” Reyher told VOA, “is that we have the tools necessary to build more land by mimicking what the Mississippi River had done for millennia. We can make ourselves safer moving forward.” That is what this plan hopes to do. But not everyone is convinced. “They say this is a 50-year plan, but who of us is going to be around in 50 years?” asked Dean Blanchard, owner of Dean Blanchard Seafood …

Russia said Wednesday that it will send an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station next month to bring home three astronauts whose planned return vehicle was damaged by a strike from a tiny meteorite. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, made the announcement after examining the flight worthiness of the Soyuz MS-22 crew capsule at the space station, which sprang a radiator coolant leak in December. Roscosmos and NASA officials said at a joint press briefing that an uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft, MS-23, would be sent to the station February 20 to bring Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio back to Earth. “We’re not calling it a rescue Soyuz,” said Joel Montalbano, the space station program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “I’m calling it a replacement Soyuz. “Right now, the crew is safe onboard the space station,” he added. MS-22 flew Petelin, Prokopyev and Rubio to the space station in September. They were scheduled to return home in the same spacecraft in mid-March. But MS-22 began leaking coolant on December 14 after being hit by what U.S. and Russian space officials said they believed was a micrometeorite. “Everything does point to a micrometeorite,” Montalbano said. Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, said the “current theory is that this damage was caused by a small particle about 1 millimeter in diameter.” Krikalev said the decision to use MS-23 to fly the crew home was made because of concern …

Genomic sequencing allowed the world to track new coronavirus variants throughout the pandemic. Now British researchers plan to use it to better understand a host of other respiratory pathogens, from influenza to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).   The work is aimed at shedding more light on known threats and, potentially, emerging ones, said the team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute working with the UK Health Security Agency.  The world has never had access to the kind of real-time information for these viruses that scientists obtained on SARS-CoV-2 through sequencing millions of genomes, Ewan Harrison, head of the new Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative, told reporters Monday.  That includes granular detail on how they transmit as well as how they evolve in the face of the human immune response.   “We hope that by expanding our ability to sequence these viruses routinely, we can build upon the work that’s going on COVID, and hopefully supercharge research efforts to understand the transmission of these viruses, but also to help develop new treatments and vaccines,” Harrison said.  The aim is to make genomic surveillance of this type the norm, to inform public health responses and act as a blueprint for other countries that want to do the same thing, he said.  The work will begin later this year by using leftover material from swabs taken for COVID-19 diagnostic purposes, sequencing SARS-CoV-2, influenza, RSV and other common respiratory viruses in a combined process.   While some of the viruses targeted typically cause mild, cold-like …

Countries should consider recommending passengers wear masks on long-haul flights to counter the latest Omicron subvariant of COVID-19 given its rapid spread in the United States, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Tuesday. In Europe, the XBB.1.5 subvariant is being detected in small but growing numbers, WHO/Europe officials said at a press briefing. Passengers should be advised to wear masks in high-risk settings such as long-haul flights, said the WHO’s senior emergency officer for Europe, Catherine Smallwood, adding: “this should be a recommendation issued to passengers arriving from anywhere where there is widespread COVID-19 transmission.” XBB.1.5 – the most transmissible Omicron subvariant that has been detected so far accounted for 27.6% of COVID-19 cases in the United States for the week ending Jan. 7, U.S. health officials have said. It remains unclear if XBB.1.5 will cause its own wave of infections around the world. Current vaccines continue to protect against severe symptoms, hospitalization and death, experts say. “Countries need to look at the evidence base for pre-departure testing”, Smallwood added, saying it was crucial not to focus exclusively on one particular geographic area. If action is considered, she said, “our opinion is that travel measures should be implemented in a non-discriminatory manner.” That did not mean the agency recommended testing for passengers coming from the United States at this stage, she added. Measures that can be taken include genomic surveillance, and targeting passengers arriving from other countries as long as it does not divert resources away from domestic surveillance …

Space sector bosses on Tuesday said they were disappointed by the failure of the country’s historic first attempt to launch satellites from UK soil but pledged to investigate and try again. The failure of the mission late on Monday is a blow to the UK’s fledgling space sector. Had it been successful, it would have made the UK one of only nine countries able to launch rockets into Earth’s orbit. A Virgin Orbit Boeing 747 carrying the 70-foot (21-meter) rocket took off from a spaceport in Cornwall, southwest England, at 2202 GMT on Monday. The rocket then detached from the aircraft and ignited as planned at a height of 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Ireland at around 2315 GMT. But as the rocket was due to enter orbit and discharge its nine satellites, scientists reported an “anomaly” that prevented it from reaching orbit. Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart praised the launch teams but said their task had been complicated by the “first time nature of this mission” which had “added layers of complexity.” “We will work tirelessly to understand the nature of the failure, make corrective actions and return to orbit as soon as we have completed a full investigation and mission assurance process,” he added. The UK Space Agency said it would work closely with Virgin Orbit as they “investigate what caused the anomaly.” “While this result is disappointing… the project has succeeded in creating a horizontal launch capability at Spaceport Cornwall,” said Matt …

It’s been six months since the James Webb Space Telescope began transmitting breathtaking pictures of the cosmos back to Earth, transfixing star gazers and scientists alike.   The images have led to new discoveries about the universe, including the formation of stars, the evolution of black holes and the composition of planets in other solar systems.  NASA’s Webb telescope — a collaboration between the United States, Europe and Canada — was launched on Christmas Day 2021. However, it was not until July 12, 2022, when U.S. President Joe Biden officially released the first set of pictures taken by the $10 billion telescope, that its first images were seen by the world.   Here is a look at some of the best images captured by the telescope over the past six months.  Galaxy cluster (Webb’s first Deep Field)  July 12, 2022  Among the first set of images taken by the telescope and revealed by NASA is a galaxy cluster known as SMACS 0723 that is teeming with thousands of galaxies. NASA called the picture “the deepest, sharpest infrared view of the universe to date” and said it shows the galaxies as they appeared 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists describe the telescope as looking back in time. That is because it can see galaxies that are so far away that it takes light from those galaxies billions of years to reach the telescope.   The Carina Nebula  July 12, 2022  Also part of the first set of images NASA released, this picture shows emerging stellar nurseries in a …

Children struggling with obesity should be evaluated and treated early and aggressively, including with medications for kids as young as 12 and surgery for those as young as 13, according to new guidelines released Monday. The long-standing practice of “watchful waiting,” or delaying treatment to see whether children and teens outgrow or overcome obesity on their own, only worsens the problem that affects more than 14.4 million young people in the U.S. Left untreated, obesity can lead to lifelong health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and depression. “Waiting doesn’t work,” said Dr. Ihuoma Eneli, co-author of the first guidance on childhood obesity in 15 years from the American Academy of Pediatrics. “What we see is a continuation of weight gain and the likelihood that they’ll have [obesity] in adulthood.” For the first time, the group’s guidance sets ages at which kids and teens should be offered medical treatments such as drugs and surgery — in addition to intensive diet, exercise and other behavior and lifestyle interventions, said Eneli, director of the Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. In general, doctors should offer adolescents 12 and older who have obesity access to appropriate drugs and teens 13 and older with severe obesity referrals for weight-loss surgery, though situations may vary. The guidelines aim to reset the inaccurate view of obesity as “a personal problem, maybe a failure of the person’s diligence,” said Dr. Sandra Hassink, medical director for the AAP Institute for Healthy …

A modified jumbo jet carrying a Virgin Orbit rocket took off from southwestern England Monday, marking the first attempt to launch satellites into orbit from Western Europe. Hundreds gathered for the launch cheered as the repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft, named “Cosmic Girl,” took off from Cornwall late Monday. Around an hour into the flight, the plane will release the rocket at 35,000 feet (around 10,000 meters) over the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Ireland. The rocket will then take nine small satellites for mixed civil and defense use into orbit, while the plane, piloted by a Royal Air Force pilot, returns to Cornwall. If successful, the mission will mark the first international launch for Virgin Orbit, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson. The company, which is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, has already completed four similar launches from California. In the past, satellites produced in the U.K. had to be sent to spaceports in other countries to make their journey into space. Some of the satellites are meant for U.K. defense monitoring, while others are for businesses such as those working in navigational technology. One Welsh company is looking to manufacture materials such as electronic components in space. “This is the start of a new era for the U.K. in terms of launch capabilities,” said Ian Annett, deputy chief executive at the U.K. Space Agency. There was strong market demand for small satellite launches, he said, and the U.K. has ambitions to be “the hub of …