Month: July 2023

As the planet warms, mosquitoes are slowly migrating upward.  The temperature range where malaria-carrying mosquitoes thrive is rising in elevation. Researchers have found evidence of the phenomenon from the tropical highlands of South America to the mountainous, populous regions of eastern Africa.  Scientists now worry people living in areas once inhospitable to the insects, including the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and the mountains of eastern Ethiopia, could be newly exposed to the disease.  “As it gets warmer at higher altitudes with climate change and all of these other environmental changes, then mosquitoes can survive higher up the mountain,” said Manisha Kulkarni, a professor and researcher studying malaria in sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Ottawa.  Kulkarni led a study published in 2016 that found the habitat for malaria-carrying mosquitoes had expanded in the high-elevation Mount Kilimanjaro region by hundreds of square kilometers in just 10 years. Lower altitudes, in contrast, are becoming too hot for the bugs.  The African region Kulkarni studied, which is growing in population, is close to the border of Tanzania and Kenya. Together, the two countries accounted for 6% of global malaria deaths in 2021.  Deaths decline, still numerous Global deaths from malaria declined by 29% from 2002 to 2021, as countries have taken more aggressive tactics in fighting the disease. However, the numbers remain high, especially in Africa where children under 5 years old account for 80% of all malaria deaths.   The latest world malaria report from the World Health Organization recorded 247 million …

Italy put 23 cities on red alert as it reckoned with another day of scorching temperatures Wednesday, with no sign of relief from the wave of extreme heat, wildfires and flooding that has wreaked havoc from the United States to China. The heat wave has hit southern Europe during the peak summer tourist season, breaking records – including in Rome – and bringing warnings about an increased risk of deaths. Wildfires burned for a third day west of the Greek capital, Athens, and firefighters raced to keep flames away from coastal refineries. Fanned by erratic winds, the fires have gutted dozens of homes, forced hundreds of people to flee and blanketed the area in thick smoke. Temperatures could climb to 109 Fahrenheit on Thursday, forecasters said. Extreme weather was also disrupting life for millions of Americans. A dangerous heat wave was holding an area stretching from Southern California to the Deep South in its grip, bringing the city of Phoenix its 20th straight day with temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Calvin lashed Hawaii, raising the potential for flash flooding and dangerous surf on the Big Island. In Texas, at least nine inmates in prisons without air conditioning have suffered fatal heart attacks during the extreme heat this summer, the Texas Tribune newspaper reported. Another 14 have died of unknown causes during periods of extreme heat. A Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson said preliminary findings of the deaths indicate that heat was not a factor …

The U.S. has suspended funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese research laboratory at the center of the debate over the origins of the coronavirus that has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide.    The lab has not received any U.S. funding since 2020, but for months the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been reviewing its operations, concluding that the institute “is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible.”    The funding cutoff was prompted by the lab’s “failure to provide documentation on [its] research requested by [the National Institutes of Health] related to concerns that [the lab] violated NIH’s biosafety protocols.”  The virus was first identified in Wuhan. One theory holds that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan lab in late 2019, triggering the pandemic. Some scientists believe the virus was passed from animals to people, possibly from a wholesale seafood market.     The U.S. intelligence community has yet to reach a conclusion about the origins of the virus.    Researchers at the institute have repeatedly denied that their work was related to the coronavirus outbreak, but China has blocked international scientists from a wide examination of the facility and its operations. …

People who have a particular genetic variant are twice as likely to never feel sick when they contract COVID-19, researchers said Wednesday, offering the first potential explanation for the lucky group dubbed the “super dodgers.” Those who have two copies of the variant are eight times more likely to never get any symptoms from COVID-19, according to the study in the journal Nature. Previous research has suggested that at least 20% of the millions of infections during the pandemic were asymptomatic. To find out what could be behind these cases, researchers took advantage of a database of volunteer bone marrow donors in the United States. The database included each person’s type of human leukocyte antigen (HLA), which are molecules on the surface of most cells in the body. The immune system uses HLA to see which cells belong in the body, and they are thought to play a key role in the response to viral infections. Subjects self-reported symptoms The researchers had nearly 30,000 people on the bone marrow registry self-report their COVID tests and symptoms on a mobile phone app. More than 1,400 unvaccinated people tested positive for COVID between February 2020 and late April 2021, the study said. Out of that group, 136 saw no symptoms two weeks before and after testing positive.  One in five of that group carried at least one copy of an HLA variant called HLA-B*15:01. Those fortunate enough to have two copies of the gene, one from their mother and one from their …

Childhood immunization has rebounded following a significant decline during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but at an uneven rate with too many children in low-income countries still missing out on the life-saving products, according to a joint World Health Organization-UNICEF report. The agencies say that four million more children were immunized against killer diseases in 2022 compared to the previous year. “Last year, we rang alarm bells at the historic backsliding that we saw across countries, regions, and vaccines,” said Kate O’Brien, director, immunization, vaccines, and biologicals, WHO. “From 2022’s data, from a global perspective, we are recovering,” she said. “But that recovery is uneven, with too many countries not yet seeing improvement.” The report says that just eight large countries—India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, and Tanzania—account for 3.8 million of the four million additional children reached in 2022. Of the 73 countries that recorded substantial declines of more than five percent during the pandemic, the report says “24 are on route to recovery and, most concerningly, 34 have stagnated or continued declining.” O’Brien said a main measure of immunization program performance is how many zero-dose children exist. “These are children who do not receive a first dose of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. It means these are children who do not receive any vaccine through the routine immunization program.” The good news, she said, is that global coverage of the first dose of DTP vaccine now stands at 89 percent—very close to the …

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of our social media world on our cellphones and computers. Text, images, audio and video are becoming easier for anyone to create using new generative AI tools. As AI-generated materials become more pervasive, it’s getting harder to tell the difference between what is real and what has been manipulated. “It’s one of the challenges over the next decade,” said Kristian Hammond, a professor of computer science who focuses on artificial intelligence at Northwestern University. AI-generated content is making its way into movies, TV shows and social media on Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms. AI has been used to change images of former President Donald Trump and Pope Francis. The winner of a prestigious international photo competition this year used AI to create a fake photo. Victor Lee, who specializes in AI as an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, said, “people need to exercise caution when looking at AI-generated materials.” Whether it’s text, video, an image or audio, with generative AI we are seeing things that look like actual news or an image of a particular person but it’s not true, Lee said. AI is also being used to create songs that sound like popular musical artists and replicating images of actors. Recently, an anonymous person on TikTok used artificial intelligence to create a song with a beat, lyrics and voices that fooled many people into believing it was a recording by pop stars Drake and The Weeknd. …

Chinese livestreamers have set their sights on TikTok shoppers in the U.S. and Europe, hawking everything from bags and apparel to crystals with their eyes on a potentially lucrative market, despite uncertainties over the platform’s future in the U.S. and elsewhere. In China, where livestreaming ecommerce is forecast to reach 4.9 trillion yuan ($676 billion) by the year’s end, popular hosts like “Lipstick King” Austin Li rack up tens of millions of dollars in sales during a single livestream. Many brands, including L’Oreal, Nike and Louis Vuitton, have begun using livestreaming to reach more shoppers. But the highly competitive livestreaming market in China has led some hosts to look to Western markets to carve out niches for themselves. Oreo Deng, a former English tutor, sells jewelry to U.S. customers by livestreaming on TikTok, delivering her sales pitches in English for about four to six hours a day. “I wanted to try livestreaming on TikTok because it aligned with my experiences as an English tutor and my past jobs working in cross-border e-commerce,” Deng said. Since 2019, western e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Facebook have experimented with livestreaming e-commerce after seeing the success of Chinese platforms like Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao, and Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart in China. TikTok started testing its live shopping feature last year. Registered merchants from the U.S., Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore, among other countries, can now sell via livestreams online. But livestreaming e-commerce has yet to take off in the U.S. The livestreaming e-commerce market in …

Climate change is a “universal threat” that should be handled separately from broader diplomatic issues, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng on Wednesday after two days of what he called constructive but complex talks.  Acknowledging the diplomatic difficulties between the two sides in recent years, Kerry said climate should be treated as a “free-standing” challenge that requires the collective efforts of the world’s largest economies to resolve.   “We have the ability to … make a difference with respect to climate,” he said at a meeting at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, China’s sprawling parliament building.  Kerry arrived in Beijing on Sunday as heat waves scorched parts of Europe, Asia and the United States, underscoring the need for governments to take drastic action to reduce carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming and extreme weather events.  He has held meetings with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and Premier Li Qiang as well as veteran climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in a bid to rebuild trust between the two sides ahead of COP28 climate talks in Dubai at the end of the year.   “If we can come together over these next months leading up to COP28, which will be the most important since Paris, we will have an opportunity to be able to make a profound difference on this issue,” he told Han.       Han said the two countries had maintained close communication and dialog on climate since Kerry’s appointment as envoy, adding that a joint statement …

As global warming intensifies and deadly heatwaves spread across the world, becoming the “new normal,” the World Meteorological Organization is calling on governments to adopt heat action plans to protect “hundreds of thousands of people dying from preventable heat-related causes each year.” WMO’s protective policies incorporate early warning and response systems for urban and nonurban settings that target vulnerable people and critical support infrastructure such as power lines, refrigeration units, roads and rail lines that often buckle under extreme heatwaves. “Worldwide, more intense and extreme heat is unavoidable,” said John Nairn, senior extreme heat adviser. He said it was imperative to prepare and adapt as cities, homes and workplaces are not built to withstand prolonged high temperatures “and vulnerable people are not sufficiently aware of the seriousness of the risk heat poses to their health and well-being.” A study published last week in the scientific journal Nature Medicine found more than 60,000 people died in Europe last year from heat-related causes. Nairn said experts and governments consider this a conservative estimate. “And it is worth noting, those numbers are for Europe, which has some of the strongest early warning systems and heat-health action plans in the world. “So, you can imagine what the numbers are likely to be globally,” he said. Heatwaves to be expected Scientists say global temperatures are at unprecedented levels. While this year’s extensive and intense heatwaves are alarming, they say this should come as no surprise as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been warning …

The heatwave engulfing the northern hemisphere is set to intensify this week, causing overnight temperatures to surge and leading to an increased risk of heart attacks and deaths, the World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday. “Temperatures in North America, Asia, and across North Africa and the Mediterranean will be above 40°C for a prolonged number of days this week as the heatwave intensifies,” the WMO said in a statement. Overnight minimum temperatures were also set to reach new highs, according to the WMO, creating risks of increased cases of heart attacks and deaths. “Whilst most of the attention focuses on daytime maximum temperatures, it is the overnight temperatures which have the biggest health risks, especially for vulnerable populations,” the WMO said. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, a researcher specialized in the study of heatwaves said that the high temperatures Europe was experiencing currently were bound to increase. “The Mediterranean heatwave is big but nothing like what’s been through North Africa,” said John Nairn, Senior Extreme Heat Advisor for WMO. “It’s developing into Europe at this stage.” …

The United Nations said Tuesday vaccinations for children have generally rebounded since a drop during the COVID-19 pandemic but warned that vaccination rates in many smaller and poorer countries are not experiencing the same progress. The U.N. said 20.5 million children missed one or more routine vaccinations in 2022, an improvement from 24.4 million the year before.  In 2019, before the pandemic hit worldwide, that figure was 18.4 million. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the overall figures “encouraging,” but said global and regional numbers “mask severe and persistent inequities.” “When countries and regions lag, children pay the price,” he said. The U.N. said 73 countries saw substantial declines in child vaccination rates during the pandemic, and that 34 of those countries have seen their rates either fail to improve or get worse. Rates for measles vaccines followed the larger global trend, with 83% of children receiving a first does during their first year of life in 2022, improving from 81% in 2021 but not reaching the 86% level achieved before the pandemic. Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters. …

The excavator tore into the remnants of the damaged building in southeast Turkey, bringing it crashing down into a cloud of dust — the latest menace facing survivors of the deadly February quake that ravaged the region. Extending to the horizon, a cocoon of fine grey dust envelops the city of Samandag in the south of Hatay province, devastated by the February 6 earthquake that killed more than 55,000 people and laid waste to parts of Turkey and Syria. “We survived the earthquake, but this dust will kill us,” Michel Atik, founder and president of the Samandag Environmental Protection Association, said. “We are going to die of respiratory diseases and lung cancer with all these hazardous materials.” Five months after the quake, the scale of cleanup and reconstruction is enormous, with the government estimating that nearly 2.6 million buildings have been destroyed. According to the UN Environment Programme, some 210 million tonnes of rubble must be disposed of. By comparison, some 1.8 million tonnes of rubble had to be hauled away after the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City that brought down the World Trade Center skyscrapers. Environmental activists and local residents worry that in the rush to clean up and rebuild, crucial safety measures are being ignored, with potentially adverse effects on the health of local residents, the environment and the economy. Landfills The landfill near Samandag is one of several that have been set up in this province bordering Syria. It lies next to the Mediterranean …

A review of the status of a vanishing species of whale found that the mammal’s population is in worse shape than previously thought, federal ocean regulators said Monday. The North Atlantic right whale numbers less than 350, and it has been declining in population for several years. The federal government declared the whale’s decline an “unusual mortality event,” which means an unexpected and significant die-off, in 2017. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released new data that 114 of the whales have been documented as dead, seriously injured or sub-lethally injured or sick — since the start of the mortality event. That is an increase of 16 whales since the previous estimate released earlier this year. The agency recently completed a review of the whales using photographs from researchers and surveys to create the new estimate, said Andrea Gomez, a spokesperson for NOAA. “Additional cases will continue to be reviewed, and animals will be added if appropriate, as more information is obtained,” Gomez said. Thirty-six of the 114 whales included in the estimate had died, NOAA documents state. The agency cautioned that only about a third of right whale deaths are documented, so the total number of dead or injured animals could be much higher. Right whales are found off the Atlantic coast of the U.S. They are vulnerable to collisions with large ships and entanglement in commercial fishing gear. The federal government has worked to craft stricter rules to protect the whales from both threats. Commercial fishing and shipping …

In the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, a debate is raging over whether to teach teenagers about contraceptives. Comprehensive sex education is required in public schools but not all schools are following through. Dave Grunebaum has the story. …

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency posted air quality alerts Sunday for several states stretching from Montana to Ohio because of smoke blowing in from Canadian wildfires. “Air Quality alerts are in place for much of the Great Lakes, Midwest, and northern High Plains,” the National Weather Service said. “This is due to the lingering thick concentration of Canadian wildfire smoke over these regions. While the concentration of smoke in the atmosphere should begin to wane by Monday, there is still enough smoke to support unhealthy air quality that is unhealthy for sensitive groups in parts of these regions into the start of the upcoming week.” The U.S. EPA’s AirNow air quality page rated the air in Chicago as “unhealthy” as of 9 a.m. CDT Sunday. And in Michigan, state environmental officials said the air “is unhealthy for sensitive groups.” The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services advised people in the state to check the Air Quality Index regularly to decide if they should be participating in outdoor activities. The Indianapolis Office of Sustainability issued a Knozone Action Day for Sunday, saying people throughout central Indiana should avoid time spent outdoors as much as possible, especially active children, the elderly, anyone who is pregnant, and those with asthma, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), emphysema, heart disease or COVID-19. Sensitive groups should remain indoors Sunday and refrain from activities that degrade indoor air quality, including burning candles and vacuuming. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Sunday that unhealthy air from the …

As much of the world swelters in record temperatures, spare a thought for Issam Genedi, who ekes out a living washing cars in one of the planet’s hottest regions, the Gulf. Pausing from his work at an outdoor carpark in Dubai, the Egyptian migrant says the United Arab Emirates’ furnace-like summer feels even hotter this year.  “This summer is a little more difficult than other years,” says Genedi, who shines cars for about 25 dirhams ($6.80) a time in temperatures that pass 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) each day.  “Between noon and 3 p.m. or 3:30 p.m., we simply cannot work.” The oil-rich UAE — host of this year’s COP28 United Nations climate talks, where the world will try to sharpen its response to global warming — is no stranger to unbearable summers. In the blistering summer months, those who can decamp to cooler climes, or stay cocooned inside air-conditioned homes, offices and shopping malls. The streets are largely deserted, apart from laborers hired cheaply from abroad. Many manual workers have a compulsory rest period in the hottest hours of the day. It’s a similar story all around the energy-rich desert region. In Bahrain, an island nation off Saudi Arabia, July average temperatures threaten to beat the record of 42.1C (107.8F) set in 2017. Two weeks ago, more than 1.8 million Muslims battled through a days-long hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in temperatures up to 48C (118F), with thousands treated for heat stress. And in Kuwait, which regularly records …