Month: August 2023

The U.S. government said Friday it will spend up to $1.2 billion for two pioneering facilities to vacuum carbon out of the air, a historic gamble on a still developing technology to combat global warming that is criticized by some experts. The two projects — in Texas and Louisiana — each aim to eliminate 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent in total to the annual emissions of 445,000 gas-powered cars. It is “the world’s largest investment in engineered carbon removal in history,” the Energy Department said in a statement. “Cutting back on our carbon emissions alone won’t reverse the growing impacts of climate change,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in the statement. “We also need to remove the CO2 that we’ve already put in the atmosphere.” Direct Air Capture (DAC) techniques — also known as Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) — focus on CO2 that has already been emitted into the air, which is helping to fuel climate change and extreme weather. Each of the projects will remove 250 times more CO2 from the air than the largest carbon capture site currently in operation, the Energy Department said. The U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere one of the methods necessary to combat global warming. But the sector is still marginal — there are just 27 existing carbon capture sites commissioned worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency, though at least 130 projects are under development. And some experts worry …

Monsoon season can exacerbate the outbreak as infected people overwhelm hospitals …

About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which posted the numbers, has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. “There’s something wrong. The number should not be going up,” said Christina Wilbur, a 45-year-old Florida woman whose son shot himself to death last year. “My son should not have died,” she said. “I know it’s complicated, I really do. But we have to be able to do something. Something that we’re not doing. Because whatever we’re doing right now is not helping.” Experts caution that suicide is complicated, and that recent increases might be driven by a range of factors, including higher rates of depression and limited availability of mental health services. But a main driver is the growing availability of guns, said Jill Harkavy-Friedman, senior vice president of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Suicide attempts involving guns end in death far more often than those with other means, and gun sales have boomed — placing firearms in more and more homes. A recent Johns Hopkins University analysis used preliminary 2022 data to calculate that the nation’s overall gun suicide rate rose last year to an all-time high. For the first time, the gun suicide rate among Black teens surpassed …

Russia launched its first mission to the moon in nearly 50 years on Friday, racing to land on the lunar south pole before a spacecraft from India gets there. The launch of the Luna-25 craft to the moon was Russia’s first since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union, and is being conducted without assistance from the European Space Agency, which ended cooperation with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The Russian lunar lander is expected to reach the moon on August 23, about the same day as an Indian craft that was launched July 14. Only three governments have managed successful moon landings: the Soviet Union, the United States and China. India and Russia are aiming to be the first to land at the moon’s south pole. Study ‘is not the goal’ Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, said it wants to show Russia “is a state capable of delivering a payload to the moon,” and “ensure Russia’s guaranteed access to the moon’s surface.” “Study of the moon is not the goal,” said Vitaly Egorov, a popular Russian space analyst. “The goal is political competition between two superpowers — China and the USA — and a number of other countries which also want to claim the title of space superpower.” Sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine make it harder for it to access Western technology, impacting its space program. The Luna-25 was initially meant to carry a small moon rover, but that idea was abandoned to reduce …

Nearly a third of U.S. hospital pharmacists say they were forced to ration, delay or cancel treatments as drug shortages in the United States approach an all-time high, according to a survey released Thursday.   The shortages are especially critical for chemotherapy drugs used in cancer treatment regimens, with more than half of the 1,123 pharmacists surveyed saying they had to limit the use of such treatments.   The survey was conducted June 23-July 14 by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), an association that represents more than 60,000 pharmacists and technicians.  The drugs in shortage include vital therapies such as steroids, cancer treatments and antibiotics.   According to the survey, while spikes in demand cause short-term scarcity such as for diabetes drug Ozempic, most severe and persistent shortages are driven by economic factors including extreme price competition among generic drugmakers.  “Purchasing at the cheapest price has led to a race to the bottom, which has basically disincentivized any investment in quality and manufacturing,” said Michael Ganio, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at ASHP.   The number of U.S. drugs in shortfall — at 309 by the end of the second quarter — is already near a 10-year peak, according to the association, compared with an all-time high of 320 drugs.   “In some cases, there are no alternatives to the affected drugs, which puts patients at risk. This issue requires quick action from Congress to address the underlying causes of shortages,” said ASHP CEO Paul Abramowitz. …

The World Health Organization says traditional medicine plays a pivotal role in the health and well-being of people and the planet and should be seen as complementary to modern medicine and be integrated into national health systems. Traditional healers have used their knowledge of plants and potions for centuries to treat people with multiple ailments. Much traditional indigenous and ancestral knowledge of traditional medicine is frequently used in health care across the world. “We are seeing a lot of increasing demand and increasing interest in traditional medicine at the moment,” said Rudi Eggers, WHO director for integrated health services. “Traditional medicine has become a global phenomenon.” He said 170 out of 194 countries have reported to WHO “that they used traditional medicine in some form, such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, yoga, and indigenous medicine in their countries. In fact, for millions of people, of course, it is the first choice for health care. In some cases, the only choice for health care.” The WHO says that around 40 percent of modern pharmaceutical products have roots in traditional medicine. “Many traditional medicines were the basis for some of the classic scientific and medical technologies that have led to some of the major medical breakthroughs, including drugs like aspirin or artemisinin for malaria, and even smallpox inoculation,” said Shyama Kuruvilla, the WHO lead for the Global Center for Traditional Medicine. Next week, WHO is convening the Traditional Medicine Global Summit in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. The two-day high-level meeting will explore the role …

Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, including a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean. The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness. Cheers erupted from families and friends watching from below when the craft’s rocket motor fired after it was released from the plane that had carried it aloft. The rocket ship reached about 88 kilometers high. Richard Branson’s company expects to begin offering monthly trips to customers on its winged space plane, joining Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the space tourism business. Virgin Galactic passenger Jon Goodwin, who was among the first to buy a ticket in 2005, said he had faith that he would someday make the trip. The 80-year-old athlete — he competed in canoeing in the 1972 Olympics — has Parkinson’s disease and wants to be an inspiration to others. “I hope it shows them that these obstacles can be the start rather than the end to new adventures,” he said in a statement. Ticket prices were $200,000 when Goodwin signed up. The cost is now $450,000. He was joined by sweepstakes winner Keisha Schahaff, 46, a health coach from Antigua, and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, 18, a student at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. Also on board: two pilots and the company’s astronaut …

Paris’ escape from record temperatures gripping parts of Europe this summer could be a short-term reprieve. A study finds the city could have the most heatwave-related deaths of any European capital by 2050 — when temperatures may soar to 50 C (122 F). For VOA, Lisa Bryant has more from Paris. …

Currently spreading COVID-19 variants such as EG.5, or Eris, do not represent a major shift in COVID variants, and updated vaccines in September will offer protection, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.  “Right now, what we’re seeing with the changes in the viruses, they’re still susceptible to our vaccine, they’re still susceptible to our medicines, they’re still picked up by the tests,” Dr. Mandy Cohen said in an interview on former Biden administration adviser Andy Slavitt’s “In the Bubble” podcast. “We’re seeing small changes that are what I would call subtypes of what we’ve seen before.”  Updated vaccines should be available by mid- to late September, she said.  COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have created new versions of their vaccine, which were updated to target the so-called XBB.1.5 subvariant that was dominant earlier this year, in order to more closely resemble the circulating virus.   “We anticipate that they are going to be available for most folks by the third or fourth week of September,” Cohen said. The vaccines still need to be authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the CDC needs to make its recommendations, she said.   “We are likely to see this as a recommendation as an annual COVID shot just like we have an annual flu shot,” she said.  Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax have all said they expect to have supplies of the updated vaccine ready for the rollout this autumn.  On Wednesday, the World Health Organization classified …

Indonesia’s capital Jakarta topped the list as the world’s most polluted city on Wednesday, having consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May, according to data by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.   Jakarta, which has a population of over 10 million, registers unhealthy air pollution levels nearly every day, according to IQAir.   Resident Rizky Putra lamented that the worsening air quality was putting his children’s health at risk.   “I think the situation is very worrying,” Rizky, 35, told Reuters TV by the side of a road in downtown Jakarta.   “So many children are sick with the same complaints and symptoms such as coughs and cold,” he said.   Jakarta residents have long complained of toxic air from chronic traffic, industrial smoke and coal-fired power plants. Some of them launched and won a civil lawsuit in 2021 demanding the government take action to control air pollution.   The court at the time ruled President Joko Widodo must establish national air quality standards to protect human health, and the health minister and Jakarta governor must devise strategies to control air pollution.   Still, Nathan Roestandy, co-founder of air quality app Nafas Indonesia, said the pollution level has continued to deteriorate.   “We take more than 20,000 breaths a day. If we take in polluted air everyday, (it could lead to) respiratory and pulmonary diseases, even asthma. It can affect cognitive development of children or even mental health,” he said.   Asked about Jakarta’s pollution …

U.N. agencies warn health conditions are deteriorating in Sudan and neighboring countries as growing numbers of people flee escalating fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Before the conflict erupted on April 15, 4.5 million Sudanese already were displaced — more than 3.7 million inside Sudan and another 800,000 as refugees in Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia. Since the rival generals went to war, the U.N. refugee agency says nearly an equal number — more than four million people — have become newly displaced. “The situation inside Sudan, where UNHCR teams are present, is untenable as needs far outweigh what is humanly possible to deliver with available resources,” said William Spindler, UNHCR spokesman. He said a lack of medicine and a shortage of staff to care for the sick and wounded in White Nile State severely hampered health and nutrition services in all 10 refugee camps, “where over 144,000 newly displaced refugees from Khartoum have arrived since the conflict started.” He said many families that have been on the move for weeks, with very little food and medicine, were arriving at border entry points and transit centers in neighboring countries in desperate condition. As a result, he said malnutrition rates have been rising, as have disease outbreaks and related deaths. “Between 15 May and 17 July, over 300 deaths, mainly among children under five years, were reported due to measles and malnutrition,” he said. “In addition, severe cholera and malaria cases are expected in the coming months …

Darwin, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory, can be brutally hot and humid.   Many of its 150,000 residents seek refuge from the tropical elements in air-conditioned homes, offices and cars. But research from the Australian National University, the ANU, suggests that air-conditioning, which is often set at 21 degrees Celsius, is making people more vulnerable to heat-related death. Heatwaves are Australia’s deadliest natural hazard.  They kill more people than bushfires, floods and storms put together. The ANU asserts that “climate change is increasing heat-associated mortality particularly in hotter parts of the world.”  Simon Quilty, the study’s lead author, is from the Australian National University’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. He told VOA that avoiding the heat and humidity may prevent people from adapting to the climate. “Being exposed regularly to the prevailing climate in which you live actually acclimatizes your body,” he said. “e know that acclimatization takes roughly 14-days to occur for a human body and that changes the way that we sweat, it changes the way that we breathe, it changes our kidneys and it even changes the way that our hearts pump.  What is happening now is that our entire lives are set at 21 degrees Celsius and so for people who are living in very hot climates like the Northern Territory that deacclimatization is actually probably increasing heat vulnerability.” Quilty said the research also finds that First Nations communities in the Northern Territory are less vulnerable to heat because they are often less …

Here we go again: COVID-19 hospital admissions have inched upward in the United States since early July in a small-scale echo of the three previous summers. With an updated vaccine still months away, this summer bump in new hospitalizations might be concerning, but the number of patients is far lower than before. A look at what we know: How bad is the spike? For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week. But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022. “It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It’s likely that infections are rising too, but the data is scant. Federal authorities ended the public health emergency in May, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states no longer track the number of positive test results. What about deaths? Since early June, about 500 to 600 people have died each week. The number of deaths appears to be stable this summer, although past increases in deaths have lagged behind hospitalizations. How are we tracking the virus? The amount of the COVID-19 virus in sewage water has been rising since …

The World Meteorological Organization says the global average temperature for July 2023 is confirmed to be the highest on record for any month. “The month is estimated to have been around 1.5 degrees warmer than the average for 1850 to 1900s. So, the average of pre-industrial times,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Some measurements began in 1850, but it was not until 1880 that scientists started to estimate average temperatures for the entire planet. Burgess said scientists who look at historical and paleoclimate and proxy records from cave deposits and other calcifying organisms, such as corals and shells, find that the observational records go back tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. “So, the longest records we have are ice core records that go back 800,000 years, which give us changes in concentrations of the ratio of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere.” She noted that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report found it has not been this warm, combining observational records and paleo-climate records for the last 120,000 years. The WMO says that heat waves were experienced throughout July in multiple regions of the Northern Hemisphere, including southern Europe, and that temperatures well above average occurred over several South American countries and around much of Antarctica. “We know from our long-term monitoring of the climate that the Earth has been warming since pre-industrial times. And we …

Botswana is aiming to recruit at least 1,000 pharmacists, some from abroad, after nurses said they would no longer dispense medications. Nurses stopped filling prescriptions to patients last month, with the Botswana Nurse Union saying that doing so was outside their scope of work. The situation has led to congestion at the country’s pharmacies and left some patients unable to get their medications at all. Now the government is looking to bring in pharmacists from abroad to fill the void and avert a health crisis. Speaking in parliament Monday, Botswana’s assistant health minister, Sethumo Lelatisitswe, said that despite recruiting about 100 pharmacists over the last month, the shortage is still severe. “We only have a few pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in the market,” Lelatisitswe said. “In the coming weeks, we would have exhausted the Botswana market. However, we would still not have been able to replace all nurses and midwives that have been dispensing medications from as long ago as the birth of our health system. Our local tertiary institutions do not produce enough pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who can be engaged to serve our people.” The Botswana Nurse Union vice president responsible for labor, Oreeditse Kelebakgosi, said that it was unlawful for nurses to be dispensing medication and that it is only proper for the government to recruit pharmacists. Kelebakgosi applauded the government’s move to recruit from outside Botswana, saying the effort would bring relief to the nurses who have been dispensing medication outside their scope of work. But …

Leaders of eight South American nations that share the Amazon rainforest convene a two-day summit in Brazil Tuesday to reach a broad agreement on preserving the critical region. The meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Belem, capital of the Amazon state of Para, takes place as more than ten percent of the rainforest has been lost in recent decades due to unregulated cattle ranching and farming, illegal mining and logging and oil drilling.  Much of the loss is in Brazil, which is home to two-thirds of the rainforest.   The Amazon region has been described as a “carbon sink” that can easily absorb pollution from emissions, making it a vital resource in reducing the effects of climate change. Scientists say the loss of between 20% and 25% of the Amazon region would be a “tipping point” that would transform it into a source of carbon emissions.   The ACTO member nations, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela and host, Brazil, are expected to announce a pledge Tuesday   to end deforestation by 2030 and a joint effort to crack down on illegal mining and logging. The summit – the first since 2009 for the 28-year-old organization – was part of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s campaign platform last year in which he pledged that “Brazil is back” in the fight against climate change after a period of surging destruction in the Amazon under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.  The meeting will also serve as something of a …