Month: August 2023

Now that July’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin.   July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.   “These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia. Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.   Days in July have been hotter than previously recorded from July 2 on. It’s been so extra warm that Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization made the unusual early announcement that it was likely the hottest month days before it ended. Tuesday’s calculations made it official.   The month was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. In 2015, the nations of the world agreed to try to prevent long-term warming — not individual months or even years, but decades — that is 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times.   …

Indigenous leaders from across South America called Monday for bold steps to protect the Amazon and their ancestral lands, ahead of a summit on saving the world’s biggest rainforest. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will host fellow regional leaders Tuesday and Wednesday for the first summit in 14 years of the eight-nation Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, seeking a roadmap to stop the destruction of one of Earth’s crucial buffers against climate change. Native leaders who took part in pre-summit talks last weekend in the host city, Belem, called on Lula and his counterparts to create new Indigenous reservations — one of the best ways to protect nature, according to experts — and rethink the way the world views the rainforest. “The forest isn’t an oil well, it’s not a gold mine. It’s our temple,” said Nemo Guiquita, head of Ecuadoran Indigenous confederation CONFENIAE, which represents 1,500 Amazon communities. “We hope our views will be included in the [summit’s] final statement,” she told Agence France-Press, saying politicians should not be the only ones deciding the future of the Amazon. “We’re calling on world leaders to work hard to promote conservation. Our struggle isn’t just for Indigenous peoples, it’s for the entire world, so future generations can survive on this planet.” Brazilian Indigenous Affairs Minister Sonia Guajajara called the summit a “historic moment” for Indigenous peoples. “We’re not just thinking about the next four years, we’re thinking about the next 40,” she told AFP. The participating countries — Bolivia, Brazil, …

Raging waters that ate away at riverbanks, destroyed at least two buildings and undermined others were receding Monday in Alaska’s capital city after a glacial dam outburst last weekend, authorities said.  Levels along the Mendenhall River had started falling by Sunday, but the city said the riverbanks remained unstable. Onlookers gathered on a bridge over the river and along the banks of the swollen Mendenhall Lake to take photos and videos Sunday. A home was propped precariously along the eroded riverbank as milky-colored water whisked past.  There were no reports of any injuries or deaths. The city said it was working to assess the damage.  Such floods occur when glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes. A study released earlier this year found such floods pose a risk to about 15 million people worldwide, more than half of them in India, Pakistan, Peru and China.  Suicide Basin — a side basin of the Mendenhall Glacier — has released water that has caused sporadic flooding along the Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River since 2011, according to the National Weather Service. However, the maximum water level in the lake Saturday night exceeded the previous record flood stage set in July 2016, the weather service reported.  Nicole Ferrin, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that while it’s not uncommon for these types of floods to happen, this one was extreme.  “The amount of erosion that happened from the fast-moving water was unprecedented,” she said.  Water …

Russia said Monday it plans to launch a lunar lander this week after multiple delays, hoping to return to the Moon for the first time in nearly fifty years. Russian space agency Roscosmos said it had scheduled the launch of the Luna-25 lander for the early hours of Friday.   With the lunar mission, Russia’s first since 1976, Moscow is seeking to restart and build on the Soviet Union’s pioneering space program.   The launch is the first mission of Moscow’s new lunar project and comes as President Vladimir Putin looks to strengthen cooperation in space with China after ties with the West broke down following the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine last year.   Engineers have assembled a Soyuz rocket at the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Russian Far East for the launch of the lander, Roscosmos said.   “The Luna-25 will have to practise soft landing, take and analyze soil samples and conduct long-term scientific research,” Roscosmos said in a statement.   The four-legged lander, which weighs around 800 kilograms (1,750 pounds) , is expected to touch down in the region of the lunar south pole. By contrast, most previous Moon landings have occurred near the lunar equator.   The spacecraft is expected to reach the Moon around five days after launch. ‘Total sanctions’ After Putin sent troops to Ukraine last year, the European Space Agency (ESA) said it would not cooperate with Moscow on the upcoming Luna-25 launch as well as future 26 and 27 missions.   …

U.S. scientists have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time since December, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said on Sunday. Scientists at the California-based lab repeated the fusion ignition breakthrough in an experiment in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on July 30 that produced a higher energy yield than in December, a Lawrence Livermore spokesperson said. Final results are still being analyzed, the spokesperson added. Lawrence Livermore achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers on Dec. 5, 2022. The scientists focused a laser on a target of fuel to fuse two light atoms into a denser one, releasing the energy. That experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target, the Energy Department said. In other words, it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it, the department said. The Energy Department called it “a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.” Scientists have known for about a century that fusion powers the sun and have pursued developing fusion on Earth for decades. Such a breakthrough could one day help curb climate change if companies can scale up the technology to a commercial level in the coming decades. …

Nigeria’s unreliable power grid is not only slowing down the country’s economic growth, but health workers say it can lead to unwanted hospital shutdowns at night. But one startup is giving hospitals hope. Alhassan Bala has this report, narrated by Haruna Shehu. …

During Europe’s heat wave last month, Floriana Peroni’s vintage clothing store had to close for a week. A truck of rented generators blocked her door as they fed power to the central Roman neighborhood hit by a blackout as temperatures surged. The main culprit: air conditioning.  The period — in which temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) — coincided with peak electricity use that came close to Italy’s all-time high, hitting a peak load of more than 59 gigawatts on July 19. That neared a July 2015 record.  Intensive electricity use knocked out the network not only near the central Campo de Fiori neighborhood, where Peroni operates her shop, but elsewhere in the Italian capital. Demand in that second July week surged 30%, correlating to a heat wave that had persisted already for weeks, according to the capital’s electricity company ARETI.  Like many Romans, Peroni herself does not have AC either in her home or her shop. Rome once could count on a Mediterranean breeze to bring down nighttime temperatures, but that has become an intermittent relief at best.  “At most, we turn on fans,” Peroni said. “We think that is enough. We tolerate the heat, as it has always been tolerated.”  In Europe, though, that is starting to change.  Air conditioning is less a part of the culture in Europe  Despite holdouts like Peroni, rising global temperatures are dropping air conditioning from luxury to a necessity in many parts of Europe, which long has had a conflicted …

India’s latest space mission entered the moon’s orbit on Saturday ahead of the country’s second attempted lunar landing, as its space program seeks to reach new heights. The world’s most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace program that is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers. Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface. The Indian Space Research Organization confirmed that Chandrayaan-3, which means moon craft in Sanskrit, had been “successfully inserted into the lunar orbit,” more than three weeks after its launch. If the rest of the current mission goes to plan, the mission will safely touch down near the moon’s little-explored south pole between Aug. 23 and 24. India’s last attempt to do so ended in failure four years ago, when ground control lost contact moments before landing. Developed by ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 includes a lander module named Vikram, which means valor in Sanskrit, and a rover named Pragyan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom. The mission comes with a price tag of $74.6 million, far smaller than those of other countries, and a testament to India’s frugal space engineering. Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing space technology. It also has an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages. The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has taken much longer to reach the moon than the manned Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in …

The blockbuster movie “Oppenheimer” focuses on the work of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in the development of the atomic bomb. To prepare for the film, director Christopher Nolan reportedly did some heavy research into quantum physics, a study whose revolutionary benefits expanded into many fields after World War II, researchers say. Quantum physics “is the study of matter and energy at the most fundamental level,” as described in an article on the California Institute of Technology’s website. “It aims to uncover the properties and behaviors of the very building blocks of nature.” Different laws “When you get down to the smallest particles and energy scales, the laws of physics seem to be different than the ones we are familiar with,” said Olivia Lanes, the global lead of education and advocacy on the quantum team at IBM. “While we don’t quite understand how this works, we have made incredible use of it,” she told VOA. Quantum mechanics has revolutionized technology in many ways, she said, from the solid-state hard drives in our phones and laptops to lasers and GPS. “None of these would exist without the discoveries of quantum science,” she said. “These are all using the laws of quantum mechanics, so I think the next logical thing is to build a computer completely based on those laws.” To do that, “we will take what we have learned about particles and matter over the last century and make an entirely new type of computational machine that harnesses these laws …

The World Bank is aiming to help fund construction of 1,000 mini solar power grids in Africa’s biggest economy Nigeria in partnership with the government and private sector, the lender’s president Ajay Banga said Saturday. Nigeria, with a population of more than 200 million people, has installed power generation capacity of 12,500 megawatts, or MW, but it produces a fraction of that, leaving millions of households and businesses reliant on petrol and diesel generators. Mini grids, made up of small-scale electricity generating units, typically range in size from a few kilowatts to up to 10 MW, enough to power about 200 households. Speaking during a visit to a mini grid site on the outskirts of the capital Abuja, Banga told reporters that nearly 150 mini grids had been built, partly funded by the World Bank, to bring power to communities without access to electricity. “We are putting another 300 in, but our ambition with the government is to go all the way to 1,000. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that are being invested,” said Banga, without giving a timeline. “Now the idea is not for the World Bank to be the only person putting the money. We put part of the money like a subsidy.” World Bank data shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, 568 million people still lack access to electricity. Globally, nearly 8 out of 10 people without electricity live in Africa. …

Somalia reopened the National Blood Bank Saturday for the first time in more than 30 years, in a significant move to address the shortage of blood supplies and save lives. Somalia Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, who inaugurated the fresh start for the center in Mogadishu, said it’s a crucial achievement for his nation, which has been grappling with frequent disasters and violent incidents that require adequate blood supplies. The country’s health minister, Dr. Ali Haji Adam, told VOA the revival of the center signifies a turning point in the country’s health care system. “With the reopening of the national blood bank, we can now adequately address the overwhelming demand for blood in emergency situations and enhance the chances of saving precious lives.” Adam said. The minister said the center will have the capacity to store hundreds of thousands of blood donations, all made by the public. “In the past, when tragic accidents like the Zobe 1 and Zobe 2 explosions occurred in 2017 and in 2022, the public rushed to donate blood, but unfortunately there was no adequate storage facility to store the donated blood. Today that changes,” Adam explained. The health minister highlighted the critical impact of the lack of access to safe blood in Somalia, particularly in connection with child mortality. “The second cause of maternal death during childbirth is bleeding, but with the reopening of [the] blood bank, mothers will have access to this lifesaving resource,” Adam said. Hospitals across Somalia have faced immense challenges in …

Rhonda Hicks could have kept working into her 60s. She loved teaching and loved her students in Philadelphia’s public schools. As a Black woman, she took pride in being a role model for many children of color. But other aspects of the job deteriorated, such as growing demands from administrators over what and how to teach. And when she retires in a few weeks, she will join a disproportionately high number of Black and Hispanic teachers in her state who are leaving the profession. “I enjoy actually teaching, that part I’ve always enjoyed,” said Hicks, 59. “Sometimes it’s a little stressful. Sometimes the kids can be difficult. But it’s the higher-ups: ‘Do it this way or don’t do it at all.’” Teachers are leaving jobs in growing numbers, state reports show. The turnover in some cases is highest among teachers of color. A major culprit: stress — from pandemic-era burnout, low pay and the intrusion of politics into classrooms. But the burdens can be heavier in schools serving high-poverty communities that also have higher numbers of teachers of color. In Philadelphia, a city with one of the highest concentrations of Black residents in the U.S., the proportion of Black teachers has been sliding. Two decades ago, it was about one-third. Last fall, it fell to below 23%, according to district figures. In the school buildings where Hicks taught, most teachers were white. She said she and other teachers of color were expected to give more of themselves in a district …

Federal health officials have approved the first pill specifically intended to treat severe depression after childbirth, a condition that affects thousands of new mothers in the U.S. each year. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted approval of the drug, Zurzuvae, for adults experiencing severe depression related to childbirth or pregnancy. The pill is taken once a day for 14 days. “Having access to an oral medication will be a beneficial option for many of these women coping with extreme, and sometimes life-threatening, feelings,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, FDA’s director of psychiatric drugs, in a statement. Postpartum depression affects an estimated 400,000 people a year, and while it often ends on its own within a couple weeks, it can continue for months or even years. Standard treatment includes counseling or antidepressants, which can take weeks to work and don’t help everyone. The new pill is from Sage Therapeutics, which has a similar infused drug that’s given intravenously over three days in a medical facility. The FDA approved that drug in 2019, though it isn’t widely used because of its $34,000 price tag and the logistics of administering it. The FDA’s pill approval is based on two company studies that showed women who took Zurzuvae had fewer signs of depression over a four- to six-week period when compared with those who received a dummy pill. The benefits, measured using a psychiatric test, appeared within three days for many patients. Sahar McMahon, 39, had never experienced depression until after the birth …

NASA has succeeded in reestablishing full contact with Voyager 2 by using its highest-power transmitter to send an “interstellar shout” that righted the distant probe’s antenna orientation, the space agency said Friday. Launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets and serve as a beacon of humanity to the wider universe, it is currently more than 19.9 billion kilometers from our planet — well beyond the solar system.  A series of planned commands sent to the spaceship on July 21 mistakenly caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth, compromising its ability to send and receive signals and endangering its mission. The situation was not expected to be resolved until at least Oct. 15 when Voyager 2 was scheduled to carry out an automated realignment maneuver. But Tuesday, engineers enlisted the help of multiple Earth observatories that form the Deep Space Network to detect a carrier or “heartbeat” wave from Voyager 2, though the signal was still too faint to read the data it carried. In an update on Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which built and operates the probe, said it had succeeded in a longshot effort to send instructions that righted the craft. “The Deep Space Network used the highest-power transmitter to send the command (the 100-kw S-band uplink from the Canberra site) and timed it to be sent during the best conditions during the antenna tracking pass in order to maximize possible receipt of the command by the spacecraft,” Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd …

The world’s oceans set a temperature record this week, raising concerns about the effects that could have on the planet’s climate, marine life and coastal communities.  The temperature of the oceans’ surface rose to 20.96 degrees Celsius (69.7 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 30, according to European Union climate observatory data.   The previous record was 20.95 C in March 2016, a spokeswoman for the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service told AFP on Friday.  The samples tested excluded polar regions.  The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which uses a different database, has also recorded a similar trend in recent months.  It said the average sea surface temperature record was reached on April 4 this year at 21.06 C, overtaking the previous high of 21.01 C in March 2016. On August 1, average temperatures were 21.03 C, it said.  Oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat produced by human activity since the dawn of the industrial age, according to scientists.   This excess heat continues to accumulate as greenhouse gases, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal, build up in the Earth’s atmosphere.  Globally, the average ocean temperature has been topping seasonal heat records regularly since April.  ‘Immediate threat’  “The ocean heat wave is an immediate threat to some marine life,” said Piers Forster of the International Center for Climate at Britain’s University of Leeds.   “We are already seeing coral bleaching in Florida as a direct result, and I expect more impacts will surface,” Forster said.   The overheating …

When Clarisse Agbégnénou won her sixth world judo title, confirming the reigning Olympic champion as one of the athletes to watch at next year’s Paris Games, the French star’s smallest but greatest fan was less wild about her mother’s newest gold medal than she was about her breast milk. After a peckish day of few feeds — because Mom had been busy putting opponents through the wringer — 10-month-old Athéna made amends that night. “She didn’t let my boobs out of her mouth,” Agbégnénou said. “I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ I think it was really something for her.” Breastfeeding and high-performance sports were long an almost impossible combination for top female athletes, torn for decades between careers or motherhood, because having both was so tough. But that’s becoming less true ahead of the 2024 Olympics, where women will take another step forward in their long march for equality, competing in equal numbers with men for the first time, and with pioneering mothers like Agbégnénou showing that it is possible to breastfeed and be competitive. They don’t pretend that late-night feeds, broken sleep, pumping milk and having to eat for two people are easy. But some female athletes are also discovering that juggling their careers with the rigors of motherhood can pay off with powerful emotional well-being. Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Agbégnénou said she stunned even herself by coming back so quickly from childbirth to win at the worlds in May, with Athéna in tow and expecting …

A cyberattack disrupted hospital computer systems in several states, forcing some emergency rooms to close and ambulances to be diverted. Many primary care services remained closed Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it. The “data security incident” began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. “Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists,” the company said in a statement Friday. “While our investigation continues, we are focused on addressing the pressing needs of our patients as we work diligently to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.” In Connecticut, the emergency departments at Manchester Memorial and Rockville General hospitals were closed for much of Thursday. Patients were diverted to other nearby medical centers. “We have a national Prospect team working and evaluating the impact of the attack on all of the organizations,” Jillian Menzel, chief operating officer for the Eastern Connecticut Health Network, said in a statement. The FBI in Connecticut issued a statement saying it is working with “law enforcement partners and the victim entities” but could not comment further on an ongoing investigation. Elective surgeries, outpatient appointments, blood drives and other services were suspended, and while the emergency departments reopened late Thursday, many primary care services were closed on Friday, according to the Eastern …

At first sight, Tiembe studies his frozen breakfast with hesitation: Chunks of red meat and bone packed in a foot-long block of ice.  The 15-year-old Angolan lion eventually licks the ice before gnawing free pieces of meat.  Animals at the Attica Zoological Park outside the Greek capital were being fed frozen meals Friday as temperatures around the country reached 40 C (107.5 F) and were set to rise further, in the fourth heat wave in less than a month.  The extreme temperatures and wildfires — a growing concern for biodiversity in southern Europe — have had an impact on Greek wildlife.  A fire on the island of Rhodes burned for 11 successive days, triggering the evacuation of 20,000 people, mostly tourists.  The island’s animals were less fortunate.  As the fire tore through mountain forests and a nature reserve, an estimated 2,500 animals and beehives were burned, along with 50,000 olive trees, according to Agriculture Ministry officials. Fallow deer, a symbol of Rhodes, were found lying dead on the roadside.  The zoo, which is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of Athens, is looking after an injured deer and several turtles — some fitted with wheels prized from toys to help with their mobility — which suffered burns and other injuries during the Rhodes fire.  Zoo curator Antonis Balas urged pet owners to be more mindful of their animals at times of extreme heat, noting that many of the popular breeds of pets are from native cooler climates in Northern and …

Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a tree-lined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. “Another big brown,” she said with a sigh. It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged on summer nights in the southern Michigan countryside. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season, sheltering behind peeling bark of dead trees. The scientists had yet to spot either species this year as they embarked on a netting mission. “It’s a bad suggestion if we do not catch one. It doesn’t look good,” said Allen Kurta, an Eastern Michigan University professor who has studied bats for more than 40 years. The two bat varieties are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock U.S. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. Enacted in 1973 amid fear for iconic creatures such as the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, it extends legal protection to 1,683 domestic species. More than 99% of those listed as “endangered” — on the verge of extinction — or the less severe “threatened” have survived. “The Endangered Species Act has been very successful,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an Associated Press interview. “And I believe very strongly that we’re in a better place for it.” Fifty years after the law took effect, environmental advocates and scientists say it’s as essential as ever. Habitat loss, …

MEXICO CITY — An ancient flamingo fossil egg between 8,000 and 12,000 years old was uncovered at a busy construction site for a new airport in Mexico, officials from the Latin American country said Wednesday. The remarkably preserved egg from the Pleistocene period is incredibly rare. It is the first discovery of its kind from the Phoenicopteridae flamingo family in the Americas and only the second in the world, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH. The Pleistocene geological epoch, the most recent Ice Age, began 2.6 million years ago and ended around 11,700 years ago. The flamingo egg fossil was found at a depth of 31 centimeters (12.2 inches) amid clay and shale during construction at the new Felipe Angeles airport in the state of Mexico, INAH said. The fossil egg implies the area was the site of a shallow lake between 8,000 and 33,000 years ago, according to Mexican scientists, and that flamingos once thrived in central Mexico. Today’s American flamingo species, known for its bright pink feathers, is mainly found in South America, the Caribbean, the Yucatan peninsula and the southeast coast of the United States. …