Year: 2023

Jill Biden has represented her country at the Olympics in Tokyo, a king’s coronation in London and a royal wedding in Jordan. She gets another chance to put her ambassadorial skills to work this week when the United States formally rejoins a United Nations agency devoted to education, science and culture around the globe. Biden arrived in Paris early Monday, accompanied by her daughter, Ashley Biden, after flying overnight from Washington to join other VIPs and speak at a ceremony Tuesday at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The American flag will be raised to mark the U.S. return to UNESCO membership after a five-year absence. UNESCO aims to foster global collaboration in education, science and culture. It also designates World Heritage sites, deeming them worthy of eternal preservation. The agency on Sunday condemned Russia’s attack on a cathedral in Odesa and other heritage sites in Ukraine in recent days and said it will send a team to the Black Sea port city to assess damage. In a statement, UNESCO noted that Odesa’s historic center was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site earlier this year and said attacks by Russian forces contradict recent promises by Russian authorities to take precautions to spare such sites across the country. Before returning to Washington on Wednesday, Biden will tour a historic venue in France, Mont-Saint-Michel, a 1,000-year-old Benedictine abbey that was listed as a World Heritage site in 1979. It sits on an island in Normandy, in the …

Researchers say the central districts in Sydney are close to becoming the first place in the world to reach the U.N.’s target for ending transmission of HIV. The city was once at the heart of Australia’s HIV epidemic but new infections among gay men have fallen by 88% between 2010 and 2022. The U.N.’s goal is a 90% reduction in cases by 2030. In 1987, the ‘Grim Reaper’ advert warned Australians about the march of a deadly virus. “At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS,” the TV spots said, “but now we know everyone one of us could be devastated by it.” HIV attacks the body’s immune system, and if not treated, can lead to AIDS. In the central parts of Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, thousands of gay men died in the 1980s and ’90s. In remarkable turnaround, researchers say that only 11 new HIV cases were recorded in central Sydney last year. Almost all HIV-positive people in Australia are on antiretroviral drugs. They suppress the level of the virus in the blood, reducing the risk of sexual transmission. There’s also the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis. These are preventative medicines taken by people who don’t have HIV to lower their chance of infection. Gay men make up about 20% of the male population in inner Sydney, and they represent most of the city’s HIV cases. The research confirming the change in HIV rates in Sydney was presented to the International AIDS Society’s HIV science …

Elon Musk said Sunday that he plans to change the logo of Twitter to an “X” from the bird, marking what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year.  In a series of posts on his Twitter account starting just after 12 a.m. ET, Twitter’s owner said that he’s looking to make the change worldwide as soon as Monday.  “And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote on his account.  Earlier this month, Musk put new curfews on his digital town square, a move that came under sharp criticism that it could drive away advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter.  In May, Musk hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO in a move to win back advertisers.  Luring advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media platform, fearing damage to their brands in the ensuing chaos. Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but provided no specifics.    …

Associated Press photographer Matt York, who has covered Arizona for 23 years, recently was caught off guard by the heat wave that has shattered records in Phoenix. The 50-year-old York photographed life in the city for six of seven days as temperatures hovered above 110 Fahrenheit. On Tuesday, he went in for a medical procedure to remove a skin cancer spot and learned he was suffering from heat exhaustion and was at risk of a heart attack. He shares his story as a cautionary tale. PHOENIX — Heat never scared me before. I’ve spent 23 years covering Phoenix as a photographer for The Associated Press, shooting golf tournaments, baseball games and other outdoor sporting events, the city’s growing homeless population, immigration and crime. And, of course, heat. Like most people around here, I talk about temperatures being in the teens as if it’s a given that people know to always put a one in front of that number. But this summer’s record-shattering heat wave has been like no other. No amount of water or Gatorade can keep you going in these conditions without adequate cool-downs throughout the day. My phone and cameras continually glitch out and stop working. Even my car’s air conditioning has struggled to keep up. In my car, I keep a thermometer that I once used to check the temperature of chemicals in a darkroom. The heat inside when the air conditioner is off is way hotter than the air outside, and the thermometer often goes up …

Sea lions and dolphins are being sickened by toxic algae off the coast of California, where hundreds of animals have washed ashore. Mike O’Sullivan visited the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, California, where workers are rescuing and treating the ailing animals. …

The World Health Organization warns dengue fever is spreading to more regions and countries around the world due to the increased movement of people, urbanization, and climate-related issues. “About half of the world’s population is at risk of dengue,” Raman Velayudhan, a top official of the WHO’s global program on the control of neglected tropical diseases, told journalists at a briefing Friday in Geneva. “Dengue affects about 129 countries. We estimate about 100 to 400 million cases are reported every year. This is basically an estimate.” The disease, which is spread by the Aedes species of mosquito, thrives mainly in tropical and subtropical climates. WHO reports it has grown dramatically worldwide in recent decades, with cases increasing from half a million in 2000 to more than 4.2 million in 2022. Last year, the Latin American region reported 2.8 million cases and 1,280 deaths. Just seven months into 2023, the region has already matched those figures, with nearly three million cases and an almost equal number of deaths.  Velayudhan said dengue is a global disease, noting that the mosquito which causes dengue has been found in 24 European countries.  He said that in Africa there recently have been reports of more than 2,000 cases and 45 deaths in Sudan, as well as new reports within the past week of dengue being present in Egypt.  He said the presence of dengue in Africa is of special concern, noting that the figure of over 200,000 cases reported annually from the continent is likely …

Environmental activists and experts are increasingly concerned about the impact that military activity by India, China and Pakistan is having on the unique biodiversity and pristine ecosystems of Ladakh, an Indian-administered region high in the Himalayas. Simmering tensions between India and China since a deadly border confrontation in 2020 have led to a surge in military deployment, with both sides fortifying their positions to ensure territorial security. The influx of troops, equipment and infrastructure construction for military purposes has disrupted the fragile Himalayan ecosystem. The unchecked expansion of military bases, roads, helipads and related projects has led to deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and increased air and noise pollution, the experts say. They point to the rapid degradation of sensitive habitats, such as alpine meadows, wetlands and high-altitude forests, which are home to several endangered species, including the elusive snow leopard, Tibetan antelope and black-necked crane. “Rare birds such as the black neck crane face disturbances in their habitats due to the heavy military presence on both the Chinese and Indian sides,” said Sonam Wangchuk, an environmentalist and past winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award – sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of Asia.   He and other experts explained that the military activities disrupt the natural breeding patterns, feeding habits and migration routes of these vulnerable species, threatening their survival. The damage caused by military activity is exacerbating degradation already underway from rising global temperatures attributed in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide, trapping …

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday launched an office to prepare for and respond to potential pandemics. It will be led by Paul Friedrichs, a military combat surgeon and retired Air Force major general who helped lead the Pentagon’s COVID response. The new Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy will also take over the duties of President Biden’s current COVID-19 and monkeypox response teams, the White House said. The office will be charged with “leading, coordinating and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health-related disruptions in the United States,” its statement read. Friedrichs is currently special assistant to the president and senior director for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council. The White House had been expected to cut down its COVID-19 response team after the U.S. government in May ended its COVID Public Health Emergency. Biden said in September last year he believed the coronavirus pandemic was over in the United States. In June, the White House announced the departure of Ashish Jha, the last of the Biden administration’s rotating COVID response coordinators. …

Every few years, the Pacific Ocean gets a fever, and the symptoms spread all the way around the world. It’s happening again. El Niño is back, and it looks like it’s going to be a big one. That raises the odds of droughts in Brazil and southern Africa, and floods in East Africa and the southern United States. …

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 …