Year: 2023

The Supreme Court is deciding whether women will face restrictions in getting a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, while a lawsuit continues. The justices are expected to issue an order on Wednesday in a fast-moving case from Texas in which abortion opponents are seeking to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone. The drug first won FDA approval in 2000, and conditions on its use have been loosened in recent years, including making it available by mail in states that allow access. The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the drug, want the nation’s highest court to reject limits on mifepristone’s use imposed by lower courts, at least as long as the legal case makes it way through the courts. They say women who want the drug and providers who dispense it will face chaos if limits on the drug take effect. Depending on what the justices decide, that could include requiring women to take a higher dosage of the drug than the FDA says is necessary. Alliance Defending Freedom, representing anti-abortion doctors and medical groups in a challenge to the drug, is defending the rulings in calling on the Supreme Court to let the restrictions take effect now. The legal fight over abortion comes less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright. Even as the abortion landscape changed …

A group of American plastic surgeons has been working in  Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, helping  wounded soldiers and civilians recover from war injuries. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. Camera: Yuriy Dankevych     …

Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, announced a provisional approval of the R21 vaccine during a media briefing on Monday. The regulatory agency’s consent came days after Ghana approved the vaccine. NAFDAC said the vaccine is 70 to 80 percent efficient in preventing the mosquito-borne disease and could protect millions of children. The agency’s director general, Mojisola Adeyeye, spoke to journalists in Abuja. “The vaccine is indicated for prevention of clinical malaria on children from five months to 36 months of age,” Adeyeye said. NAFDAC did not say when the vaccine will be rolled out, but Adeyeye said Nigeria will conduct in-country clinical trials and pharmacovigilance study. The WHO says some 600,000 people die of malaria every year, most of them in Africa, many of them young children. Nigeria accounts for the highest numbers of cases and deaths from malaria globally. Health experts say the vaccine could be a game changer. Kunle Olobayo is a lead researcher at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development. “A proactive, preemptive intervention will definitely be most useful especially in countries like Nigeria,” said Olobayo. “Many interventions and steps that have been taken to reduce transmission have not been very successful because of our level of development, poverty. So, it will definitely change the dynamics. The WHO has yet to approve the vaccine. The WHO Nigeria malaria program head, Lynda Ozor, said authorities are still reviewing the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. “The WHO is reviewing the R21 data, and …

Virtual medicine, or medical extended reality, uses virtual reality headsets and imaging software to supplement conventional medical treatments. Practitioners from around the world shared best practices at a recent conference in Los Angeles. Mike O’Sullivan reports. …

Mozambique has asked the World Health Organization to supply an additional 2 million doses of a cholera vaccine as the country struggles to control a spreading outbreak.  The head of the Department of National Health Surveillance at the Ministry of Health, Domingos Guihole, told VOA that the government awaits the WHO’s response to the cholera vaccine request, admitting difficulties due to the high global demand for vaccines. “At this moment in Mozambique, the cholera situation is not good,” Guihole said. “It is not good because we have 10 provinces affected by cholera. We have 53 districts in the whole country, 45 of which have active cholera disease.” The official said the intent is to vaccinate the population in high-risk areas, such as the northern province of Nampula and Zambezia in the central part of the country. Both provinces were hit hard by Cyclone Freddy, which tore across Mozambique twice inside two weeks last month. All five provinces impacted by Freddy on its first and second passes have witnessed cholera outbreaks. In addition to the risk of cholera, the government is concerned about a potential increase in cases of other waterborne diseases such as dysentery. Malaria is a concern, too; both are among the leading causes of mortality in Mozambique. “During almost seven months from October to April 16, we have notified 27,000 cases of cholera with 124 deaths, so the situation is not good,” said Guihole. “We have to say to all Mozambicans that we must follow the recommendations from the …

Nearly 300 Tyrannosaurus rex bones that were dug up from three sites in the United States and assembled into a single skeleton sold at Tuesday at a Switzerland auction for 4.8 million francs ($5.3 million), below the expected price. Crafted into an open-mouth pose, the T. rex skeleton measuring 11.6 meters long (38 feet long) and 3.9 meters high (12.8 feet) high came in under the anticipated range of 5 million to 8 million francs when it went under the hammer at the Koller auction house in Zurich. Koller had said Tuesday’s sale would be the first time such a T. rex skeleton would go up for auction in Europe. The composite skeleton was a showpiece of an auction that featured some 70 lots, and the skull was set up next to the auctioneer’s podium throughout. “It could be that it was a composite — that could be why the purists didn’t go for it,” Karl Green, the auction house’s marketing director, said by phone. “It’s a fair price for the dino. I hope it’s going to be shown somewhere in public.” Green did not immediately identify the buyer. Including the “buyer’s premium” and fees, the sale came to 5.5 million Swiss francs (about $6.1 million), Koller said. Promoters said the composite T. rex, dubbed “Trinity,” was built from specimens retrieved from three sites in the Hell Creek and Lance Creek formations of Montana and Wyoming between 2008 and 2013. Koller said “original bone material” comprised more than half of …

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he will launch an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that he calls “TruthGPT” to challenge the offerings from Microsoft and Google. He criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the firm behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, of “training the AI to lie” and said OpenAI has now become a “closed source,” “for-profit” organization “closely allied with Microsoft.” He also accused Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously. “I’m going to start something which I call ‘TruthGPT’, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson aired on Monday. He said TruthGPT “might be the best path to safety” that would be “unlikely to annihilate humans.” “It’s simply starting late. But I will try to create a third option,” Musk said. Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft and Page did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. Musk has been poaching AI researchers from Alphabet Inc’s Google to launch a startup to rival OpenAI, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Musk last month registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. The firm listed Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary. ‘Civilizational destruction’ The move came even after Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing …

Scientists found coastal species of shellfish and anemones living and breeding on floating islands of garbage in the Pacific thousands of miles from home, a study revealed Monday.  Environmentalists have for years been eyeing what they call the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” — masses of plastic rubbish combining bottles, fishing nets and much more. U.S. researchers who sampled rubbish from the northeastern Pacific between California and Hawaii said they found 37 kinds of invertebrates that originated from coastal areas, mostly from countries such as Japan on the other side of the ocean. “The high seas are colonized by a diverse array of coastal species, which survive and reproduce in the open ocean,” they wrote in the study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. “Coastal species persist now in the open ocean as a substantial component of a neopelagic [new, sea-dwelling] community sustained by the vast and expanding sea of plastic debris,” the study said. More than two-thirds of the items examined had coastal species on them, including crustaceans, sea anemones and moss-like creatures called bryozoans. Scientists had not often tracked creatures surviving dispersal across entire oceans. The researchers noted that in one rare event in 2012, debris from the previous year’s tsunami in Japan washed ashore in North America bearing living species. Creatures can spread quickly by feeding on the layers of slime formed on floating plastics by bacteria and algae, the study said. Scientists must now investigate how these coastal colonists will fit into the ocean food chain. “We …

Kenya is using the launch of its first operational observation satellite to promote space education and science through space clubs in schools. Kenya launched an operational 3U nanosatellite April 15 aboard the SpaceX Falcon Force base in the U.S. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo …

Two years ago, Paul’s teacher noticed that the 10-year-old boy could no longer see anything on the board at the front of the class. An ophthalmologist confirmed that Paul was one of the soaring number of children worldwide with myopia, also known as nearsightedness, an eye condition projected to affect half of the world’s population by 2050. But the ophthalmologist in the western French city of Nantes had some good news: specially designed glasses had just become available that could slow down the progression of Paul’s myopia. “After a year, the results were quite positive because his eyesight seemed to have stabilized,” Paul’s mother Caroline Boudet told AFP. Previous research has suggested that myopia progresses 60% slower in children wearing the “Miyosmart” glasses compared to normal prescription glasses. A six-year clinical study also found that the disorder did not start speeding up again if the children stopped using the glasses. Developed by Japan’s Hoya Corporation, the Miyosmart lenses, which also function as normal glasses to help the children see clearly, have been available in numerous European countries including France and the U.K. for around two years. Eyewear firm EssilorLuxottica claims its own Stellest lenses reduce myopia’s progression by 67% when worn at least 12 hours a day. The Italian French firm said the glasses could save more than one dioptre — the unit of measurement for optical power — over three years. Myopia occurs when there is too much distance between the cornea and retina, making far-off objects appear blurry. …

Nigeria has granted provisional approval to Oxford University’s R21 malaria vaccine, its medicines regulator said Monday, making it the second country to do so after Ghana last week.  The approvals are unusual as they have come before the publication of final-stage trial data for the vaccine.  “A provisional approval of the R21 Malaria Vaccine was recommended, and this shall be done in line with the WHO’s Malaria Vaccine Implementation Guideline,” Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said.  Malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, kills more than 600,000 people each year, most of them African babies and children.  Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, is the world’s worst-affected country with 27% of global cases and 32% of global deaths, according to a 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) report.  It was unclear when the R21 vaccine may be rolled out in Nigeria or Ghana as other regulatory bodies, including the WHO, are still assessing its safety and effectiveness.  Childhood vaccines in the poorest parts of Africa are typically co-funded by international organizations such as Gavi, the vaccine alliance, only after getting WHO approval.  “While granting the approval, the Agency has also communicated the need for expansion of the clinical trial conducted to include a phase 4 clinical trial/Pharmacovigilance study to be carried out in Nigeria,” NAFDAC’s director-general, Mojisola Christianah Adeyeye, said in a statement.  Mid-stage data from the R21 trial involving more than 400 young children were published in September, showing vaccine efficacy of 70% to 80% at 12 …

Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Monday called off a highly anticipated launch of its powerful new Starship rocket, delaying the first uncrewed test flight of the vehicle into space. The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, originally was scheduled for blast-off from the SpaceX facility at Boca Chica, Texas, during a two-hour launch window that began at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT). But the California-based space company announced in a live webcast during the final minutes of the countdown that it was scrubbing the flight attempt for at least 48 hours, citing a pressurization issue in the lower-stage rocket booster. Musk, the company’s billionaire founder and chief executive, told a private Twitter audience on Sunday night that the mission stood a better chance of being scrubbed than proceeding to launch on Monday. Getting the vehicle to space for the first time would represent a key milestone in SpaceX’s ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars – at least initially as part of NASA’s newly inaugurated human spaceflight program, Artemis. A successful debut flight would also instantly rank the Starship system as the most powerful launch vehicle on Earth. Both the lower-stage Super Heavy booster rocket and the upper-stage Starship cruise vessel it will carry to space are designed as reusable components, capable of flying back to Earth for soft landings – a maneuver that has become routine for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket. But neither stage would …

Information in this article is confirmed with other sources and may be used without attribution to The Associated Press in broadcasts — websites still must use the attribution. The News Center has no plans currently to match it.   (With AP Photo)    Europe’s Most Powerful Nuclear Reactor Kicks Off in Finland    Apr 16, 2023 13:05 (GMT) – 423 words |By JARI TANNER The Associated Press    FOR RADIO: HELSINKI (AP) — Finland’s much-delayed and costly new nuclear reactor, Europe’s most powerful by production capacity, has completed a test phase lasting over a year and has started regular output, significantly boosting the Nordic country’s electricity self-sufficiency. The Olkiluoto 3 reactor, which has 1,600-megawatt capacity, was connected into the Finnish national power grid in March 2022 and kicked off regular production Sunday. Operator Teollisuuden Voima, or TVO, tweeted that “Olkiluoto 3 is now ready” after a delay of 14 years from the original plan. It will help Finland achieve its carbon neutrality targets and increase energy security at a time when European countries have cut oil, gas and other power supplies from Russia, Finland’s neighbor.    FOR WEB: HELSINKI (AP) — Finland’s much-delayed and costly new nuclear reactor, Europe’s most powerful by production capacity, has completed a test phase lasting over a year and started regular output, boosting the Nordic country’s electricity self-sufficiency significantly.  The Olkiluoto 3 reactor, which has 1,600-megawatt capacity, was connected into the Finnish national power grid in March 2022 and kicked off regular production Sunday. Operator Teollisuuden …

The Group of Seven rich nations on Sunday set big new collective targets for solar power and offshore wind capacity, agreeing to speed up renewable energy development and move toward a quicker phase-out of fossil fuels. But they stopped short of endorsing a 2030 deadline for phasing out coal that Canada and other members had pushed for, and left the door open for continued investment in gas, saying that sector could help address potential energy shortfalls. “In the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis, it’s important to come up with measures to tackle climate change and promote energy security at the same time,” Japanese industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference. “While acknowledging that there are diverse pathways to achieve carbon neutral, we agreed on the importance of aiming for a common goal toward 2050,” he said. G7 ministers finish two days of meetings on climate, energy and environmental policy in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo on Sunday. Renewable fuel sources and energy security have taken on a new urgency following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Initially people thought that climate action and action on energy security potentially were in conflict. But discussions which we had and which are reflected in the communique are that they actually work together,” said Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s minister of natural resources. In their communique, the members pledged to collectively increase offshore wind capacity by 150 gigawatts by 2030 and solar capacity to more than 1 terawatt. They agreed to accelerate “the phase-out of …

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris made an appearance at an abortion rights rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, one of a number of such rallies held around the country following recent court rulings limiting access to abortion. “When you attack the rights of women in America, you are attacking America,” Harris told the crowd. On Friday, the Supreme Court temporarily kept in place federal rules for use of the abortion drug mifepristone, after lower court rulings sought to restrict the use of the drug, which women have been using for years. The justices are being asked to only focus on what parts of an April 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, as modified by an appellate ruling Wednesday, can be in force while the case continues. The order expires late Wednesday. The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the pill, asked the justices to intervene. Last year, the justices reversed Roe v. Wade, opening the door for some states to ban abortions. Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press. …

Cindy Powers was driven into bankruptcy by 19 life-saving abdominal operations. Medical debt started stacking up for Lindsey Vance after she crashed her skateboard and had to get nine stitches in her chin. And for Misty Castaneda, open heart surgery for a disease she’d had since birth saddled her with $200,000 in bills. These are three of an estimated 100 million Americans who have amassed nearly $200 billion in collective medical debt — almost the size of Greece’s economy — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Now lawmakers in at least a dozen states and the U.S. Congress have pushed legislation to curtail the financial burden that’s pushed many into untenable situations: forgoing needed care for fear of added debt, taking a second mortgage to pay for cancer treatment or slashing grocery budgets to keep up with payments. Some of the bills would create medical debt relief programs or protect personal property from collections, while others would lower interest rates, keep medical debt from tanking credit scores or require greater transparency in the costs of care. In Colorado, House lawmakers approved a measure Wednesday that would lower the maximum interest rate for medical debt to 3%, require greater transparency in costs of treatment and prohibit debt collection during an appeals process. If it became law, Colorado would join Arizona in having one of the lowest medical debt interest rates in the country. North Carolina lawmakers have also started mulling a 5% interest ceiling. But there are opponents. Colorado Republican state …

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is about to take its most daring leap yet with a round-the-world test flight of its mammoth Starship. It’s the biggest and mightiest rocket ever built, with the lofty goal of ferrying people to the moon and Mars. Jutting almost 120 meters into the South Texas sky, Starship could blast off as early as Monday, with no one aboard. Musk’s company got the OK from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Friday. It will be the first launch with Starship’s two sections together. Early versions of the sci-fi-looking upper stage rocketed several miles into the stratosphere a few years back, crashing four times before finally landing upright in 2021. The towering first-stage rocket booster, dubbed Super Heavy, will soar for the first time. For this demo, SpaceX won’t attempt any landings of the rocket or the spacecraft. Everything will fall into the sea. “I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement. It won’t be boring,” Musk promised at a Morgan Stanley conference last month. “I think it’s got, I don’t know, hopefully about a 50% chance of reaching orbit.” Here’s the rundown on Starship’s debut: Supersize rocket The stainless-steel Starship has 33 main engines and 7.6 million kilograms of thrust. All but two of the methane-fueled, first-stage engines ignited during a launch pad test in January — good enough to reach orbit, Musk noted. Given its muscle, Starship could lift as much as 250 tons and accommodate 100 people on a trip …

A man in Chile is infected with a bird flu that has concerning mutations, but the threat to people from the virus remains low, U.S. health officials said Friday. Past animal studies suggest these mutations could cause the virus to be more harmful or spread more easily, health officials said. But they also said there is no evidence that the mutations would make it easier for it to take root in a person’s upper lungs — a development that would raise concerns about it spreading among people. The mutations do not change public health officials’ assessment of the overall risk to people from the H5N1 virus, which “continues to be low,” said Vivien Dugan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The mutations, which have appeared only in the one hospitalized patient, may have occurred after the man got sick, CDC officials said. There’s no evidence that the mutated virus spread to other people, mixed with other flu viruses, or developed the ability to fight off current medicines or evade vaccines, agency officials said. Such genetic changes have been seen in past bird flu infections. “Nevertheless, it’s important to continue to look carefully at every instance of human infection,” Dugan said. “We need to remain vigilant for changes that would make these viruses more dangerous to people.” Threat first identified in 1997 This type of flu, called Type A H5N1, was first identified as a threat to people during a 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong, when visitors to live …

For 35 years, the Emsland nuclear power plant in northwestern Germany has reliably provided millions of homes with electricity and many with well-paid jobs in what was once an agricultural backwater. Now, it and the country’s two other remaining nuclear plants are being shut down. Germany long ago decided to phase out both fossil fuels and nuclear power over concerns that neither is a sustainable source of energy. The final countdown Saturday — delayed for several months over feared energy shortages because of the Ukraine war — is seen with relief by Germans who have campaigned against nuclear power. Yet with energy prices stubbornly high and climate change a growing concern, some in the country and abroad are branding the move reckless. As Germany closes nuclear stations, other governments in Europe have announced plans to build new ones or have backtracked on commitments to shut down existing plants. “The Emsland nuclear power plant has indeed contributed significantly to the economic development of this region,” says Albert Stegemann, a dairy farmer and lawmaker for the opposition Christian Democrats who represents the nearby town of Lingen and surrounding areas in the federal parliament. Unlike some of his conservative colleagues, Stegemann isn’t worried the lights will go out in Germany when the three reactors — Emsland, Neckarwestheim II and Isar II — are switched off for good. The closure of three other plants in late 2021 reduced nuclear’s share of electricity produced in Germany to about 5% but didn’t result in any blackouts. …

A trio of health care bills enshrining access in Colorado to abortion and gender-affirming procedures and medications became law Friday as the Democrat-led state tries to make itself a safe haven for its neighbors, whose Republican leaders are restricting care.  The main goal of the legislation signed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis is to ensure people in surrounding states and beyond can go to Colorado to have an abortion, begin puberty blockers or receive gender-affirming surgery without fear of prosecution. Bordering states of Wyoming and Oklahoma have passed abortion bans and Utah has severely restricted transgender care for minors.  Many states with abortion or transgender care bans are also criminalizing traveling to states for the purpose of accessing legal health care.  The contradicting laws are setting the stage for interstate disputes comparable to the patchwork of same-sex marriage laws that existed until 2015, or the 19th-century legal conflict over whether fugitive enslaved people in free states remained the property of slaveholders when they escaped.  The governor’s office was packed with lawmakers, advocates and health care providers, many of them women, for a ceremony with a celebratory feel that resembled a rally at times with loud applause and call-and-response chants.  “We see you and in Colorado, we’ve got your back,” Democratic state Senator Julie Gonzalez said during the ceremony.  With the new laws, Colorado joins Illinois as a progressive place offering reproductive rights to residents of conservative states. Illinois abortion clinics now serve people living in a 2,900-kilometer (1,800-mile) stretch of …