Year: 2023

Decades of violence and humanitarian crises have left many Somali people traumatized, according to a health study by the U.N. and Somali organizations. Harun Maruf reported from Washington and Abdulkadir Zubeyr in Mogadishu spoke to mental health doctors and patients in the country. They have this report narrated by Salem Solomon. Camera: Abdulkadir Zubeyr. Video editor Betty Ayoub. …

Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut will remain aboard the International Space Station for an extra six months because of damage to their Russian spacecraft. Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and Frank Rubio were set to end their six-month stay aboard the ISS in late March, but the Russian space agency Roscosmos said Tuesday the trio will have to remain on the orbital outpost until September. The Soyuz MS-22 capsule that carried the crew to the ISS last September has been leaking coolant since mid-December, which both Roscosmos and the U.S. space agency NASA have blamed on a micrometeoroid, or space rock, that struck the capsule. Russia had planned to send an unmanned Soyuz capsule to the ISS earlier this month to bring the crew home, but the launch of that spacecraft was postponed because a Russian Progress MS-21 cargo ship docked at the station was also leaking coolant. That leak has been blamed by officials on an “external impact.” Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio were joined on the ISS in October by four astronauts brought by a SpaceX capsule: two Americans, a Russian and a Japanese. The space station will become even more crowded next week when another four person crew, including an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates, is set to arrive. Some information for this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse. …

The U.N. in Malawi has launched an urgent appeal for aid to deal with the impact of a record cholera outbreak that has so far killed nearly 1,450 people and infected 45,000.   Local health experts say if urgent action isn’t taken to scale up the response, the number of cases could double in the next few months. The U.N. says the flash appeal seeks to raise $45.3 million to provide life-saving aid to thousands of people in Malawi devastated by the outbreak. In a statement released Monday, the U.N. said the appeal aims to assist four million people in Malawi, including 56,000 refugees and asylum seekers who are at the highest risk in the outbreak. The current outbreak started in March last year and has spread to all 29 districts of Malawi. Rebecca Adda-Dontoh, the U.N. resident coordinator in Malawi, told reporters Monday that more assistance is needed to stop the outbreak. “So much work has been done but a lot more needs to be done,” she said. “We have focused on health, we have focused on WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene). The two are very important but there are also other sectors like nutrition, protection and even logistics because we need to be able to move supplies from one point to the other.” Adda-Dontoh said the needed assistance would complement what various donor partners have already contributed. “The U.N. itself has mobilized already close to $10 million,” she said. “You heard the EU; you heard the U.K. here saying …

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Ghenya Grondin of Waltham, Massachusetts, was a postpartum doula – a person charged with helping young couples navigate the first weeks of their newborn child’s life at home. Grondin, now aged 44, was infected with SARS-CoV-2 in mid-March of that year – before there were tests, before social distancing or masks, and many months before the medical community recognized long COVID as a complication of COVID-19. She is part of a community of first-wave long-haulers who faced a new disease without a roadmap or support from the medical establishment. Three years later, at least 65 million people worldwide are estimated to have long COVID, according to an evidence review published last month in Nature Reviews Microbiology. More than 200 symptoms have been linked to the syndrome – including extreme fatigue, difficulty thinking, headaches, dizziness when standing, sleep problems, chest pain, blood clots, immune dysregulation, and even diabetes. There are no proven treatments but research is underway. People infected later in the pandemic had the benefit of vaccination, which “protects at least to some degree” from long COVID, said Dr. Bruce Levy, a Harvard pulmonologist and a co-principal investigator of the National Institute of Health’s $1.15 billion U.S. RECOVER trial, which aims to characterize and find cures for the disease. “The initial variant of the virus caused a more severe illness than we’re seeing currently in most patients,” he said. According to the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, in the first two …

Two 16th-century sculptures, jewels of French Renaissance art, have been on display since 1908 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But thanks to modern technology and an unusual agreement, precise 3D copies will be made and installed in the French castle where the originals long resided. The facsimiles plan is the fruit of a rare partnership between the Met, as the New York museum is known, and the Dordogne department in southwestern France. The statues, both from the early 1500s and by an anonymous sculptor, represent Biblical scenes entitled “Entombment of Christ” and “Pieta With Donors.” A tourism promotion agency in the Dordogne, Semitour, will be working with the Atelier of Fac-Similes Perigord (AFSP) to make the replicas over the coming months. For nearly 400 years, the originals graced the chapel of the Biron chateau in the Dordogne. Built on a strategic promontory, the sprawling fortress comprises buildings from different eras, including a dungeon dating to the 12th century. Damaged and rebuilt repeatedly through the centuries, the chateau has belonged since 1978 to the Dordogne department, which declared it a historic monument, Dordogne president Germinal Peiro said during a visit to the Met. Digital copy The technology to be employed in copying the sculptures was described to AFP by Francis Rigenbach, who heads the Perigord atelier, and C. Griffith Mann, the Met’s medieval art curator. Using 3D scanners to make digital images of the sculptures, artisans will be able to create replicas without having to move or disturb the …

United Nations members gather Monday in New York to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard the world’s marine biodiversity.  Nearly two-thirds of the ocean lies outside national boundaries on the high seas where fragmented and unevenly enforced rules seek to minimize human impact.  The goal of the U.N. meetings, running through March 3, is to produce a unified agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of those vast marine ecosystems. The talks, formally called the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, resume negotiations suspended last fall without agreement on a final treaty.  “The ocean is the life support system of our planet,” said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University. “For the longest time, we did not feel we had a large impact on the high seas. But that notion has changed with expansion of deep-sea fishing, mining, plastic pollution, climate change,” and other human disturbances, he said.  The U.N. talks will focus on key questions, including: How should the boundaries of marine protected areas be drawn, and by whom? How should institutions assess the environmental impacts of commercial activities, such as shipping and mining? And who has the power to enforce rules?  “This is our largest global commons,” said Nichola Clark, an oceans expert who follows the negotiations for the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington. “We are optimistic that this upcoming round of negotiations will be the one to get a treaty over the finish line.”  The …

The prospect of large-scale mining to extract valuable minerals from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, once a distant vision, has grown more real, raising alarms among the oceans’ most fervent defenders. “I think this is a real and imminent risk,” Emma Wilson of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an umbrella organization of environmental groups and scientific bodies, told AFP. “There are plenty of stakeholders that are flagging the significant environmental risks.” And the long-awaited treaty to protect the high seas, even if it is adopted in negotiations resuming on Monday, is unlikely to alleviate risks anytime soon: it will not take effect immediately and will have to come to terms with the International Seabed Authority (ISA). That agency, established under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, has 167 member states. It has authority over the ocean floors outside of member states’ Exclusive Economic Zones (which extend up to 200 nautical miles, or 370 kilometers, from coastlines). But conservation groups say the ISA has two glaringly contradictory missions: protecting the sea floors under the high seas while organizing the activities of industries eager to mine untapped resources on the ocean floor. For now, some 30 research centers and enterprises have been approved to explore — but not exploit — limited areas. Mining activities are not supposed to begin before negotiators adopt a mining code, already under discussion for nearly a decade. Making waves But the small Pacific island nation of Nauru, impatient with the plodding pace of …

The little-noticed program that led to a Chinese spy balloon drifting across the United States this month has been discussed in China’s state-controlled media for more than a decade in articles extolling its potential military applications. The reports, dating back to at least 2011, focus on how best to exploit what is known as “near space” – that portion of the atmosphere that is too high for traditional aircraft to fly but too low for a satellite to remain in orbit. Those early articles may offer clues to the capabilities of the balloon shot down by a U.S. jet fighter on Feb. 4. “In recent years, ‘near space’ has been discussed often in foreign media, with many military commentators pointing out that this is a special sphere that had been neglected by militaries but now has risen to hotspot status,” reads a July 5, 2011, article in the People’s Liberation Army Daily titled Near Space – A Strategic Asset That Ought Not to be Neglected. The article quoted Zhang Dongjiang, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, discussing the potential applications of flying objects designed for near space. “This is an area sitting in between ‘air’ and ‘space’ where neither the theory of gravity nor Kepler’s Law is independently applicable, thus limiting the freedom of flight for both aircraft that are designed based on the theory of gravity and spacecraft that follow Kepler’s Law,” Zhang was quoted as saying. He noted that near space lacks the atmospheric …

World health officials warn the war in Ukraine is taking a heavy toll on the mental health condition of millions of people, requiring an urgent increase in mental health and psychological support. “An estimated almost 10 million people may currently have a mental health condition, of whom about 4 million may have conditions which are moderate or severe,” said Hans Kluge, World Health Organization regional director for Europe. Speaking in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr, Kluge said he met Thursday with first lady Olena Zelenska, who summed up the prevailing situation in the country by telling him that “everyone in society has to become a psychologist.” Managing the critical situation, he said, “requires an all-government and all-society effort.” Data and evidence gathered by Ukraine’s Ministry of Health and WHO in recent months show the major priorities and challenges that need to be addressed are mental health, rehabilitation, and community access to health services. The latest estimate by the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights finds more than 7,000 civilians have been killed and nearly 12,000 injured since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly one year ago. Kluge said rehabilitation of victims of the war must not be delayed but made available now. “We are doubling the support on rehabilitation,” he said, “including treatment for war-related injuries, which are often horrific for adults and children alike.” The latest WHO needs assessment survey finds that one in 10 people express difficulty in accessing medicine for various reasons, including damaged or destroyed …

Imagine if your dog or cat could use words to let you know when they’re angry, lonely or in pain. Well now they can, thanks to an innovative communication tool that’s helping them express themselves more effectively. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. Camera: Adam Greenbaum            Produced by: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum   …

Avian flu has reached new corners of the globe and become endemic for the first time in some wild birds that transmit the virus to poultry, according to veterinarians and disease experts, who warn it is now a year-round problem. Reuters spoke to more than 20 experts and farmers on four continents who said the prevalence of the virus in the wild signals that record outbreaks will not abate soon on poultry farms, ramping up threats to the world’s food supply. They warned that farmers must view the disease as a serious risk all year, instead of focusing prevention efforts during spring migration seasons for wild birds. Outbreaks of the virus have widened in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, undefeated by summer heat or winter cold snaps, since a strain arrived in the United States in early 2022 that was genetically similar to cases in Europe and Asia. On Wednesday, Argentina and Uruguay each declared national sanitary emergencies after officials confirmed the countries’ first infections. Argentina found the virus in wild birds, while dead swans in Uruguay tested positive. Egg prices set records after the disease last year wiped out tens of millions of laying hens, putting a staple source of cheap protein out of reach to some of the world’s poorest at a time the global economy is reeling from high inflation. Wild birds are primarily responsible for spreading the virus, according to experts. Waterfowl like ducks can carry the disease without dying and introduce it …

Police use of automated data analysis to prevent crime in some German states was unconstitutional, a top German court said on Thursday, ruling in favor of critics of software provided by the CIA-backed Palantir Technologies PLTR.N. Provisions regulating the use of the technology in Hesse and Hamburg violate the right to informational self-determination, a statement from the constitutional court said. Hesse has been given a Sept. 30 deadline to rewrite its provisions, while legislation in Hamburg — where the technology was not yet in use — was nullified. “Given the particularly broad wording of the powers, in terms of both the data and the methods concerned, the grounds for interference fall far short of the constitutionally required threshold of an identifiable danger,” the court said. However, court president Stephan Harbarth said states had the option “of shaping the legal basis for further processing of stored data files in a constitutional manner.” Hesse’s State Minister of Interior Peter Beuth said current practices must be made more robust and codified, but welcomed the ruling for recognizing that “police work of the future must deal efficiently with large amounts of data.” He said the technology has so far been used, among other things, to investigate the underground network charged with plotting to overthrow the German government in December. Palantir’s strategy chief in Europe, Jan Hiesserich, said the U.S.-based company merely provides the software for processing data, not the data itself. “Which data is relevant for investigation in this context is determined exclusively by …

Climate change isn’t causing the multi-year drought that is devastating parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Bolivia, but warming is worsening some of the dry spell’s impacts, a new study says. The natural three-year climate condition La Nina – a cooling of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide temporarily but lasted much longer than normal this time – is the chief culprit in a drought that has devastated central South America and is still going on, according to a flash study released Thursday by international scientists at World Weather Attribution. The study has not been peer reviewed yet. Drought has hit the region since 2019 with last year seeing the driest year in Central Argentina since 1960, widespread crop failures and Uruguay declaring an agricultural emergency in October. Water supplies and transportation were hampered, too. “There is no climate change signal in the rainfall,” said study co-author Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College in London. “But of course, that doesn’t mean that climate change doesn’t play an important role in the context of these droughts. Because of the extreme increase in heat that we see, the soils do dry faster and the impacts are more severe they would have otherwise been.” The heat has increased the evaporation of what little water there is, worsened a natural water shortage and added to crop destruction, scientists said. The same group of scientists found that climate change made the heat wave last December 60 times more likely. And cutting …

The confirmation of more bird flu cases in South America raised alarm bells in Brazil, which remains free of contagion even after its close neighbors Argentina and Uruguay confirmed cases there on Wednesday.  In a press conference to discuss the global sanitary hazard, Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro said Brazil, the world’s biggest chicken exporter, would bolster measures to prevent outbreaks as the virus continued to spread.  Until now, bird flu cases had been detected in commercial farms in Bolivia, which borders Brazil, and in Peru and Ecuador, Favaro said.  On Wednesday, cases in wild birds were confirmed in Uruguay and Argentina, sparking a health emergency in both.  In recent days, Brazil also investigated suspected cases of the highly pathogenic bird flu.  The suspect cases occurred in wild birds in Rio Grande do Sul state, where many Brazilian meatpackers operate, and in domestic birds, ducks and chickens with bird flu symptoms in Amazonas state, according to the minister.  None of the suspect cases turned out to be avian influenza, he said.  Avian flu, which has reached new corners of the globe, has become endemic for the first time in some wild birds that transmit the virus to poultry, experts said.  The virus has spurred import bans in some countries and pushed egg prices to record highs in some parts of the world.  Brazil is home to some of the world’s biggest meatpackers. It has never registered a bird flu case.  But since late last year, the Brazilian meat industry has …

Cameroon’s health ministry has dismissed a report of two suspected cases of Marburg virus in the country after a first deadly outbreak in neighboring Equatorial Guinea. Health officials along the border said Tuesday there were two suspected cases of the severe hemorrhagic fever in Cameroon after Malabo confirmed nine deaths and sixteen possible infections. Despite dismissing the reported cases, Cameroon’s health ministry says it is increasing surveillance and travel restrictions along the border. Health Minister Manaouda Malachie says Cameroon does not yet have any suspected cases of the Marburg virus, despite reports of two possible infections. Health officials in Cameroon’s South region on Tuesday said a teenage boy and girl suffering from high fever were rushed to a hospital Monday in Olamze, on the border with Equatorial Guinea. The health officials said the children were suspected of being infected with the Marburg virus, are in isolation, and are responding to treatment. But Malachie seemed to contradict those reports when he spoke Wednesday to state broadcaster Cameroon Radio Television. Malachie says the decision by Cameroon to stop Marburg virus, an illness like Ebola, by restricting movement along the border with Equatorial Guinea is so far yielding fruit. He says as of Wednesday at midday central African time, Cameroon had not reported any deaths or suspected cases of Marburg virus. Malachie says civilians should avoid contact with animals and people who have travelled to Equatorial Guinea and make sure people with fever, fatigue, and blood-stained vomit and diarrhea are isolated. But Malachie …