Year: 2023

Brazil’s government has declared a public health emergency for the Yanomami people in the Amazon who are suffering from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria because of illegal mining. The decree, signed by Health Minister Nisia Trindade on Friday, has no expiration date and allows for hiring extra personnel. It determines that the team in charge has to publish reports regarding the Indigenous group’s health and general well-being. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also created a multiministerial committee to be coordinated by his chief of staff for an initial period of 90 days. He is traveling to Roraima state’s capital, Boa Vista, where many ill Yanomami have been admitted to specialized hospitals. The Yanomami are the largest native group in Brazil, with a population of around 30,000 that lives in an area larger than 9 million hectares (22 million acres) in the northern area of the Amazon rainforest, close to the border with Venezuela. In recent years, specialists sounded the alarm that humanitarian and sanitary crises were taking shape. The report “Yanomami Under Attack,” written by the nonprofit Socio-Environmental Institute, points out that in 2021 the region was responsible for 50% of the malaria cases in the country. The same report said that more than 3,000 children were malnourished. Illegal mining is the main root of the problems faced by the Yanomami people. Activists accuse miners of death threats, sexual violence and alcohol and drug abuse, especially against Indigenous children. The same report shows that the region had more …

Tons of waste dumped in poorly regulated riverside landfills or directly into the waterways that flow across three countries end up accumulating behind a trash barrier in the Drina River in eastern Bosnia during the wet weather of winter and early spring. This week, the barrier once again became the outer edge of a massive floating waste dump crammed with plastic bottles, rusty barrels, used tires, household appliances, driftwood and other garbage picked up by the river from its tributaries. The river fencing installed by a Bosnian hydroelectric plant, a few kilometers upstream from its dam near Visegrad, has turned the city into an unwilling regional waste site, local environmental activists complain. Heavy rain and unseasonably warm weather over the past week have caused many rivers and streams in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro to overflow, flooding the surrounding areas and forcing scores of people from their homes. Temperatures dropped in many areas Friday as rain turned into snow. “We had a lot of rainfall and torrential floods in recent days and a huge inflow of water from (the Drina’s tributaries in) Montenegro which is now, fortunately, subsiding,” said Dejan Furtula of the environmental group Eko Centar Visegrad. “Unfortunately, the huge inflow of garbage has not ceased,” he added.   The Drina The Drina River runs 346 kilometers (215 miles) from the mountains of northwestern Montenegro through Serbia and Bosnia. and some of its tributaries are known for their emerald color and breathtaking scenery. A section along the border between Bosnia …

As damaging as it was for more than 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow to fall on California since Christmas, a worst-case global warming scenario could juice up similar future downpours by one-third by the middle of this century, a new study says. The strongest of California’s storms from atmospheric rivers, long and wide plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and flow through the sky over land, would probably get an overall 34% increase in total precipitation, or another 11 trillion gallons more than just fell. That’s because the rain and snow is likely to be 22% more concentrated at its peak in places that get really doused, and to fall over a considerably larger area if fossil fuel emissions grow uncontrolled, according to a new study in Thursday’s journal Nature Climate Change. The entire western United States would likely see a 31% increase in precipitation from these worst of the worst storms in a souped-up warming world because of more intense and widely spread rainfall, the study said. Scientists say the worst-case scenario, which is about 4.4 degrees Celsius (7.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, looks a bit more unlikely since efforts are being undertaken to rein in emissions. If countries do as they promise, temperatures are on track to warm about 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Climate Action Tracker. The National Weather Service calculated that California averaged 11.47 inches of precipitation statewide from Dec. 26 to Jan. 17 — including …

Countless artists have taken inspiration from “The Starry Night” since Vincent Van Gogh painted the swirling scene in 1889. Now artificial intelligence systems are doing the same, training themselves on a vast collection of digitized artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app. The images generated by tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weird and otherworldly but also increasingly realistic and customizable — ask for a “peacock owl in the style of Van Gogh” and they can churn out something that might look similar to what you imagined. But while Van Gogh and other long-dead master painters aren’t complaining, some living artists and photographers are starting to fight back against the AI software companies creating images derived from their works. Two new lawsuits —- one this week from the Seattle-based photography giant Getty Images —- take aim at popular image-generating services for allegedly copying and processing millions of copyright-protected images without a license. Getty said it has begun legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London against Stability AI — the maker of Stable Diffusion —- for infringing intellectual property rights to benefit the London-based startup’s commercial interests. Another lawsuit filed Friday in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco describes AI image-generators as “21st-century collage tools that violate the rights of millions of artists.” The lawsuit, filed by three working artists on behalf of others like them, also names Stability AI as a defendant, along with San …

The World Health Organization says there is no evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines increase the risk of strokes in older people. WHO officials say there is no basis to the recent concerns raised by the media and science communities about the safety of the mRNA booster shots. They say the concerns, which are related to one U.S. data system that monitors safety, presented misinformation about deaths related to COVID-19 infection. Kate O’Brien, WHO director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, said other U.S. and national vaccine safety monitoring systems have not found further evidence that mRNA vaccines lead to strokes. “At this point in time, the best evidence is that there is no true association between the booster doses of Pfizer in the older adults and strokes,” she said. “And, again, there is an ongoing, unending system to continuously monitor safety, not only for COVID vaccine and dose-by-dose, but also for all other vaccines.” O’Brien said COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalization, severe disease, or death, but less effective at stopping people from getting infected and transmitting the disease. She noted it is particularly important that people in high priority groups receive all their recommended doses. They include people over age 60, those who have underlying medical conditions or are immunocompromised, pregnant women and health workers. “For the strains that we have circulating in the world now, the omicron strains, the first booster dose actually improves the performance of your primary series for protection against the severe end of …

South Korea on Friday announced an end to its indoor mask mandate, one of the country’s last major pandemic restrictions. Health authorities said as of Jan. 30, face coverings will no longer be required indoors, except in hospitals, pharmacies, and on public transportation. The move was made because a winter spike in COVID-19 cases is on the decline and the overall pandemic situation is under control, authorities said. “Of course, there may be some increase in cases after changing the mandatory mask rule, but given the current situation in Korea we are not expecting a major spike,” said Jee Young-mee, the commissioner of the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The announcement came exactly three years after South Korea reported its first COVID-19 case. South Korea is the world’s last remaining developed country to lift its indoor mask rule and one of just a handful of nations where masks are still expected to be worn in nearly every public setting. In Seoul, the densely populated metropolitan area where nearly half the country lives, many residents say they disagree with lifting the mask mandate. “It’s too early,” said Kim Da-young, a 30-year-old nursing student, who said she fears a spike in COVID-19 cases. “I’m still nervous about taking off my mask, so I’ll keep wearing it.” According to an opinion poll released earlier this month, 66% of South Koreans will continue to wear masks even after the mandate is lifted. Several polls suggest a large percentage of South Koreans do not …

Every year, the night sky grows brighter, and the stars look dimmer. A new study that analyzes data from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers finds that artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year. That’s a much faster rate of change than scientists had previously estimated looking at satellite data. The research, which includes data from 2011 to 2022, is published Thursday in the journal Science. “We are losing, year by year, the possibility to see the stars,” said Fabio Falchi, a physicist at the University of Santiago de Compostela, who was not involved in the study. “If you can still see the dimmest stars, you are in a very dark place. But if you see only the brightest ones, you are in a very light-polluted place,” he said. As cities expand and put up more lights, “skyglow” or “artificial twilight,” as the study authors call it, becomes more intense. The 10% annual change “is a lot bigger than I expected — something you’ll notice clearly within a lifetime,” said Christopher Kyba, a study co-author and physicist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. Kyba and his colleagues gave this example: A child is born where 250 stars are visible on a clear night. By the time that child turns 18, only 100 stars are still visible. “This is real pollution, affecting people and wildlife,” said Kyba, who said he hoped that policymakers would do more to curb light pollution. Some localities have set …

As the coronavirus pandemic enters its fourth year, the United States is grappling with a new subvariant of COVID-19 called XBB.1.5, and China is reporting a spike in cases following the dismantling of its zero-COVID policy. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports. …

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is set to meet International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol in Davos on Thursday, organizers of a fringe round-table event at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting told Reuters. Thunberg is to meet Birol along with fellow campaigners Helena Gualinga, Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer, the organizers said in a statement. The IEA, which makes policy recommendations on global energy, had no immediate comment. Thunberg was released by police on Tuesday after being detained alongside other climate activists during protests in Germany. “Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening,” she tweeted, adding: “Climate protection is not a crime.” ‘We are not winning’ Former United States Vice President Al Gore said in Davos that he agreed with Thunberg’s efforts in Germany and that the climate crisis was getting worse faster than the world was tackling it. “We are not winning. The crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying these solutions,” Gore told a WEF panel, highlighting a growing gap between those “old enough to be in positions in power and the young people of this world.” Thunberg, whose current whereabouts are not clear, attended the WEF meeting in Davos in January 2020, when she challenged world leaders, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, to act on climate change, saying that “our house is still on fire.” She …

The impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine is being felt as far away as Indian-administered Kashmir, where ornithologists see the conflict as contributing to a shortage of migratory birds which make their way each winter from Europe to the wetlands of the Kashmir Valley. Every February, the wildlife protection department conducts a census of migratory birds in Kashmir. The department says that more than 1.1 million birds of 39 species visited the region in 2021. The census estimated 810,000 birds in 2020 and 950,000 in 2019. The department has not yet begun this year’s count but the wildlife warden of wetlands, Ifshan Dewan, told VOA, “I am getting reports from various wetlands on low arrival of migratory birds compared to the last year.” Experts believe that the nearly year-old war between Russia and Ukraine could be one reason for the reduced size of this year’s migratory flocks, both in Kashmir and elsewhere in the region. Irfan Jeelani, founder of the birding club Birds of Kashmir, told VOA that birds from China, Siberia, central Asia and Europe visit Kashmir every winter. “Birds from Europe could be affected due to the war and have altered their flyway to reach here; however, weak ones couldn’t reach their destinations,” Jeelani suggested. A similar pattern has been noted in the neighboring Jammu region, where Parmil Kumar, the head of the department of statistics at the University of Jammu, said the war in Ukraine could have been responsible for some species arriving almost two weeks later …

Campaigners have welcomed a decision to remove the skeleton of an 18th century man with gigantism from public display at a London museum. The remains of Charles Byrne, who was 2.31 meters (7ft 7in), had been on show at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in central London. But the museum has said the self-styled “Irish Giant” will not be part of the collection when it reopens in March after a five-year, £4.6-million ($5.7-million) refurbishment. Thomas Muinzer, a senior law lecturer at Aberdeen University in Scotland, called the decision “wonderful news”. But he said the development was only a “partial success”, as Byrne himself wanted to be buried at sea, to prevent anatomists using him for study. In 2011, Muinzer and Len Doyal, a medical ethicist, published a paper in the British Medical Journal, calling for Byrne’s final wishes to be respected. “Byrne’s remains ought to be buried at sea or at least be withdrawn from public display,” they wrote. The British writer Hilary Mantel, who died last year and wrote a 1998 fictionalized portrait of Byrne called “The Giant”, had also backed the campaign. RCS England said last week that trustees of the collection had discussed the “sensitivities” of keeping and displaying Byrne’s skeleton during the closure. The skeleton was acquired after Byrne’s death aged 22 in 1783 by the eminent surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. Before he could be buried, Hunter paid Byrne’s friends £500 — the equivalent of £60,000 today — for …

A sharp spike in Greenland temperatures since 1995 showed the giant northern island 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than its 20th-century average, the warmest in more than 1,000 years, according to new ice core data. Until now Greenland ice cores — a glimpse into long-running temperatures before thermometers — hadn’t shown much of a clear signal of global warming on the remotest north central part of the island, at least compared to the rest of the world. But the ice cores also hadn’t been updated since 1995. Newly analyzed cores, drilled in 2011, show a dramatic rise in temperature in the previous 15 years, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. “We keep on (seeing) rising temperatures between 1990s and 2011,” said study lead author Maria Hoerhold, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. “We have now a clear signature of global warming.” It takes years to analyze ice core data. Hoerhold has new cores from 2019 but hasn’t finished studying them yet. She expects the temperature rise to continue as Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers have been melting faster recently. “This is an important finding and corroborates the suspicion that the ‘missing warming’ in the ice cores is due to the fact that the cores end before the strong warming sets in,” said climate scientist Martin Stendel of the Danish Meteorological Institute, who wasn’t part of the research. The ice cores are used to make a chart of proxy temperatures for Greenland running from …

People in Somalia are highly traumatized due to political instability, prolonged violence and humanitarian crisis, a new health study said. The joint study by the United Nations, Somalia’s health ministry and the country’s national university found that mental disorder is prevalent across the country. It said that cases are about 77 percent higher than a previous study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that nearly 40% of the population in Somalia had a mental or psychological disorder. The study further said that the prevalence of mental disorders among the young is significantly higher than previously reported. “There is a high prevalence and wide range of the various mental disorders (76.9%), substance abuse disorders (lifetime, 53.3%; current, 50.6%) and poor quality of life in both non-clinical and clinical populations,” the study said. The study obtained by VOA Somali Service was conducted between October 25 and November 15 2021. The data was collected from 713 participants in the towns of Baidoa, Kismayo and Dolow. The majority of the participants (68.1%) were younger than 35 years and 58.5% were males. All three towns host internally displaced persons who have been impacted by conflicts, and droughts which forced the pastoral communities to migrate to urban locations in search of food, water, and safety. “Conflicts and clashes have brought about mental illness because we face many of these challenges in our country,” a young person in Kismayo who was interviewed for the study told the researchers. “For example, explosions occur, and the witness …

There was visible excitement among students when schools reopened Tuesday in Malawi’s two biggest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre, after a two-week suspension caused by a cholera outbreak.  The bacterial illness has killed close to 800 people, more than 100 of them children, and affected more than 25,000.  Malawi’s government announced measures to prevent cholera from spreading in schools but warned it will shut down the schools again if needed.   To many students, especially those who are preparing to take national examinations this year, the closure doomed their hope of passing the exams. Ronnie Lutepo, a teenaged student at Michiru View secondary school in Blantyre, said returning to the school was the best thing he hoped for. “Yes, as I was at home my mum was telling me to study, but being in an examination class affected me badly,” he said. “We are all supposed to be here and ready for the exams and if we are not ready, we are not going to get good grades.” The reopening comes after the government announced that it has put into place preventive measures against the spread of cholera, which is transmitted mainly through dirty water.  These include fixing broken boreholes and water taps in the schools and banning the sale of cooked food around school premises. Malawi is battling its worst cholera outbreak in a decade. Government statistics show that as of Monday it had registered 25,458 cases since the start of the outbreak last March, with 550 cases reported on Monday …

Nearly two thirds of the sharks and rays that live among the world’s corals are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Tuesday, with a warning this could further imperil precious reefs. Coral reefs, which harbor at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants, are gravely menaced by an array of human threats, including overfishing, pollution and climate change. Shark and ray species — from apex predators to filter feeders — play an important role in these delicate ecosystems that “cannot be filled by other species”, said Samantha Sherman, of Simon Fraser University in Canada and the wildlife group TRAFFIC International. But they are under grave threat globally, according to the study in the journal Nature Communications, which assessed extinction vulnerability data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to look at 134 species of sharks and rays linked to reefs. The authors found 59 percent of coral reef shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, an extinction risk almost double that of sharks and rays in general. Among these, five shark species are listed as critically endangered, as well as nine ray species, all so-called “rhino rays” that look more like sharks than stingrays. Keeping reefs healthier “It was a bit surprising just how high the threat level is for these species,” Sherman told AFP.  “Many species that we thought of as common are declining at alarming rates and becoming more difficult to find in some places.” Sherman said the biggest threat to …

Jill Biden’ s advocacy for curing cancer didn’t start with her son’s death in 2015 from brain cancer. It began decades earlier, long before she came into the national spotlight, and could now be further energized by her own brush with a common form of skin cancer. The first lady often says the worst three words anyone will ever hear are, “You have cancer.” She heard a version of that phrase for herself this past week. A lesion that doctors had found above her right eye during a routine screening late last year was removed on Wednesday and confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma — a highly treatable form of skin cancer. While Biden was being prepped to remove the lesion, doctors found and removed another one from the left side of her chest, also confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma. A third lesion from her left eyelid was being examined. While it’s too early to know when and how Biden might address her situation publicly, her experience could inject new purpose into what has become part of her life’s work highlighting research into curing cancer and urging people to get regular screenings. Personal experiences can add potency to a public figure’s advocacy. “Nothing like ‘I’ve been there, done that’ and being personally involved,” said Myra Gutin, a first lady scholar at Rider University. Biden’s spokesperson, Vanessa Valdivia, said “the first lady’s fight against cancer has always been personal. She knows that cancer touches us all.” Biden’s advocacy dates to …

Pakistan Monday launched its first nationwide anti-polio campaign of the year to immunize children under the age of five against the crippling disease. The move follows a surge in new infections in 2022. While no new case has been reported in Pakistan so far this year, the highly infectious wild poliovirus paralyzed 20 children last year. That compares to just one infection reported in 2021. National eradication program officials said that more than 360,000 health workers would deliver polio drops to at least 44.2 million children across 156 districts during the five-day campaign. They noted that children would also be administered an additional vitamin A supplement to boost their immunity against infectious diseases. The 20 polio cases in Pakistan in 2022 were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, mostly in its violence-hit North Waziristan district on the Afghan border. An official statement quoted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as saying on Sunday the resurgence of cases has raised concerns among Pakistan’s global partners, including the World Health Organization and other stakeholders. The previous nationwide polio campaign in Pakistan was organized last August but was disrupted by catastrophic floods triggered by erratic summer monsoon rains. Authorities later carried out special polio drives in flood-affected districts and vaccinated children against the virus there. Pakistan has repeatedly come close to eradicating polio but long-running propaganda in conservative rural areas that the vaccines cause sterility in children, coupled with deadly militant attacks on vaccinators, have set back the mission. The latest militant attack on a polio …

When Benjamin Franklin fashioned the first lightning rod in the 1750s following his famous experiment flying a kite with a key attached during a thunderstorm, the American inventor had no way of knowing this would remain the state of the art for centuries. Scientists now are moving to improve on that 18th-century innovation with 21st-century technology — a system employing a high-powered laser that may revolutionize lightning protection. Researchers said on Monday they succeeded in using a laser aimed at the sky from atop Mount Santis in northeastern Switzerland to divert lightning strikes. With further development, this Laser Lightning Rod could safeguard critical infrastructure including power stations, airports, wind farms and launchpads. Lightning inflicts billions of dollars in damage on buildings, communication systems, power lines and electrical equipment annually while also killing thousands of people. The equipment was hauled to the mountaintop at an altitude of about 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), some parts using a gondola and others by helicopter, and was focused on the sky above a 400-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) transmission tower belonging to telecommunications provider Swisscom SCMN.S, one of Europe’s structures most affected by lightning. In experiments during two months in 2021, intense laser pulses — 1,000 times per second — were emitted to redirect lightning strikes. All four strikes while the system was active were successfully intercepted. In the first instance, the researchers used two high-speed cameras to record the redirection of the lightning’s path by more than 160 feet (50 meters). Three others were documented with different …

Pakistan launched its first anti-polio campaign of the year Sunday, targeting 44.2 million children under the age of five. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio continues to threaten the health and well-being of children. Polio affects the nervous system of children and ultimately leads to paralysis. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif kicked off the nationwide drive by administering polio drops to children in the capital, Islamabad, saying Pakistan was unfortunately among the few countries that still suffered from the disease. Twenty cases were reported in the tribal North Waziristan area last year, though the disease was contained among other children through immunization, Sharif said. Around 44 million children in 156 districts will be immunized. This includes 22.54 million children in Punjab, 10.1 million in Sindh and 7.4 million in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. Sharif said his government along with other stakeholders, including U.S. billionaire Bill Gates and the World Health Organization, were effectively contributing to polio eradication in Pakistan. He gave out appreciation certificates at the launch to front-line polio workers and praised their “invaluable sacrifices.” Pakistan has witnessed frequent attacks on polio teams and police officers deployed to protect them. Militants falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.  …