Year: 2023

Students from Kabarak University in Kenya’s Rift Valley have developed a method for turning grass into flour and then fortifying it for human consumption. This new flour will be an ingredient for ugali, a staple food normally made from cornmeal, since that grain has become too expensive for many families. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi. …

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said talks this week with his Chinese counterpart resulted in “some agreement” on climate issues that leave him optimistic about the U.N. climate summit scheduled for later this month in Dubai.  Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, Kerry said Friday that he met for four days this week with Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in California. He described their talks as “productive” and, without providing details, said they had reached “some agreement on reducing emissions and the direction we have to go.”  Kerry said, “I am hopeful about that,” adding that details of the agreements would be released soon.  The U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, is scheduled for the end of this month. The climate conference seeks to meet and expand on climate goals established during the Paris agreement of 2015, in which some 200 nations agreed to limit the rise of global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or about pre-industrial age levels.  Kerry said the goal, as in the previous climate conferences, “is to open up the opportunity to keep 1.5 degrees alive.”  Any agreements between the United States and China — the world’s two largest polluters — would be integral to the success of the conference.  The U.S. climate envoy said the use of fossil fuels — coal in particular — is likely to be a central part of the discussion at the conference. China is the world’s largest user of fossil fuels and relies on coal for …

Rain in New Delhi and its suburbs brought relief Friday morning to the Indian capital, where authorities were mulling seeding clouds to improve the toxic air gripping the city. New Delhi, which was the most polluted in the world until Thursday, saw its air quality index (AQI) improve to 127 early Friday – a welcome change from the “hazardous” 400-500 level seen during the past week, according to the Swiss group IQAir. India’s weather department has forecast intermittent rain over the city and adjoining areas until early noon on Friday. Light showers are also expected in neighboring states like Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan. On Friday morning, New Delhi was the 10th most polluted city in the world, while Kolkata, in India’s east, topped the global chart with an AQI of 303. Meanwhile, air in the financial capital of Mumbai has markedly improved due to showers in nearby coastal areas. This year, attention on the worsening air quality has cast a shadow over the cricket World Cup hosted by India. Scientists and authorities were planning to seed clouds in New Delhi around Nov. 20 to trigger heavy rain, the first such attempt to clean the air. A thick layer of smog envelops the city every year ahead of winter as heavy, cold air traps dust, vehicle emissions and smoke from burning crop stubble in Punjab and Haryana. Friday’s rain comes two days before the Diwali festival, when many people defy a ban on firecrackers, causing a spike in air pollution. The …

Surgeons have performed the world’s first transplant of an entire human eye, an extraordinary addition to a face transplant — although it’s far too soon to know if the man will ever see through his new left eye.  An accident with high-voltage power lines destroyed most of Aaron James’ face and one eye. His right eye still works. But surgeons at NYU Langone Health hoped replacing the missing one would yield better cosmetic results for his new face, because it would support the transplanted eye socket and lid.  The NYU team announced Thursday that so far, it’s doing just that. James is recovering well from the dual transplant last May, and the donated eye looks remarkably healthy.  “It feels good. I still don’t have any movement in it yet. My eyelid, I can’t blink yet. But I’m getting sensation now,” James told The Associated Press as doctors examined his progress recently.  “You got to start somewhere, there’s got to be a first person somewhere,” said James, 46, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. “Maybe you’ll learn something from it that will help the next person.”  Today, transplants of the cornea — the clear tissue in front of the eye — are common to treat certain types of vision loss. But transplanting the whole eye — the eyeball, its blood supply and the critical optic nerve that must connect it to the brain — is considered a moonshot in the quest to cure blindness.  Whatever happens next, James’ surgery offers scientists an unprecedented …

Recent heavy rain and flooding killed 15 people in Kenya and displaced thousands of others, the Kenya Red Cross Society says. The heavy rainfall also killed livestock and destroyed businesses and farmland, said Peter Murgor, a disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation manager with the Kenya Red Cross Society. “Schools [are] being affected … and even hospital facilities in some of the places that have been marooned are also affected,” Murgor told VOA. The situation could get worse, Murgor said. In its forecast for this year’s last quarter, the Kenya Meteorological Department had warned the country will experience above-average rainfall, driven by warmer sea surface temperatures over the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. “We are informed by the [weather forecaster] that November normally is the peak,” Murgor told VOA. “If November is the peak and we are just at the beginning of November, chances are … the situation is likely to worsen in the month towards the end, probably seeing a bit more people being displaced, probably seeing a bit more loss of livelihoods.” Nearly half of the 47 counties in Kenya are at risk, he said, with the northeastern part of the country being the most affected. Heavy rains also have affected neighboring Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia, where the government declared a state of emergency after 29 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced as a result of the extreme weather. Meanwhile, in Kenya, Murgor said flash floods would likely cause more problems. “We are likely …

Crying in a hospital bed with a nebulizer mask on his tiny face, 1-month-old Ayansh Tiwari has a thick, hacking cough. His doctors blame the acrid air that blights New Delhi every year. The spartan emergency room of the government-run Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya hospital in the Indian capital is crowded with children struggling to breathe — many with asthma and pneumonia, which spike as air pollution peaks each winter in the megacity of 30 million people. Delhi regularly ranks among the most polluted major cities on the planet, with a melange of factory and vehicle emissions exacerbated by seasonal agricultural fires. “Wherever you see there is poisonous smog,” said Ayansh’s mother Julie Tiwari, 26, as she rocked the baby on her lap, attempting to calm him. “I try to keep the doors and windows closed as much as possible. But it’s like breathing poison all the time. I feel so helpless,” she told AFP, fighting back tears. On Thursday, the level of PM2.5 particles — the smallest and most harmful, which can enter the bloodstream — topped 390 micrograms per cubic meter, according to monitoring firm IQAir, more than 25 times the daily maximum recommended by the World Health Organization. Government efforts have so far failed to solve the country’s air quality problem, and a study in the Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths to air pollution in the world’s most populous country in 2019. ‘Maddening rush’ “It’s a maddening rush in our emergency room during this …

Transsexual people can be godparents at Roman Catholic baptisms, witnesses at religious weddings and receive baptism themselves, the Vatican’s doctrinal office said on Wednesday, responding to questions from a bishop.  The department, known as the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, was vague, however, in response to a question about whether a same-sex couple could have a church baptism for an adopted child or one obtained through a surrogate mother.  Bishop Jose Negri of Santo Amaro, Brazil, sent the doctrinal office six questions in July regarding LGBTQ people and their participation in the sacraments of baptism and matrimony.  The three pages of questions and answers were signed by the department’s head, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernandez, and approved by Pope Francis on October 31. They were posted in Italian on the department’s website Wednesday.  Francis, 86, has tried to make the church more welcoming to the LGBTQ community without changing church teachings, including one saying that same-sex attraction is not sinful but same-sex acts are.  In response to a question of whether transsexual people can be baptized, the doctrinal office said they could with some conditions and as long as there is “no risk of causing a public scandal or disorientation among the faithful.”  It said a transsexual people could be godparents at a baptism at the discretion of the local priest, as well as a witness at a church wedding, but the local priest should exercise “pastoral prudence” in his decision.  A person in a same-sex relationship could …

A new study by the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization finds nearly 1 in 3 deaths from non-melanoma skin cancer are caused by working in the sun. “We know that around the world, 1.6 billion workers are exposed to solar ultraviolet radiation globally. Depending on where you live, you will have more or less protection,” said Maria Neira, director of the WHO department of environment, climate change and health. “The number of those deaths from occupational non-melanoma skin cancer burden has doubled over the last 20 years and, of course, unfortunately, we can expect to see many cases in the future. It takes a number of years to develop a cancer,” she said. The joint study issued Wednesday provides data for 183 countries and produces the first comprehensive global picture of the extent of this growing occupational health problem. Authors of the study say governments can use their data to identify unsafe workplaces and design policies to protect workers from the harmful effects of the sun’s rays. According to the joint estimates, 1 in 4 of the 1.6 billion people of working age was exposed to UV radiation while working outdoors in 2019 and nearly 19,000 died from non-melanoma skin cancer. “We pooled a large number of case control studies, epidemiological evidence in three regions of the world, 90,000 people, and found there was a 60% increased risk” of developing non-melanoma skin cancer among working people exposed to solar UV radiation, said Frank Pega, a technical officer in …

A new version of the popular diabetes treatment Mounjaro can be sold as a weight-loss drug, U.S. regulators announced Wednesday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, or tirzepatide. The drug helped dieters lose about a quarter of their body weight, or 27 kilograms, in a recent study. Zepbound is the latest diabetes drug approved for weight loss, joining Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, a high-dose version of its diabetes treatment Ozempic. The FDA approved Lilly’s drug for people who are considered obese, with a body mass index of 30 or higher, or those who are overweight with a related health condition, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes. The drug should be paired with a healthy diet and regular exercise, the FDA said. In the U.S., at least 100 million adults and about 15 million children are considered obese. The drug tirzepatide in Zepbound and Mounjaro and semaglutide in Wegovy and Ozempic work by mimicking hormones that kick in after people eat to regulate appetite and the feeling of fullness. Both imitate a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1, known as GLP-1. Tirzepatide targets a second hormone, called glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, or GIP. Zepbound appears to spur greater weight loss than Wegovy. Approved for chronic weight management in 2021, Wegovy helped people lose about 15% of their body weight or 15.4 kilograms, according to study results. “This would be the most highly efficacious drug ever approved for the treatment of obesity,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine …

A new United Nations report says the amount of fossil fuels produced in 2030 will far exceed the levels needed for the world to alleviate global warming.  The study by the U.N. Environment Program says 20 of the world’s major fossil fuel producing nations are on track to produce about 110% more oil, gas and coal in 2030 than the amounts consistent with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees celsius. Holding down global temperatures to a 1.5 degree increase compared with pre-industrial levels was a key goal of the global climate pact signed in Paris in 2015.  The 20 countries in the report include Australia, Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, which account for 82% of fossil fuel production and 73% of consumption.   The report says none of them have committed to reducing production of oil, gas and coal to levels that would meet the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold. Many of those countries have continued to offer government subsidies or tax breaks to fossil fuel companies, while others produce oil through state-owned enterprises.  The report was also produced by experts with the Stockholm Environment Institute, the   International Institute for Sustainable Development, and research groups Climate Analytics and E3G. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse.   …

This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European Union scientists said on Wednesday, after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period. Last month smashed through the previous October temperature record, from 2019, by a massive margin, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said. “The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge margin,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, who described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme.” The heat is a result of continued greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, combined with the emergence this year of the El Nino weather pattern, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Globally, the average surface air temperature in October was 1.7 degrees Celsius warmer than the same month in 1850-1900, which Copernicus defines as the pre-industrial period. The record-breaking October means 2023 is now “virtually certain” to be the warmest year recorded, C3S said in a statement. The previous record was 2016, another El Nino year. Copernicus’ dataset goes back to 1940. “When we combine our data with the IPCC, then we can say that this is the warmest year for the last 125,000 years,” Burgess said. The longer-term data from the U.N. climate science panel IPCC includes readings from sources such as ice cores, tree rings and coral deposits. The only other time before October a month breached the temperature record by such a large margin was in September 2023. “September really, really …

After a century-long absence, gray wolves have returned to California forests. Though some wildlife experts are thrilled to see the their return, some farmers and ranchers worry the wolves present a threat to their animals. From Tulare County, California, VOA’s Robin Guess reports. Camera: Matt Dibble, Roy Kim. …

Alarmed by yet another jump in syphilis cases in newborns, U.S. health officials are calling for stepped-up prevention measures, including encouraging millions of women of childbearing age and their partners to get tested for the sexually transmitted disease. More than 3,700 babies were born with congenital syphilis in 2022 — 10 times more than a decade before and a 32% increase from 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Syphilis caused 282 stillbirth and infant deaths, nearly 16 times more than the 2012 deaths. The 2022 count was the most in more than 30 years, CDC officials said, and in more than half of the congenital syphilis cases, the mothers tested positive during pregnancy but did not get properly treated. The rise in congenital syphilis comes despite repeated warnings by public health agencies, and it’s tied to the surge in primary and secondary cases of syphilis in adults, CDC officials said. It’s also been increasingly difficult for medical providers to get benzathine penicillin injections — the main medical weapon against congenital syphilis — because of supply shortages. “It is clear that something is not working here, that something has to change,” the CDC’s Dr. Laura Bachmann said. “That’s why we’re calling for exceptional measures to address this heartbreaking epidemic.” The federal agency wants medical providers to start syphilis treatment when a pregnant woman first tests positive, rather than waiting for confirmatory testing, and to expand access to transportation so the women can get treatment. The CDC also …

European astronomers on Tuesday released the first images from the newly launched Euclid space telescope, designed to unlock the secrets of dark matter and dark energy — hidden forces thought to make up 95% of the universe. The European Space Agency, which leads the six-year mission with NASA as a partner, said the images were the sharpest of their kind, showcasing the telescope’s ability to monitor billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light years away. The images spanned four areas of the relatively nearby universe, including 1,000 galaxies belonging to the massive Perseus cluster just 240 million light years away, and more than 100,000 galaxies spread out in the background, ESA said. Scientists believe vast, seemingly organized structures such as Perseus could have formed only if dark matter exists. “We think we understand only 5% of the universe. That’s the matter that we can see,” ESA’s science director Carole Mundell told Reuters. “The rest of the universe we call dark because it doesn’t produce light in the normal electromagnetic spectrum,” she said. “But we know its effect because we see the effect on visible matter.” Tell-tale signs of the hidden force exerted by dark matter include galaxies rotating more quickly than scientists would expect from the amount of visible matter that can be detected. Its influence is also implicated in pulling together some of the most massive structures in the universe, such as clusters of galaxies, Mundell said. Dark energy is even more enigmatic. Its hypothetical existence was established …

Sweden is poised to become Europe’s first smoke-free country largely thanks to the popularity of snus, a kind of moist snuff which is placed under the upper lip.    But some are worried the tobacco industry is peddling a “fairytale” that is too good to be true.     Used by one in seven Swedes, snus has, according to the government, helped slash the number of smokers from 15% of the population in 2005 to 5.2% last year, a record low in Europe.   A country is considered smoke-free when less than 5% of its population are daily smokers.      Snus has been banned in the European Union since 1992. But Sweden negotiated an exemption when it joined the bloc three years later.    At the Swedish Match factory in the western city of Gothenburg, thousands of doses of snus wend their way through a complex web of machinery producing the sachets.    The company sold 277 million boxes of snus in Sweden and Norway in 2021.    “We have used it for 200 years in Sweden. [It’s] part of the Swedish culture, just like many other European countries have their wine culture,” Swedish Match spokesman Patrik Hildingsson told AFP.      Clad in a white lab coat, he described the manufacturing process.    “Tobacco comes from India or the United States. It goes through this silo and is then packed inside the pouches like tea bags and then into these boxes.”     There are two types: traditional brown snus, which contains tobacco, and white snus, which is …

President Joe Biden signed last week a sweeping executive order to promote the safe, secure and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence. VOA’s Julie Taboh reports on reactions by Washington-area AI experts. …

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will expand its traveler-based surveillance program to include testing for respiratory viruses, partners Ginkgo Bioworks and XWELL said on Monday. The expansion, to be launched at four of the seven participating airports, comes ahead of the fall and winter months in the United States when viruses that cause respiratory diseases such as influenza and respiratory synctial virus (RSV) usually circulate more heavily. CDC has warned that it expects hospitalizations from COVID-19, RSV infections and flu this year to be similar to last year’s numbers, higher than the pre-pandemic levels. Ginkgo and XWELL said they will monitor over 30 new viruses, bacteria, and antimicrobial resistance targets including seasonal respiratory pathogens such as influenza A and B, RSV, and SARS-CoV-2 as part of the expansion. The expansion will launch at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. The surveillance program is a public-private partnership between the health agency, Ginkgo’s biosecurity and public health unit, Concentric, and XWELL’s diagnostic testing service, XpresCheck. The agency conducts voluntary nasal swabbing and airport wastewater sampling as part of the program, aimed to help with early detection of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and other pathogens. …

When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle five years ago, it left boats, cars and trucks piled up to the windows of Bonny Paulson’s home in the tiny coastal community of Mexico Beach, Florida, even though the house rests on pillars 14 feet above the ground. But Paulson’s home, with a rounded shape that looks something like a ship, shrugged off Category 5 winds that might otherwise have collapsed it.  “I wasn’t nervous at all,” Paulson said, recalling the warning to evacuate. Her house lost only a few shingles, with photos taken after the storm showing it standing whole amid the wreckage of almost all the surrounding homes. Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time. Solar panels, for example, installed so snugly that high winds can’t get underneath them, mean clean power that can survive a storm. Preserved wetlands and native vegetation that trap carbon in the ground and reduce flooding vulnerability, too. Recycled or advanced construction materials that reduce energy use as well as the need to make new material. A person’s home is one of the biggest ways they can reduce their individual carbon footprint. Buildings release about 38% of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions each year. Some of the carbon pollution comes from powering things like lights and air conditioners and some of it from making the construction materials, like concrete …

Building a robot that’s both humanlike and useful is a decadesold engineering dream inspired by popular science fiction.  While the latest artificial intelligence craze has sparked another wave of investments in the quest to build a humanoid, most of the current prototypes are clumsy and impractical, looking better in staged performances than in real life. That hasn’t stopped a handful of startups from keeping at it.  “The intention is not to start from the beginning and say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make a robot look like a person,’” said Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. “We’re trying to make robots that can operate in human spaces.”  Do we even need humanoids? Hurst makes a point of describing Agility’s warehouse robot Digit as human-centric, not humanoid, a distinction meant to emphasize what it does over what it’s trying to be.  What it does, for now, is pick up tote bins and move them. Amazon announced in October it would begin testing Digits for use in its warehouses, and Agility opened an Oregon factory in September to mass-produce them.  Digit has a head containing cameras, other sensors and animated eyes, and a torso that essentially works as its engine. It has two arms and two legs, but its legs are more birdlike than human, with an inverted knees appearance that resembles so-called digitigrade animals such as birds, cats and dogs that walk on their toes rather than on flat feet.  Rival robot-makers, like Figure AI, are taking a …

Prince William arrived Sunday in Singapore for the annual Earthshot Prize awards, the first to be held in Asia, to support environmental innovators with solutions to battle climate change and save the planet.  Upon his arrival, dozens of people waving British flags welcomed him with loud cheers. William, 41, shook hands, signed autographs and sportingly took selfies with many of them during a walkabout.  “It’s fantastic to be back in Singapore for this year’s Earthshot Prize ceremony, after 11 years,” he said in a statement upon landing. “Singapore’s bold vision to be a leader for environmental innovation sets the standard for others to follow.”  “He has this charm,” said Johanes Mario, a Singaporean welcoming William at the airport. “He really fights for … the climate. I believe this is really a good cause for the future of our generation.” At Singapore’s Changi Airport and before greeting the crowd, William stood on an upper floor for a stunning view of the 40-meter (131-foot) Rain Vortex, the world’s largest indoor waterfall, which was illuminated green to mark his arrival. He was also shown a tree planted in his honor in the indoor garden at the foot of the waterfall.  The heir to the British throne last visited Singapore with his wife, Princess Catherine, in 2012. Traveling solo this time, William’s focus is on the Earthshot Prize that he and his Royal Foundation charity launched in 2020 to promote innovative solutions and technologies to combat global warming and mitigate its impact on the …

Using sidewalks as exam rooms and heavy red duffle bags as medical supply closets, volunteer medics spend their Saturdays caring for the growing number of migrants arriving in Chicago without a place to live. Mostly students in training, they go to police stations where migrants are first housed, prescribing antibiotics, distributing prenatal vitamins and assessing for serious health issues. These student doctors, nurses and physician assistants are the front line of health care for asylum-seekers in the nation’s third-largest city, filling a gap in Chicago’s haphazard response. “My team is a team that shouldn’t have to exist, but it does out of necessity,” said Sara Izquierdo, a University of Illinois Chicago medical student who helped found the group. “Because if we’re not doing this, I’m not sure anyone will.” More than 19,600 migrants have come to Chicago over the last year since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending buses to so-called sanctuary cities. The migrants wait at police stations and airports, sometimes for months, until there’s space at a longer-term shelter, like park district buildings. Once in shelter, they can access a county clinic exclusively for migrants. But the currently 3,300 people in limbo at police stations and airports must rely on a mishmash of volunteers and social service groups that provide food, clothes and medicine. Izquierdo noted the medical care gap months ago, consulted experienced doctors and designed a street-medicine model tailored to migrants’ medical needs. Her group makes weekly visits to police stations, operating on a shoestring budget …