Author: Sellheal

Nigeria’s unreliable power grid is not only slowing down the country’s economic growth, but health workers say it can lead to unwanted hospital shutdowns at night. But one startup is giving hospitals hope. Alhassan Bala has this report, narrated by Haruna Shehu. …

During Europe’s heat wave last month, Floriana Peroni’s vintage clothing store had to close for a week. A truck of rented generators blocked her door as they fed power to the central Roman neighborhood hit by a blackout as temperatures surged. The main culprit: air conditioning.  The period — in which temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) — coincided with peak electricity use that came close to Italy’s all-time high, hitting a peak load of more than 59 gigawatts on July 19. That neared a July 2015 record.  Intensive electricity use knocked out the network not only near the central Campo de Fiori neighborhood, where Peroni operates her shop, but elsewhere in the Italian capital. Demand in that second July week surged 30%, correlating to a heat wave that had persisted already for weeks, according to the capital’s electricity company ARETI.  Like many Romans, Peroni herself does not have AC either in her home or her shop. Rome once could count on a Mediterranean breeze to bring down nighttime temperatures, but that has become an intermittent relief at best.  “At most, we turn on fans,” Peroni said. “We think that is enough. We tolerate the heat, as it has always been tolerated.”  In Europe, though, that is starting to change.  Air conditioning is less a part of the culture in Europe  Despite holdouts like Peroni, rising global temperatures are dropping air conditioning from luxury to a necessity in many parts of Europe, which long has had a conflicted …

India’s latest space mission entered the moon’s orbit on Saturday ahead of the country’s second attempted lunar landing, as its space program seeks to reach new heights. The world’s most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace program that is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers. Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface. The Indian Space Research Organization confirmed that Chandrayaan-3, which means moon craft in Sanskrit, had been “successfully inserted into the lunar orbit,” more than three weeks after its launch. If the rest of the current mission goes to plan, the mission will safely touch down near the moon’s little-explored south pole between Aug. 23 and 24. India’s last attempt to do so ended in failure four years ago, when ground control lost contact moments before landing. Developed by ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 includes a lander module named Vikram, which means valor in Sanskrit, and a rover named Pragyan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom. The mission comes with a price tag of $74.6 million, far smaller than those of other countries, and a testament to India’s frugal space engineering. Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing space technology. It also has an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages. The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has taken much longer to reach the moon than the manned Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in …

The blockbuster movie “Oppenheimer” focuses on the work of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in the development of the atomic bomb. To prepare for the film, director Christopher Nolan reportedly did some heavy research into quantum physics, a study whose revolutionary benefits expanded into many fields after World War II, researchers say. Quantum physics “is the study of matter and energy at the most fundamental level,” as described in an article on the California Institute of Technology’s website. “It aims to uncover the properties and behaviors of the very building blocks of nature.” Different laws “When you get down to the smallest particles and energy scales, the laws of physics seem to be different than the ones we are familiar with,” said Olivia Lanes, the global lead of education and advocacy on the quantum team at IBM. “While we don’t quite understand how this works, we have made incredible use of it,” she told VOA. Quantum mechanics has revolutionized technology in many ways, she said, from the solid-state hard drives in our phones and laptops to lasers and GPS. “None of these would exist without the discoveries of quantum science,” she said. “These are all using the laws of quantum mechanics, so I think the next logical thing is to build a computer completely based on those laws.” To do that, “we will take what we have learned about particles and matter over the last century and make an entirely new type of computational machine that harnesses these laws …

The World Bank is aiming to help fund construction of 1,000 mini solar power grids in Africa’s biggest economy Nigeria in partnership with the government and private sector, the lender’s president Ajay Banga said Saturday. Nigeria, with a population of more than 200 million people, has installed power generation capacity of 12,500 megawatts, or MW, but it produces a fraction of that, leaving millions of households and businesses reliant on petrol and diesel generators. Mini grids, made up of small-scale electricity generating units, typically range in size from a few kilowatts to up to 10 MW, enough to power about 200 households. Speaking during a visit to a mini grid site on the outskirts of the capital Abuja, Banga told reporters that nearly 150 mini grids had been built, partly funded by the World Bank, to bring power to communities without access to electricity. “We are putting another 300 in, but our ambition with the government is to go all the way to 1,000. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that are being invested,” said Banga, without giving a timeline. “Now the idea is not for the World Bank to be the only person putting the money. We put part of the money like a subsidy.” World Bank data shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, 568 million people still lack access to electricity. Globally, nearly 8 out of 10 people without electricity live in Africa. …

Somalia reopened the National Blood Bank Saturday for the first time in more than 30 years, in a significant move to address the shortage of blood supplies and save lives. Somalia Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, who inaugurated the fresh start for the center in Mogadishu, said it’s a crucial achievement for his nation, which has been grappling with frequent disasters and violent incidents that require adequate blood supplies. The country’s health minister, Dr. Ali Haji Adam, told VOA the revival of the center signifies a turning point in the country’s health care system. “With the reopening of the national blood bank, we can now adequately address the overwhelming demand for blood in emergency situations and enhance the chances of saving precious lives.” Adam said. The minister said the center will have the capacity to store hundreds of thousands of blood donations, all made by the public. “In the past, when tragic accidents like the Zobe 1 and Zobe 2 explosions occurred in 2017 and in 2022, the public rushed to donate blood, but unfortunately there was no adequate storage facility to store the donated blood. Today that changes,” Adam explained. The health minister highlighted the critical impact of the lack of access to safe blood in Somalia, particularly in connection with child mortality. “The second cause of maternal death during childbirth is bleeding, but with the reopening of [the] blood bank, mothers will have access to this lifesaving resource,” Adam said. Hospitals across Somalia have faced immense challenges in …

Rhonda Hicks could have kept working into her 60s. She loved teaching and loved her students in Philadelphia’s public schools. As a Black woman, she took pride in being a role model for many children of color. But other aspects of the job deteriorated, such as growing demands from administrators over what and how to teach. And when she retires in a few weeks, she will join a disproportionately high number of Black and Hispanic teachers in her state who are leaving the profession. “I enjoy actually teaching, that part I’ve always enjoyed,” said Hicks, 59. “Sometimes it’s a little stressful. Sometimes the kids can be difficult. But it’s the higher-ups: ‘Do it this way or don’t do it at all.’” Teachers are leaving jobs in growing numbers, state reports show. The turnover in some cases is highest among teachers of color. A major culprit: stress — from pandemic-era burnout, low pay and the intrusion of politics into classrooms. But the burdens can be heavier in schools serving high-poverty communities that also have higher numbers of teachers of color. In Philadelphia, a city with one of the highest concentrations of Black residents in the U.S., the proportion of Black teachers has been sliding. Two decades ago, it was about one-third. Last fall, it fell to below 23%, according to district figures. In the school buildings where Hicks taught, most teachers were white. She said she and other teachers of color were expected to give more of themselves in a district …

Federal health officials have approved the first pill specifically intended to treat severe depression after childbirth, a condition that affects thousands of new mothers in the U.S. each year. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted approval of the drug, Zurzuvae, for adults experiencing severe depression related to childbirth or pregnancy. The pill is taken once a day for 14 days. “Having access to an oral medication will be a beneficial option for many of these women coping with extreme, and sometimes life-threatening, feelings,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, FDA’s director of psychiatric drugs, in a statement. Postpartum depression affects an estimated 400,000 people a year, and while it often ends on its own within a couple weeks, it can continue for months or even years. Standard treatment includes counseling or antidepressants, which can take weeks to work and don’t help everyone. The new pill is from Sage Therapeutics, which has a similar infused drug that’s given intravenously over three days in a medical facility. The FDA approved that drug in 2019, though it isn’t widely used because of its $34,000 price tag and the logistics of administering it. The FDA’s pill approval is based on two company studies that showed women who took Zurzuvae had fewer signs of depression over a four- to six-week period when compared with those who received a dummy pill. The benefits, measured using a psychiatric test, appeared within three days for many patients. Sahar McMahon, 39, had never experienced depression until after the birth …

NASA has succeeded in reestablishing full contact with Voyager 2 by using its highest-power transmitter to send an “interstellar shout” that righted the distant probe’s antenna orientation, the space agency said Friday. Launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets and serve as a beacon of humanity to the wider universe, it is currently more than 19.9 billion kilometers from our planet — well beyond the solar system.  A series of planned commands sent to the spaceship on July 21 mistakenly caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth, compromising its ability to send and receive signals and endangering its mission. The situation was not expected to be resolved until at least Oct. 15 when Voyager 2 was scheduled to carry out an automated realignment maneuver. But Tuesday, engineers enlisted the help of multiple Earth observatories that form the Deep Space Network to detect a carrier or “heartbeat” wave from Voyager 2, though the signal was still too faint to read the data it carried. In an update on Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which built and operates the probe, said it had succeeded in a longshot effort to send instructions that righted the craft. “The Deep Space Network used the highest-power transmitter to send the command (the 100-kw S-band uplink from the Canberra site) and timed it to be sent during the best conditions during the antenna tracking pass in order to maximize possible receipt of the command by the spacecraft,” Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd …

The world’s oceans set a temperature record this week, raising concerns about the effects that could have on the planet’s climate, marine life and coastal communities.  The temperature of the oceans’ surface rose to 20.96 degrees Celsius (69.7 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 30, according to European Union climate observatory data.   The previous record was 20.95 C in March 2016, a spokeswoman for the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service told AFP on Friday.  The samples tested excluded polar regions.  The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which uses a different database, has also recorded a similar trend in recent months.  It said the average sea surface temperature record was reached on April 4 this year at 21.06 C, overtaking the previous high of 21.01 C in March 2016. On August 1, average temperatures were 21.03 C, it said.  Oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat produced by human activity since the dawn of the industrial age, according to scientists.   This excess heat continues to accumulate as greenhouse gases, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal, build up in the Earth’s atmosphere.  Globally, the average ocean temperature has been topping seasonal heat records regularly since April.  ‘Immediate threat’  “The ocean heat wave is an immediate threat to some marine life,” said Piers Forster of the International Center for Climate at Britain’s University of Leeds.   “We are already seeing coral bleaching in Florida as a direct result, and I expect more impacts will surface,” Forster said.   The overheating …

When Clarisse Agbégnénou won her sixth world judo title, confirming the reigning Olympic champion as one of the athletes to watch at next year’s Paris Games, the French star’s smallest but greatest fan was less wild about her mother’s newest gold medal than she was about her breast milk. After a peckish day of few feeds — because Mom had been busy putting opponents through the wringer — 10-month-old Athéna made amends that night. “She didn’t let my boobs out of her mouth,” Agbégnénou said. “I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ I think it was really something for her.” Breastfeeding and high-performance sports were long an almost impossible combination for top female athletes, torn for decades between careers or motherhood, because having both was so tough. But that’s becoming less true ahead of the 2024 Olympics, where women will take another step forward in their long march for equality, competing in equal numbers with men for the first time, and with pioneering mothers like Agbégnénou showing that it is possible to breastfeed and be competitive. They don’t pretend that late-night feeds, broken sleep, pumping milk and having to eat for two people are easy. But some female athletes are also discovering that juggling their careers with the rigors of motherhood can pay off with powerful emotional well-being. Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Agbégnénou said she stunned even herself by coming back so quickly from childbirth to win at the worlds in May, with Athéna in tow and expecting …

A cyberattack disrupted hospital computer systems in several states, forcing some emergency rooms to close and ambulances to be diverted. Many primary care services remained closed Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it. The “data security incident” began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. “Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists,” the company said in a statement Friday. “While our investigation continues, we are focused on addressing the pressing needs of our patients as we work diligently to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.” In Connecticut, the emergency departments at Manchester Memorial and Rockville General hospitals were closed for much of Thursday. Patients were diverted to other nearby medical centers. “We have a national Prospect team working and evaluating the impact of the attack on all of the organizations,” Jillian Menzel, chief operating officer for the Eastern Connecticut Health Network, said in a statement. The FBI in Connecticut issued a statement saying it is working with “law enforcement partners and the victim entities” but could not comment further on an ongoing investigation. Elective surgeries, outpatient appointments, blood drives and other services were suspended, and while the emergency departments reopened late Thursday, many primary care services were closed on Friday, according to the Eastern …

At first sight, Tiembe studies his frozen breakfast with hesitation: Chunks of red meat and bone packed in a foot-long block of ice.  The 15-year-old Angolan lion eventually licks the ice before gnawing free pieces of meat.  Animals at the Attica Zoological Park outside the Greek capital were being fed frozen meals Friday as temperatures around the country reached 40 C (107.5 F) and were set to rise further, in the fourth heat wave in less than a month.  The extreme temperatures and wildfires — a growing concern for biodiversity in southern Europe — have had an impact on Greek wildlife.  A fire on the island of Rhodes burned for 11 successive days, triggering the evacuation of 20,000 people, mostly tourists.  The island’s animals were less fortunate.  As the fire tore through mountain forests and a nature reserve, an estimated 2,500 animals and beehives were burned, along with 50,000 olive trees, according to Agriculture Ministry officials. Fallow deer, a symbol of Rhodes, were found lying dead on the roadside.  The zoo, which is about 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of Athens, is looking after an injured deer and several turtles — some fitted with wheels prized from toys to help with their mobility — which suffered burns and other injuries during the Rhodes fire.  Zoo curator Antonis Balas urged pet owners to be more mindful of their animals at times of extreme heat, noting that many of the popular breeds of pets are from native cooler climates in Northern and …

Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a tree-lined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. “Another big brown,” she said with a sigh. It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged on summer nights in the southern Michigan countryside. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season, sheltering behind peeling bark of dead trees. The scientists had yet to spot either species this year as they embarked on a netting mission. “It’s a bad suggestion if we do not catch one. It doesn’t look good,” said Allen Kurta, an Eastern Michigan University professor who has studied bats for more than 40 years. The two bat varieties are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock U.S. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. Enacted in 1973 amid fear for iconic creatures such as the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, it extends legal protection to 1,683 domestic species. More than 99% of those listed as “endangered” — on the verge of extinction — or the less severe “threatened” have survived. “The Endangered Species Act has been very successful,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an Associated Press interview. “And I believe very strongly that we’re in a better place for it.” Fifty years after the law took effect, environmental advocates and scientists say it’s as essential as ever. Habitat loss, …

MEXICO CITY — An ancient flamingo fossil egg between 8,000 and 12,000 years old was uncovered at a busy construction site for a new airport in Mexico, officials from the Latin American country said Wednesday. The remarkably preserved egg from the Pleistocene period is incredibly rare. It is the first discovery of its kind from the Phoenicopteridae flamingo family in the Americas and only the second in the world, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH. The Pleistocene geological epoch, the most recent Ice Age, began 2.6 million years ago and ended around 11,700 years ago. The flamingo egg fossil was found at a depth of 31 centimeters (12.2 inches) amid clay and shale during construction at the new Felipe Angeles airport in the state of Mexico, INAH said. The fossil egg implies the area was the site of a shallow lake between 8,000 and 33,000 years ago, according to Mexican scientists, and that flamingos once thrived in central Mexico. Today’s American flamingo species, known for its bright pink feathers, is mainly found in South America, the Caribbean, the Yucatan peninsula and the southeast coast of the United States. …

Mexican officials met Tuesday with U.S. and Canadian officials in Mexico to talk about combating the trafficking of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. To get a better understanding of the problem, VOA visited addicts and a counselor from a harm reduction center in Washington. Júlia Riera has the story. …

At least 108 people were treated for heat-related illnesses at the World Scout Jamboree being held in South Korea, which is having one of its hottest summers in years. Most of them have recovered but at least two remain in treatment at an on-site hospital as of Thursday morning, said Choi Chang-haeng, secretary-general of the Jamboree’s organizing committee. The committee, which plans to proceed with the event while adding dozens more medical staff to prepare for further emergencies, did not confirm the ages and other personal details of those who were injured. Wednesday night’s opening ceremony of the Jamboree brought more than 40,000 scouts, mostly teens, to a campsite built on land reclaimed from the sea in the southwestern town of Buan. The temperature there reached 35 degrees Celsius Wednesday. Lee Sang-min, South Korea’s Minister of the Interior and Safety, during an emergency meeting instructed officials to explore “all possible measures” to protect the participants, including adjusting the event’s outdoor activities, adding more emergency vehicles and medical posts, and also adding more shade structures and air-conditioning. He said the goal is to prevent “even one serious illness or death,” according to comments shared by the ministry. There had been concerns about holding the Jamboree in a vast, treeless area lacking refuge from the heat. Choi insisted that the event was safe enough to continue and similar situations could have occurred if the Jamboree was held elsewhere. “The participants came from afar and hadn’t yet adjusted (to the weather),” Choi said …

There could be a new contender for heaviest animal to ever live. While today’s blue whale has long held the title, scientists have dug up fossils from an ancient giant that could tip the scales. Researchers described the new species — named Perucetus colossus, or “the colossal whale from Peru” — in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Each vertebra weighs more than 100 kilograms, and its ribs measure nearly 1.4 meters long. “It’s just exciting to see such a giant animal that’s so different from anything we know,” said Hans Thewissen, a paleontologist at Northeast Ohio Medical University who had no role in the research. The bones were first discovered more than a decade ago by Mario Urbina from the University of San Marcos’ Natural History Museum in Lima. An international team spent years digging them out from the side of a steep, rocky slope in the Ica desert, a region in Peru that was once underwater and is known for its rich marine fossils. The results: 13 vertebrae from the whale’s backbone, four ribs and a hip bone. The massive fossils, which are 39 million years old, “are unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said study author Alberto Collareta, a paleontologist at Italy’s University of Pisa. After the excavations, the researchers used 3D scanners to study the surface of the bones and drilled into them to peek inside. They used the huge — but incomplete — skeleton to estimate the whale’s size and weight, using modern marine mammals for comparison, …

Human-caused global warming made July hotter for four out of five people on Earth, with more than 2 billion people feeling climate change-boosted warmth daily, according to a flash study. More than 6.5 billion people, or 81% of the world’s population, sweated through at least one day where climate change had a significant effect on the average daily temperature, according to a new report issued Wednesday by Climate Central, a science nonprofit that has figured a way to calculate how much climate change has affected daily weather. “We really are experiencing climate change just about everywhere,” said Climate Central Vice President for Science Andrew Pershing. Researchers looked at 4,711 cities and found climate change fingerprints in 4,019 of them for July, which other scientists said is the hottest month on record. The new study calculated that the burning of coal, oil and natural gas had made it three times more likely to be hotter on at least one day in those cities. In the U.S., where the climate effect was largest in Florida, more than 244 million people felt greater heat due to climate change during July. For 2 billion people, in a mostly tropical belt across the globe, climate change made it three times more likely to be hotter every single day of July. Those include the million-person cities of Mecca, Saudi Arabia and San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The day with the most widespread climate-change effect was July 10, when 3.5 billion people experienced extreme heat that had global …

The State Department launched a new bureau Tuesday aimed at making the battle against global outbreaks a lasting priority of U.S. foreign policy, even as one of its key elements – a widely acclaimed HIV program – has become caught up in the political battle over abortion. The bureau is to include the 20-year-old initiative known as the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The program is relatively unknown to Americans but has succeeded beyond most early expectations in addressing the AIDS crisis and is credited with saving up to 25 million lives worldwide. The bureau will be led by a public health official integral to PEPFAR, John Nkengasong. Born in Cameroon, Nkengasong was a founder of U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention operations in Africa. He helped set up some of the sub-Saharan’s first sophisticated labs for work with HIV and AIDS. President George W. Bush started PEPFAR in Africa in 2003. The program retains bipartisan support. But anti-abortion groups and some House Republicans, including Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, are pushing to attach abortion-related limits on U.S. health support overseas to the reauthorizing legislation They are also seeking yearly votes on PEPFAR’s continuance. While the Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to try to squash any such GOP conditions on the HIV program, the skirmish signals the PEPFAR program is now likely a captive of U.S. abortion politics going forward. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a ceremony for the new Bureau of Global Health Security …

A customer goes into a store in the United States that is popular for trendy and cheap clothes — known as “fast fashion” — for an impulsive wardrobe addition. The person buying those clothes may be planning to keep them for only a short time, and then throwing them out when a new fashion trend arrives. Fast fashion refers to the mass-produced and low-cost clothing items that manufacturers churn out by the millions each day, especially in China, but also in countries such as India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Turkey. But what most people don’t realize is that most of the clothes are made from materials that are bad for the environment and end up in landfills. “Fast fashion has huge implications for the environment,” said Eliot Metzger, director of sustainable business and innovation at the World Resources Institute in Washington. “Not many people realize how much water and energy it takes to create a T-shirt. And if that T-shirt is going to the landfill, replaced by another T-shirt, that is going to multiply what is already an unsustainable pattern.” Global issue Fast fashion is not only a problem in the United States but in poorer countries where donated clothes arrive and are then resold by vendors. “Kenya and Ghana import quite a lot of fast fashion clothing that is causing a huge amount of pollution,” explained Erica Cirino, communications manager for the Plastic Pollution Coalition in Washington. “The landfills are so overwhelmed by textile waste that they begin flowing …

Amazon is adding video telemedicine visits in all 50 states to a virtual clinic it launched last fall, as the e-commerce giant pushes deeper into care delivery. Amazon said Tuesday that customers can visit its virtual clinic around the clock through Amazon’s website or app. There, they can compare prices and response times before picking a telemedicine provider from several options. The clinic, which doesn’t accept insurance, launched last fall with a focus on text message-based consultations. Those remain available in 34 states. Virtual care, or telemedicine, exploded in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has remained popular as a convenient way to check in with a doctor or deal with relatively minor health issues like pink eye. Amazon says its clinic offers care for more than 30 common health conditions. Those include sinus infections, acne, COVID-19 and acid reflux. The clinic also offers treatments for motion sickness, seasonal allergies and several sexual health conditions, including erectile dysfunction. It also provides birth control and emergency contraception. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nworah Ayogu said in a blog post that the clinic aims to remove barriers to help people treat “everyday health concerns.” “As a doctor, I’ve seen firsthand that patients want to be healthy but lack the time, tools, or resources to effectively manage their care,” Ayogu wrote. Amazon said messaging-based consultations cost $35 on average while video visits cost $75. That’s cheaper than the cost of many in-person visits with a doctor, which can run over $100 for people without …

The tallest mountain in New England is known for its snow-capped peak, but it was heavy rainfall that had hikers talking in July. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington set a record for rainfall in July with 43.38 centimeters (17.1 inches) of precipitation for the month, the Mount Washington Observatory reported. Heavy rainfall was recorded across the region. Vermont, which dealt with serious flooding across the state, saw several records broken.   It was the wettest month on record in Montpelier, which recorded 30.63 centimeters (12.1 inches) of rain, and the wettest July on record in Rutland, which had 18.84 centimeters (7.4 inches) of rain, said Adriana Kremer, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington. In Massachusetts, it was the second-wettest July on record in Boston and Worcester, officials said. There was heavier-than-normal rainfall in Maine and New Hampshire but no top 10 rain totals, officials said. …

As World Breastfeeding Week got underway Tuesday, child advocates called for the promotion of mothers’ milk as the best way to get babies off to a healthy start in life and save lives. The World Health Organization and UNICEF said exclusive breastfeeding could save the lives of more than 820,000 children under 5 years of age every year. The U.N. health agencies said they are making inroads in getting across their message about the benefits of breastfeeding, noting, “The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding rates has increased by a remarkable 10 percentage points to 48% globally” over the last decade. They acknowledge, however, that the rate falls short of the 2030 breastfeeding target of 70% and are calling for greater family, communal and workplace support for nursing mothers. “Breastfeeding is as important as breathing fresh air and eating nutritious food,” said Nina Chad, infant and young child feeding consultant for the WHO. Protection from infectious diseases Speaking on Skype from Sydney, Australia, she told VOA that the way babies start eating in life is important for keeping them healthy throughout their lives. “Breastfeeding is important because it protects babies from infectious diseases in infancy, such as diarrhea and pneumonia, that can be life-threatening, and it protects mothers from noncommunicable diseases throughout their life course,” adding, “Women who breastfeed are less likely to get breast and ovarian cancers.” To achieve maximum benefit, the World Health Organization advises mothers to breastfeed babies exclusively for the first six months, then introduce nutritious solid foods …