Author: Sellheal

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns global health challenges are growing and threatening the well-being of millions of people worldwide. He spoke at the opening of WHO’s week-long executive board meeting.  The WHO chief began his presentation on a somber note. He told meeting participants that an emergency committee convened to assess the status of the pandemic has concluded that COVID-19 remains a global health emergency.  He said the situation is much better now than a year ago when the omicron variant of the coronavirus was at its peak. But, he added, weekly reported deaths have been rising since early December. He said more than 170,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the past eight weeks.  “And that is just the reported deaths. We know the actual number is much higher. We cannot control the virus, but we can do more to address the vulnerabilities in populations and health systems.”  Tedros said health providers have the knowledge and means to control the spread of other diseases as well. He outlined an ambitious program for promoting health and protecting people from diseases. These, as well as other proposals for how the world can better prepare and respond to future health emergencies will be under discussion by member countries this week.  Tedros said progress has been made over the past year in promoting health, by addressing the root causes of disease. He called this action essential in achieving a target set by WHO of seeing one billion …

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warns the world is dangerously unprepared for the next pandemic and this will have severe health, economic and social consequences for countries around the world.  The IFRC has just released this year’s World Disaster Report. In a marked departure from previous reports, the IFRC does not delve into the numerous natural disasters that caused untold devastation last year.  It does not rank the severity of disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and drought in terms of deaths and the destruction of livelihoods and infrastructure. Instead, the report focuses on the global crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic and on warnings of worse calamities to come if the global community does not prepare now for the next health crisis. IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said the authors of the report conclude the coronavirus pandemic has been the biggest disaster in our living memory, by any measure. “I think no other disasters, the hurricane, earthquake, drought, or flood can compete in terms of the terrible human and socio-economic costs.  Of course, the most conservative estimates tell us that 6.5 million people died from COVID-19 across these three years.  But we all know that the real number could be much, much higher,” said Chapagain. And the financial costs, he said, are staggering.  He said the International Monetary Fund estimates the cost of the pandemic over the last three years to be $13.8 trillion. He said the COVID-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call for …

Ahead of World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day Monday, the World Health Organization is calling for action to tackle these debilitating illnesses, which affect an estimated 1.65 billion people globally.  A diverse group of 20 parasitic and bacterial tropical diseases is categorized as neglected. This is because they disproportionally affect people who live in poor, remote communities and are not on the list of global health priorities. Ibrahima Soce Fall is director of WHO’s Department of Neglected Tropical Diseases. He says these vector-borne diseases are transmitted by insects in areas that lack safe water, sanitation, and access to health care. He says they also are spread via contaminated food and water. Fall says they cause immense suffering because of their disfiguring and disabling impact. “If you take diseases like onchocerciasis, you know, so-called river blindness because it can lead to blindness. The same for trachoma. So, these are so many diseases that are fatal and very debilitating,” he said. Trachoma is an eye disease that can cause permanent blindness. Fall says these diseases do not attract the amount of investment needed to access health services or develop new tools for diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. He notes some of these ailments have been around for a very long time. For instance, the biblical disease, leprosy, still exists in 139 countries and dengue, which has been around for 800 years, remains prevalent in 129 nations. Despite the many challenges, progress is being made in the elimination of the NTDs. WHO reports the number …

The discovery of an asteroid the size of a small shipping truck mere days before it passed Earth on Thursday, albeit one that posed no threat to humans, highlights a blind spot in our ability to predict those that could actually cause damage, astronomers say. NASA for years has prioritized detecting asteroids much bigger and more existentially threatening than 2023 BU, the small space rock that streaked by 2,200 miles from the Earth’s surface, closer than some satellites. If bound for Earth, it would have been pulverized in the atmosphere, with only small fragments possibly reaching land. But 2023 BU sits on the smaller end of a size group, asteroids 5-to-50 meters in diameter, that also includes those as big as an Olympic swimming pool. Objects that size are difficult to detect until they wander much closer to Earth, complicating any efforts to brace for one that could impact a populated area. The probability of an Earth impact by a space rock, called a meteor when it enters the atmosphere, of that size range is fairly low, scaling according to the asteroid’s size: a 5-meter rock is estimated to target Earth once a year, and a 50-meter rock once every thousand years, according to NASA. But with current capabilities, astronomers can’t see when such a rock targets Earth until days prior. “We don’t know where most of the asteroids are that can cause local to regional devastation,” said Terik Daly, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. …

Heavy rainfall hit New Zealand’s north island again on Sunday, causing landslides, flash floods and knocking out roads, with the death toll rising to four after a person who had been missing was confirmed dead. Battered by rain since Friday, Auckland — New Zealand’s largest city of 1.6 million people — remained under a state of emergency. The nation’s weather forecaster, MetService, warned of severe weather on Sunday and Monday for the north island. Intense rainfall could also cause surface and flash flooding, it said. The focus of the emergency has since moved south, with Waitomo District, about 220 km from Auckland, declaring a state of emergency late on Saturday. Police confirmed that a man missing after being swept away on Friday in Onewhero, a rural village about 70 km south of Auckland, had died. “The most horrific part of it is that we’ve lost lives,” Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni told reporters in Auckland. The culprit: Climate change Climate change is causing episodes of heavy rainfall to become more common and more intense in New Zealand, though the impact varies by region. Climate Change Minister James Shaw noted the link to climate change on Saturday when he tweeted his support for those affected by flooding. On Sunday, police said they were assisting with traffic management and road closures after heavy rainfall “caused numerous slips, flooding and damage to roads.” In nearby Bay of Plenty there was also “widespread flooding,” police said, as well as a landslide that had knocked …

The U.N.’s main AIDS program says thousands of children are dying from HIV/AIDS because, unlike adults, they do not receive treatment for the deadly disease. HIV/AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence. People infected with the disease can live a normal lifespan, provided they receive treatment and care. Unfortunately, there is a glaring disparity between the way children and adults with HIV/AIDS are treated. UNAIDS spokeswoman Charlotte Sector says 76 percent of adults have access to treatment but only half of children living with HIV are receiving lifesaving treatment. She says children account for 15 percent of all AIDS deaths, despite making up only four percent of all people living with the disease. “Last year alone 160,000 children were infected with HIV,” Sector said. “So, what is happening is that 12 countries are coming together in Africa because six countries in sub-Saharan Africa represent 50 percent of those new infections.” She says a global alliance led by UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF has formed to close the huge gap. She says 12 African countries have joined the alliance. Sector says health ministers from eight countries will launch the initiative next week in Tanzania. “So, not only is it getting children on treatment, but it is mostly trying to stop vertical transmission,” Sector said. “Now what is vertical transmission? It is the mother passing on HIV during pregnancy, during delivery or during breast feeding because most of those transmissions are taking place during breastfeeding.” Spector says efforts to …

This week India launched its first nasal COVID-19 vaccine, four months after it received approval for its restricted emergency use among adults in the country. The mucosal vaccine, made by India’s leading vaccine maker, Bharat Biotech, is based on technology licensed from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in the U.S. It is administered in the form of drops in the nose and stimulates an immune response in the mucous membranes of the tissues lining the nasal cavity, upper airways and lungs. Originally called BBV154 and now sold by Bharat Biotech as iNCOVACC, the nasal vaccine was launched by Indian Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Thursday, Republic Day, a national holiday in the country. “Proud to launch iNCOVACC, the world’s 1st intranasal vaccine for COVID … A mighty display of India’s research and innovation prowess under PM Narendra Modi Ji’s leadership. Congratulations to Bharat Biotech for this feat!” Mandaviya posted on Twitter. He called the vaccine a “historic achievement & a testimony to the innovative zeal” of India’s scientists. In a statement, Bharat Biotech said that iNCOVACC, the “world’s first intranasal COVID vaccine for primary series and heterologous booster” is now available on CoWIN, India’s vaccine portal that digitally tracks people’s vaccination status. It will cost 800 rupees ($9.80) in private hospitals and 325 rupees ($4) in government hospitals. A heterologous booster is the vaccine dose for people who have already received two doses of Covishield or Covaxin, the two common Indian COVID vaccines. “iNCOVACC is a cost-effective …

A comet is streaking back our way after 50,000 years.  The dirty snowball last visited during Neanderthal times, according to NASA. It will come within 42 million kilometers (26 million miles) of Earth on Wednesday before speeding away again, unlikely to return for millions of years.  Discovered less than a year ago, this harmless green comet already is visible in the northern night sky with binoculars and small telescopes, and possibly the naked eye in the darkest corners of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s expected to brighten as it draws closer and rises higher over the horizon through the end of January, best seen in the predawn hours. By February 10, it will be near Mars, a good landmark.  Skygazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have to wait until next month for a glimpse.  Bigger, brighter, closer While plenty of comets have graced the sky over the past year, “this one seems probably a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit brighter and it’s coming a little bit closer to the Earth’s orbit,” said NASA’s comet and asteroid-tracking guru, Paul Chodas.  Green from all the carbon in the gas cloud, or coma, surrounding the nucleus, this long-period comet was discovered last March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide field camera at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. That explains its official, cumbersome name: comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF).  On Wednesday, it will hurtle between the orbits of Earth and Mars at a relative speed of 207,000 kph (128,500 mph). Its nucleus …

The United States and European Union announced Friday an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, health care, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid.  A senior U.S. administration official, discussing the initiative shortly before the official announcement, called it the first sweeping AI agreement between the United States and Europe. Previously, agreements on the issue had been limited to specific areas such as enhancing privacy, the official said.   AI modeling, which refers to machine-learning algorithms that use data to make logical decisions, could be used to improve the speed and efficiency of government operations and services.   “The magic here is in building joint models [while] leaving data where it is,” the senior administration official said. “The U.S. data stays in the U.S. and European data stays there, but we can build a model that talks to the European and the U.S. data, because the more data and the more diverse data, the better the model.”  The initiative will give governments greater access to more detailed and data-rich AI models, leading to more efficient emergency responses and electric grid management, and other benefits, the administration official said.  Pointing to the electric grid, the official said the United States collects data on how electricity is being used, where it is generated, and how to balance the grid’s load so that weather changes do not knock it offline.  Many European countries have similar data points they gather relating to their own grids, the official …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed revisions to its guidelines to make it easier for gay and bisexual men to donate blood, eliminating a three-month abstinence period before donations. The restrictions were implemented years ago to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In a release posted to the agency’s website, the FDA said under the draft proposals, all donors — regardless of sexual orientation — would be given a questionnaire regarding new partners, sexual history, and certain types of sexual activities. Any prospective donors who do not report having new or multiple sexual partners and have not engaged in certain practices, such as anal sex, in the previous three months, may be eligible to donate, provided all other eligibility criteria are met. The proposed new guidelines would allow gay and bisexual men in monogamous, long-term relationships to more easily give blood. The FDA said the draft proposals were developed after reviewing available information, including data from Britain and Canada, countries with similar HIV epidemiology that have implemented the “gender-inclusive, individual risk-based approach for assessing donor eligibility.” In the statement, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said, “Maintaining a safe and adequate supply of blood and blood products in the U.S. is paramount for the FDA,” and these proposals will allow the agency to do so. Under the plan, the donor deferral time periods would stay in place for other HIV risk factors, including for those who have exchanged sex for money or drugs, or have …

The Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 has likely become the dominant variant in the United States, accounting for 61.3% of COVID cases in the week ended January 28, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Friday. The subvariant accounted for 49.5% of cases in the week ended January 21, according to estimates from the CDC. XBB.1.5, which is currently the most transmissible variant, is an offshoot of XBB, first detected in October. The now-dominant XBB-related subvariants are derived from the BA.2 version of Omicron. An analysis from CDC showed on Wednesday that updated COVID-19 boosters from Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna helped prevent symptomatic infections against the new XBB-related subvariants. …

The Biden administration moved Thursday to protect northeastern Minnesota’s pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from future mining, dealing a potentially fatal blow to a copper-nickel project. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland signed an order closing more than 900 square kilometers of the Superior National Forest in the Rainy River Watershed around the town of Ely, to mineral and geothermal leasing for 20 years, the longest period the department can sequester the land without congressional approval. The order is “subject to existing valid rights,” but the Biden administration contends that Twin Metals Minnesota lost its rights last year, when the department rescinded a Trump administration decision to reinstate federal mineral rights leases that were critical to the project. Twin Metals, which is owned by the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, filed suit in August to try to reclaim those rights, and reaffirmed Tuesday that it’s not giving up despite its latest setback. “Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy,” Haaland said in a statement. “With an eye toward protecting this special place for future generations, I have made this decision using the best available science and extensive public input.” Project’s critics praise decision Critics of the project hailed the decision as a massive victory and called for permanent protection for the wilderness. But supporters of Twin Metals said the order runs counter to the administration’s stated goal …

The U.S. space agency NASA says a small asteroid will pass very close to Earth Thursday, just 3,600 kilometers from our planet’s surface, well within the orbit of most geosynchronous satellites.   In a release on its website, NASA says the object, known as 2023 BU, poses no threat to the Earth. The agency says even if it entered the atmosphere it would turn into a fireball and largely disintegrate harmlessly, with some bigger debris potentially reaching the surface as small meteorites.   NASA says the object – just 3.5 to 8.5 meters across – represents one of the closest passes by a near-Earth object ever recorded. It is expected to pass over the southern tip of South America at 7:27 p.m. EST (12:27 a.m. GMT). Experts say it would not be visible without a powerful telescope.   The agency said the asteroid was discovered and reported Saturday by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, who operates an observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea.   NASA says additional observations were reported to the Minor Planet Center, or MPC, – the internationally recognized authenticator of the position of small celestial bodies. The MPC operates from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts under the authority of the International Astronomical Union.   The data was automatically posted on the Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page website. Within three days, several observatories around the world had made dozens of observations, helping astronomers better refine 2023 BU’s orbit.   The Center for Near Earth Object Studies, or …

The United States is “actively seeking to reengage” China on counternarcotics, including stopping the flow of illicit synthetic drugs like fentanyl into the U.S., said the State Department ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing in early February. U.S. officials admit engagement between the two countries on these issues “has been limited in recent months.” “We don’t have any recent meetings to read out or to preview,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA on Tuesday, when asked if talks to combat fentanyl have been resumed after Beijing suspended collaboration with Washington on the issue in protest of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August. “Though its past action has helped counter illicit synthetic drug flows, we do hope to see additional action from the PRC (People’s Republic of China) – meaningful, concrete action – to curb the diversion of precursor chemicals and equipment used by criminals to manufacture fentanyl and other synthetic drugs,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told VOA this week. In 2019, China added fentanyl-related substances to the list of controlled narcotic drugs. While Beijing is no longer a major source of the synthetic opioid flowing to the United States, U.S. officials said Washington continues to see Chinese-origin precursor chemicals being used in illicit fentanyl production and other illicit synthetic drugs. Bipartisan congressional majorities have approved legislation to prioritize U.S. efforts to combat international trafficking of covered synthetic drugs. The FENTANYL Results Act was signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden through …

An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will whip past Earth on Thursday night, one of the closest such encounters ever recorded. NASA said it will be a near miss with no chance of the asteroid hitting Earth. NASA said Wednesday that the newly discovered asteroid will zoom 3,600 kilometers above the southern tip of South America. That’s 10 times closer than the bevy of communication satellites circling overhead. The closest approach will occur at 7:27 p.m. EST (9:27 p.m. local.) Even if the space rock came a lot closer, scientists said most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with some of the bigger pieces possibly falling as meteorites. NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a strike, said its developer, Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Farnocchia said in a statement. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.” 2023 BU Discovered Saturday, the asteroid known as 2023 BU is believed to be between 3.5 meters and 8.5 meters feet across. It was first spotted by the same amateur astronomer in Crimea, Gennadiy Borisov, who discovered an interstellar comet in 2019. Within a few days, dozens of observations were made by astronomers around the world, allowing them to refine the asteroid’s orbit. Earth’s gravity will alter …

Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday that they are trying to uncover the meaning of a recently discovered hand imprint carved into the stone wall of an ancient moat outside Jerusalem’s Old City. The imprint, which may been made as a “prank”, was found in a thousand-year-old moat exposed during works to expand a road in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem near Herod’s Gate, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said. The massive moat was hewn into the stone around all of the Old City, stretching 10 meters (33 feet) across and between two to seven meters deep and, unlike typical European ones, not filled with water. According to the IAA, Crusaders in 1099 needed five weeks to cross it and breach the city’s walls and defenses While the moat’s function was clear, the hand’s meaning was elusive. “It’s a mystery, we tried to solve it,” IAA’s excavation director Zubair Adawi said in a statement. IAA archaeologists remained uncertain who carved the hand into the rock or its significance. The moat and hand have meanwhile been covered to enable the continued infrastructure works just below the walls that currently surround the city, built in the 16th century by Suleiman the Magnificent. …

A chatbot powered by reams of data from the internet has passed exams at a U.S. law school after writing essays on topics ranging from constitutional law to taxation and torts. ChatGPT from OpenAI, a U.S. company that this week got a massive injection of cash from Microsoft, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate streams of text from simple prompts. The results have been so good that educators have warned it could lead to widespread cheating and even signal the end of traditional classroom teaching methods. Jonathan Choi, a professor at Minnesota University Law School, gave ChatGPT the same test faced by students, consisting of 95 multiple-choice questions and 12 essay questions. In a white paper titled “ChatGPT goes to law school” published on Monday, he and his coauthors reported that the bot scored a C+ overall. While this was enough for a pass, the bot was near the bottom of the class in most subjects and “bombed” at multiple-choice questions involving mathematics. ‘Not a great student’ “In writing essays, ChatGPT displayed a strong grasp of basic legal rules and had consistently solid organization and composition,” the authors wrote. But the bot “often struggled to spot issues when given an open-ended prompt, a core skill on law school exams”. Officials in New York and other jurisdictions have banned the use of ChatGPT in schools, but Choi suggested it could be a valuable teaching aide. “Overall, ChatGPT wasn’t a great law student acting alone,” he wrote on Twitter. “But we expect …

The Carter Center said Tuesday that only 13 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported worldwide last year. After decades of progress, the eradication program’s director cautioned the end phase of the global effort to eradicate the parasitic disease will be “the most difficult.” The Atlanta-based center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Eleanor Rosalynn Carter, said the remaining infections occurred in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Six human cases were reported in Chad, five in South Sudan, one in Ethiopia and one in the Central African Republic, which remains under investigation. That’s a significant drop from when former President Carter began leading the global eradication effort in 1986, when the disease infected 3.5 million people. The figures, which are provisional, are expected to be confirmed in the coming months. “We are truly in the midst of that last mile and experiencing firsthand that it is going to be a very long and arduous last mile,” Adam Weiss, director of The Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program, told The Associated Press. “Not so much as it taking more than the next seven years – five to seven years – but just knowing that it’s going to be a slow roll to get to zero.” Guinea worm affects some of the world’s more vulnerable people and can be prevented by training people to filter and drink clean water. People who drink unclean water can ingest parasites that can grow as long as 1 meter (3 feet). The …

Malawi has appealed for more than 7 million additional doses of cholera vaccine from the World Health Organization as it struggles to control a record outbreak of the bacterial illness. The WHO donated almost 3 million doses of the vaccine to Malawi in November but those were quickly used up. Since March of last year, almost 30,000 people have been infected and nearly 1,000 have died. The appeal for more cholera doses comes as Malawi continues to register an increase in cases that have now affected all of its 29 districts. The spokesperson for the health ministry, Adrian Chikumbe, said talks with the WHO are underway. “We are expecting a consignment of 7.6 million doses for 17 districts, but we are going to also consider districts that are hard hit with the current outbreak,” Chikumbe said. The Ministry of Health said Tuesday that there is no indication Malawi will receive the vaccine any time soon because many other countries are also pressing the WHO on the same issue. The World Health Organization first supported Malawi with 3.9 million doses of the oral cholera vaccine last May, after the outbreak was reported in March. The country received another consignment of 2.9 million doses in November through the WHO and the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF. Maziko Matemba, community health ambassador in Malawi, said the vaccine shortage shows a change in attitude toward the shots. “We had a similar situation with COVID-19 where we had low uptake when we saw more people getting …

A so-called space environmentalist is working to make the public more aware about space debris by tracking its movement in real time on a website. He says we need to think about space as an ecosystem. Deana Mitchell has the story. Camera: Deana Mitchell Produced by: Deana Mitchell …

The World Health Organization is appealing for a record $2.54 billion to assist millions of people in 54 countries facing catastrophic health emergencies triggered by multiple man-made and natural disasters.   In launching the appeal, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world is witnessing an unprecedented convergence of crises that demand an unprecedented response.  He said WHO is addressing an overwhelming number of intersecting health emergencies. These include climate change-related flooding in Pakistan, drought and acute hunger across the Sahel and in the greater Horn of Africa, health challenges sparked by the war in Ukraine, and the outbreaks of measles, cholera, and other killer diseases in dozens of countries.  “The world cannot look away and hope these crises resolve themselves,” Tedros emphasized. “With funding and urgent action, we can save lives, support recovery efforts, prevent the spread of diseases within countries and across borders, and help give communities the opportunity to rebuild for the future.”  WHO reports 80 percent of humanitarian needs globally are driven by conflict and around half of preventable maternal and child deaths occur in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings.  The African region faces the highest burden of public health emergencies globally. In 2022, the continent accounted for 64 percent of all Grade 3, or most acute, emergencies globally.  Fiona Braka, health emergencies operations manager in WHO’s regional office for Africa, said the continent has had to deal with conflicts and climate-driven humanitarian crises combined with new and recurrent outbreaks of diseases. Speaking from Brazzaville, …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is proposing switching to an annual COVID-19 vaccination campaign for the country, similar to the flu shot. In documents posted online Monday, the agency said the new strategy would provide a simplified approach to the coronavirus vaccine. The proposed plan is set to be discussed at a meeting this week of FDA scientists and the agency’s panel of external vaccine advisers. The FDA said most Americans would need only one annual vaccination to help protect them against the coronavirus, while others — including the elderly, the very young and those with weakened immune systems — might need a two-dose inoculation for additional protection. Under the current vaccination system, a person must get two doses of the original COVID-19 vaccine, which targets the coronavirus that emerged in 2020. Following that, booster shots have been recommended at periodic intervals, with the latest boosters targeting both the original virus and the omicron variant. The proposed FDA changes would do away with the system of primary vaccinations and boosters and would instead recommend for most Americans a single vaccine dose that is developed annually. As with the flu shot, vaccine makers and independent experts would aim to develop a shot that targets the virus strains most likely to dominate in the winter season. The targeted strains could be changed every year. The FDA is also considering making the shots interchangeable, so people would not have to keep track of which vaccine brand they receive. The agency is hoping …

Far below our feet, a giant may have started moving against us.  Earth’s inner core, a hot iron ball the size of Pluto, has stopped spinning in the same direction as the rest of the planet and might even be rotating the other way, research suggested on Monday. Roughly 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) below the surface we live on, this “planet within the planet” can spin independently because it floats in the liquid metal outer core.  Exactly how the inner core rotates has been a matter of debate between scientists — and the latest research is expected to prove controversial. What little we know about the inner core comes from measuring the tiny differences in seismic waves — created by earthquakes or sometimes nuclear explosions — as they pass through the middle of the Earth. Seeking to track the inner core’s movements, new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience analysed seismic waves from repeating earthquakes over the last six decades. The study’s authors, Xiaodong Song and Yi Yang of China’s Peking University, said they found that the inner core’s rotation “came to near halt around 2009 and then turned in an opposite direction.” “We believe the inner core rotates, relative to the Earth’s surface, back and forth, like a swing,” they told AFP. “One cycle of the swing is about seven decades,” meaning it changes direction roughly every 35 years, they added. They said it previously changed direction in the early 1970s and predicted the next about-face would be …

The World Health Organization has called for “immediate and concerted action” to protect children from contaminated medicines after a spate of child deaths linked to cough syrups last year.  In 2022, more than 300 children — mainly younger than 5 years old — in Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan died of acute kidney injury, deaths that were associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said in a statement on Monday.  The medicines, over-the-counter cough syrups, had high levels of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol.  “These contaminants are toxic chemicals used as industrial solvents and antifreeze agents that can be fatal even taken in small amounts, and should never be found in medicines,” the WHO said.  It said seven countries had reported finding the contaminated syrups in the last four months, and called for action across its 194 member states to prevent more deaths.  “Since these are not isolated incidents, WHO calls on various key stakeholders engaged in the medical supply chain to take immediate and coordinated action,” WHO said.    …