Oil is everywhere in Oklahoma, says local student Luke Kerr.

But that has not deterred him from planning a protest calling for its phasing out in the state’s capital city on Friday – mirroring similar events due to be staged around the world by students skipping school.

“It is very important that strikes and marches take place in fossil-fuel producing areas of the country, like Oklahoma,” the high school senior said on Thursday.

“We are showing the rest of the country that we can fight for climate.”

With strikes planned in at least 168 U.S. cities and towns, mostly progressive communities, a handful of them like that set up by Kerr stand out for taking place deep in oil country.

The students are taking their cue from Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg whose weekly “school strike for climate” has sparked a global movement.

The school strike movement – which hopes to raise awareness on climate change and force policymakers to take action – has taken the world by storm in recent months, prompting school walkouts mostly in Europe and Australia.

Kerr and his fellow student protesters will rally just feet away from monumental, mock oil derricks next to the State Capitol in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma ranks fourth among all 50 states for oil production, whose burning is blamed for climate change. The southern state recently left its mark on the country when its former attorney general, Scott Pruitt, angered environmentalists due to his skepticism of mainstream climate science when he headed the Environmental Protection Agency.

About 38 percent of Oklahomans do not believe in global warming, an eight percentage point difference from the national average, according to a 2018 survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

In the adjacent state of Colorado, 7-year-old Forest Olson has been the driving force behind another climate rally in an area that is also among the country’s top fossil fuel producers.

The mountainous state ranks fifth nationally for its crude oil production, and tenth for coal, federal data shows.

But Olson, a first grader who lives outside the remote town of Telluride, is rallying high school and elementary school students there who have agreed to follow his lead to demonstrate on the county court house’s steps.

The young boy is witnessing the effects of climate change first hand, said his mother Josselin Lifton-Zoline, including reduced snowpacks on nearby ski slopes.

Snowpacks are expected to continue decreasing in size and affect water resources in the western United States, according to the National Climate Assessment, a U.S. government report.

So Olson recently wrote to the town newspaper and spoke to his fellow pupils about taking to the streets.

“I love Earth and I don’t want it to be a disaster,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

In Alaska’s capital city, Anchorage, German exchange student Maxim Unruh, said he had been inspired to bring the movement to this oil-rich state after a friend back home helped with Berlin’s first youth climate strike in December.

The 17-year-old high school senior said he expected some push back for exporting ideas perceived by some as foreign but had prepared a response.

“The climate crisis is a problem in the whole world, and it doesn’t matter from where – I’ll fight for climate justice,” he said.
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The death rate among women undergoing a C-section to deliver a baby is about 50 times higher in Africa than in most wealthy nations, researchers said Friday.

One in 200 women dies during or soon after a cesarean in a sampling of nearly 3,700 births across 22 African countries, they reported in The Lancet Global Health.

By comparison, maternal mortality is about one woman per 10,000 operations in Britain. Death rates related to C-sections are roughly the same across most developed countries.

Urgent need to improve safety

“The findings highlight the urgent need for improved safety for the procedure,” said researchers led by Bruce Biccard, a professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Preventable C-section deaths mostly stemmed from a ruptured uterus, in mothers who had pre-existing placental complications, bleeding before birth or during surgery, and problems related to anesthesia.

“Improvement of C-section surgical outcomes could substantially improve both maternal and neonatal mortality,” Biccard said.

He also called for a better assessment of the risk related to bleeding, and less restrictive use of drugs to treat post-partum hemorrhaging.

In many African nations, there is a chronically short supply of blood for transfusions.

Blood products with a greater shelf life and better use of anesthesia by non-doctors — through mobile and online training, for example — could also help boost survival rates, the researchers said.

Surgical study

The findings are part of the Africa Surgical Outcomes Study, which tracks all patients who received surgery at 183 hospitals across the 22 countries for seven days.

C-sections accounted for a third of all surgeries in the period covered, the study found.

Making C-sections more easily available could also avoid potentially lethal complications, the authors noted.

Of the cases examined, 75 percent were classified as “emergency surgery,” with mothers arriving at the operating room with high-risk conditions.

“Paradoxically, while many countries are aiming to reduce cesarean delivery rates, increasing the rate remains a priority in Africa,” Biccard said.

C-section double worldwide

Worldwide, the number of C-sections has nearly doubled over the last 20 years, reaching unprecedented proportions in some countries, recent research has highlighted.

In Brazil, Egypt and Turkey, for example, more than half of all births are done via C-section.

But in close to a quarter of nations surveyed, many in Africa, use of the procedure is significantly lower than average.

It is estimated that the operation is medically necessary 10-15 percent of the time.

In 2015, doctors performed 29.7 million C-sections worldwide, 21 percent of all births.

This was up from 16 million in 2000, or 12 percent of all births.
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The death rate among women undergoing a C-section to deliver a baby is about 50 times higher in Africa than in most wealthy nations, researchers said Friday.

One in 200 women dies during or soon after a cesarean in a sampling of nearly 3,700 births across 22 African countries, they reported in The Lancet Global Health.

By comparison, maternal mortality is about one woman per 10,000 operations in Britain. Death rates related to C-sections are roughly the same across most developed countries.

Urgent need to improve safety

“The findings highlight the urgent need for improved safety for the procedure,” said researchers led by Bruce Biccard, a professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Preventable C-section deaths mostly stemmed from a ruptured uterus, in mothers who had pre-existing placental complications, bleeding before birth or during surgery, and problems related to anesthesia.

“Improvement of C-section surgical outcomes could substantially improve both maternal and neonatal mortality,” Biccard said.

He also called for a better assessment of the risk related to bleeding, and less restrictive use of drugs to treat post-partum hemorrhaging.

In many African nations, there is a chronically short supply of blood for transfusions.

Blood products with a greater shelf life and better use of anesthesia by non-doctors — through mobile and online training, for example — could also help boost survival rates, the researchers said.

Surgical study

The findings are part of the Africa Surgical Outcomes Study, which tracks all patients who received surgery at 183 hospitals across the 22 countries for seven days.

C-sections accounted for a third of all surgeries in the period covered, the study found.

Making C-sections more easily available could also avoid potentially lethal complications, the authors noted.

Of the cases examined, 75 percent were classified as “emergency surgery,” with mothers arriving at the operating room with high-risk conditions.

“Paradoxically, while many countries are aiming to reduce cesarean delivery rates, increasing the rate remains a priority in Africa,” Biccard said.

C-section double worldwide

Worldwide, the number of C-sections has nearly doubled over the last 20 years, reaching unprecedented proportions in some countries, recent research has highlighted.

In Brazil, Egypt and Turkey, for example, more than half of all births are done via C-section.

But in close to a quarter of nations surveyed, many in Africa, use of the procedure is significantly lower than average.

It is estimated that the operation is medically necessary 10-15 percent of the time.

In 2015, doctors performed 29.7 million C-sections worldwide, 21 percent of all births.

This was up from 16 million in 2000, or 12 percent of all births.
…

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A proposal to strip gray wolves of their remaining federal protections could curtail their rapid expansion across vast swaths of the U.S. West and Great Lakes, yet the predators already are proving to be resilient in states where hunting and trapping occur. 

 

Thursday’s Interior Department proposal to remove threatened and endangered species protections for wolves would end a decades-long restoration effort that saw a remarkable turnaround for an animal once nearly exterminated across the Lower 48 states. Now more than 6,000 gray wolves live in portions of nine states. 

 

Authority over wolves would revert to state wildlife agencies with no obligation to maintain current numbers. Critics say that amounts to a death sentence for thousands of the animals, shrinking well-established populations and preventing wanderers from carving out new territory. 

 

The track record suggests otherwise in parts of the Northern Rockies, where wolf numbers have not noticeably flagged in the face of aggressive hunting and trapping. 

 

When legal wolf harvests began in Montana and Idaho in 2009, wildlife advocates and some scientists argued their numbers would plummet. 

 

Hunters and trappers have since killed almost 4,400 wolves in the two states, according to data from state wildlife agencies obtained by The Associated Press. About 1,500 more were killed by government wildlife agents and property owners following attacks on livestock and similar conflicts. 

​Bounced back

 

But wolves are such prolific breeders that after each hunting season, their numbers bounced back the next spring. That continued even as wildlife regulators loosened trapping restrictions and allowed individual hunters and trappers to harvest multiple animals. 

 

The wolf populations for the two states hovered at around 1,700 animals combined from 2009 through the beginning of 2016, the most recent year with figures from both states. 

 

“We’re almost a decade into hunting and trapping and we still have a population that is robust and well-distributed. It can be done well,” said Bob Inman, a biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. 

 

Wildlife researcher Scott Creel at Montana State University said his examination of population data suggests sustained high harvest rates are pushing wolves near a “tipping point” that would drive the species into decline. State officials said they see no cause for concern and expect the population size to fluctuate. 

 

Montana’s wolf numbers dipped from their 2013 peak over the last several years before increasing in 2017, the data show.  

  

Meanwhile, packs from the Northern Rockies have spread into neighboring Oregon and Washington, where they had been absent for decades. A small number have also taken up residence in California. 

 

Collette Adkins, a Minnesota-based senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, acknowledged dropping federal protections would not drive wolves to extinction, despite earlier saying the proposal “was a death sentence for gray wolves across the country.” 

​Threat to recovery seen

 

But she said their recovery would “come to a screeching halt” as hunting and trapping are allowed in more states. That would put the species in a tenuous position in the Pacific Northwest and likely rule out its return to historic ranges, such as Colorado’s southern Rockies and the Adirondacks in the Northeast, she said. 

 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say their goal was to prevent extinction, not restore wolves everywhere they once roamed. State officials say even without federal protection, wolves won’t return to their imperiled status of the early 20th century because modern hunting regulations focus on managing animals, not exterminating them. 

 

“The only way wolves were removed from the Lower 48 was using techniques we don’t use anymore — poisons,” said Toby Boudreau, wildlife bureau chief for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. 

 

Endangered Species Act protections were given to the animals in the 1970s except in Alaska, where the population was never considered in danger. States that designate the wolf as threatened or endangered under their own laws and regulations include California, Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Virginia and Washington. 

 

David Mech, a U.S. Geological Survey wolf expert, said the species likely would continue to grow and expand in the contiguous U.S. after losing its endangered and protected status, albeit more slowly. 

 

Wolves can and will live any place people tolerate them, Mech said. He pointed to studies that suggest the southern Rockies could host up to 1,000 wolves, with vast areas of additional habitat in the heartland region from Texas to North Dakota. 

 

The Interior Department will make a final decision on its proposal after a public comment period that runs through May 14.  

  

The most immediate changes could come for more than 4,000 wolves in the Western Great Lakes. Wisconsin law requires its wolf hunts to resume if the state regains authority. Wildlife officials would make the call in Michigan and Minnesota. 

 

Hunting, trapping or both were allowed in the region at various times between 2012 and 2014 before a federal judge shut them down by returning wolves to the endangered species list. State survey data for the Western Great Lakes showed at least modest wolf declines during the period. 

​Fewer deer

 

Wolf advocates attributed the drop in Minnesota to hunting and trapping. Dan Stark of the state Department of Natural Resources said a more likely explanation was a 30 percent decline in deer, the wolf’s primary prey. Either way, wildlife managers say the populations in all three states remained strong. 

 

If hunting is allowed, debate is likely over whether to maintain wolf numbers or seek cutbacks. Some farmers hope for a smaller population, which they believe would reduce attacks that have killed hundreds of cows and sheep. 

 

Montana wildlife officials credit a more aggressive effort to kill problem wolves with a sharp decline in livestock attacks since 2009. However, some scientists say hunting and trapping makes livestock a more tempting target for wolves because it disrupts the pack cohesion needed to bring down swift or bulky prey like deer, elk and moose. 

 

Some Wisconsin groups are pushing to reduce their wolf population to 350 from about 900. 

 

“If we’d kept them at that number, I think almost all livestock conflicts would have been gone,” said Mark Liebaert, a sixth-generation beef producer who said he’s considered quitting because of wolf kills and harassment.  

  

But Ethan Lane of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said his organization’s priority is enabling farmers and ranchers to protect their herds. Making deep cuts in wolf numbers, he said, is “just not realistic.” 
…

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A proposal to strip gray wolves of their remaining federal protections could curtail their rapid expansion across vast swaths of the U.S. West and Great Lakes, yet the predators already are proving to be resilient in states where hunting and trapping occur. 

 

Thursday’s Interior Department proposal to remove threatened and endangered species protections for wolves would end a decades-long restoration effort that saw a remarkable turnaround for an animal once nearly exterminated across the Lower 48 states. Now more than 6,000 gray wolves live in portions of nine states. 

 

Authority over wolves would revert to state wildlife agencies with no obligation to maintain current numbers. Critics say that amounts to a death sentence for thousands of the animals, shrinking well-established populations and preventing wanderers from carving out new territory. 

 

The track record suggests otherwise in parts of the Northern Rockies, where wolf numbers have not noticeably flagged in the face of aggressive hunting and trapping. 

 

When legal wolf harvests began in Montana and Idaho in 2009, wildlife advocates and some scientists argued their numbers would plummet. 

 

Hunters and trappers have since killed almost 4,400 wolves in the two states, according to data from state wildlife agencies obtained by The Associated Press. About 1,500 more were killed by government wildlife agents and property owners following attacks on livestock and similar conflicts. 

​Bounced back

 

But wolves are such prolific breeders that after each hunting season, their numbers bounced back the next spring. That continued even as wildlife regulators loosened trapping restrictions and allowed individual hunters and trappers to harvest multiple animals. 

 

The wolf populations for the two states hovered at around 1,700 animals combined from 2009 through the beginning of 2016, the most recent year with figures from both states. 

 

“We’re almost a decade into hunting and trapping and we still have a population that is robust and well-distributed. It can be done well,” said Bob Inman, a biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. 

 

Wildlife researcher Scott Creel at Montana State University said his examination of population data suggests sustained high harvest rates are pushing wolves near a “tipping point” that would drive the species into decline. State officials said they see no cause for concern and expect the population size to fluctuate. 

 

Montana’s wolf numbers dipped from their 2013 peak over the last several years before increasing in 2017, the data show.  

  

Meanwhile, packs from the Northern Rockies have spread into neighboring Oregon and Washington, where they had been absent for decades. A small number have also taken up residence in California. 

 

Collette Adkins, a Minnesota-based senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, acknowledged dropping federal protections would not drive wolves to extinction, despite earlier saying the proposal “was a death sentence for gray wolves across the country.” 

​Threat to recovery seen

 

But she said their recovery would “come to a screeching halt” as hunting and trapping are allowed in more states. That would put the species in a tenuous position in the Pacific Northwest and likely rule out its return to historic ranges, such as Colorado’s southern Rockies and the Adirondacks in the Northeast, she said. 

 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say their goal was to prevent extinction, not restore wolves everywhere they once roamed. State officials say even without federal protection, wolves won’t return to their imperiled status of the early 20th century because modern hunting regulations focus on managing animals, not exterminating them. 

 

“The only way wolves were removed from the Lower 48 was using techniques we don’t use anymore — poisons,” said Toby Boudreau, wildlife bureau chief for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. 

 

Endangered Species Act protections were given to the animals in the 1970s except in Alaska, where the population was never considered in danger. States that designate the wolf as threatened or endangered under their own laws and regulations include California, Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Virginia and Washington. 

 

David Mech, a U.S. Geological Survey wolf expert, said the species likely would continue to grow and expand in the contiguous U.S. after losing its endangered and protected status, albeit more slowly. 

 

Wolves can and will live any place people tolerate them, Mech said. He pointed to studies that suggest the southern Rockies could host up to 1,000 wolves, with vast areas of additional habitat in the heartland region from Texas to North Dakota. 

 

The Interior Department will make a final decision on its proposal after a public comment period that runs through May 14.  

  

The most immediate changes could come for more than 4,000 wolves in the Western Great Lakes. Wisconsin law requires its wolf hunts to resume if the state regains authority. Wildlife officials would make the call in Michigan and Minnesota. 

 

Hunting, trapping or both were allowed in the region at various times between 2012 and 2014 before a federal judge shut them down by returning wolves to the endangered species list. State survey data for the Western Great Lakes showed at least modest wolf declines during the period. 

​Fewer deer

 

Wolf advocates attributed the drop in Minnesota to hunting and trapping. Dan Stark of the state Department of Natural Resources said a more likely explanation was a 30 percent decline in deer, the wolf’s primary prey. Either way, wildlife managers say the populations in all three states remained strong. 

 

If hunting is allowed, debate is likely over whether to maintain wolf numbers or seek cutbacks. Some farmers hope for a smaller population, which they believe would reduce attacks that have killed hundreds of cows and sheep. 

 

Montana wildlife officials credit a more aggressive effort to kill problem wolves with a sharp decline in livestock attacks since 2009. However, some scientists say hunting and trapping makes livestock a more tempting target for wolves because it disrupts the pack cohesion needed to bring down swift or bulky prey like deer, elk and moose. 

 

Some Wisconsin groups are pushing to reduce their wolf population to 350 from about 900. 

 

“If we’d kept them at that number, I think almost all livestock conflicts would have been gone,” said Mark Liebaert, a sixth-generation beef producer who said he’s considered quitting because of wolf kills and harassment.  

  

But Ethan Lane of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said his organization’s priority is enabling farmers and ranchers to protect their herds. Making deep cuts in wolf numbers, he said, is “just not realistic.” 
…

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Russian-American crew of three has blasted off to the International Space Station, their second attempt to reach the outpost following an aborted launch in October

A Russian-American crew of three blasted off to the International Space Station early Friday, making a second attempt to reach the outpost after October’s aborted launch.

A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch along with Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin lifted off as planned from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:14 a.m. Friday (1914 GMT Thursday).

Their Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft reached a designated orbit about nine minutes after the launch, and the crew reported they were feeling fine and all systems on board were operating normally. They are set to dock at the space station in about six hours.

On Oct. 11, a Soyuz that Hague and Ovchinin were riding in failed two minutes into its flight, activating a rescue system that allowed their capsule to land safely. That accident was the first aborted crew launch for the Russian space program since 1983, when two Soviet cosmonauts safely jettisoned after a launch pad explosion.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine congratulated the crew on a successful launch. “So proud of Nick Hague for persevering through last October’s launch that didn’t go as planned,” he tweeted.

Speaking at a pre-launch news conference at Baikonur, the crew said they trusted the rocket and fully believed in the success of their mission.

“I’m 100 percent confident in the rocket and the spacecraft,” Hague said. “The events from October only helped to solidify that and boost confidence in the vehicle to do its job.”

The trio will join NASA’s Anne McClain, Roscosmos’ Oleg Kononenko and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency who are currently on the space station. They will conduct work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.

When one of the four strap-on boosters for their Soyuz failed to separate properly two minutes after their launch in October, Hague and Ovchinin were jettisoned from the rocket. Their rescue capsule plunged steeply back to Earth with its lights flashing and alarms screaming, subjecting the crew to seven times the force of gravity.

Hague emphasized Wednesday that they were well-trained for the emergency.

“The nature of our profession is we spend 90-95 percent of our time practicing what to do when things go wrong,” he said. “And so we spend all that time training, running through all those scenarios. And because we do train that way, like in October when things like that happened, we were ready to do what we need to do to come out successfully.”

The October failure was the first aborted launch for the Russian space program in 35 years and only the third in history. Each time, the rocket’s automatic rescue system kept the crew safe.

A Russian investigation attributed October’s launch failure to a sensor that was damaged during the rocket’s final assembly. The next crew launch to the space station in December went on without a hitch.

Ovchinin recalled that they felt “more annoyed than stressed” when their rescue capsule touched down in the barren steppes of Kazakhstan. “It was disappointing and a bit frustrating that we didn’t make it to the International Space Station,” he said.

NASA and Roscosmos praised the crew’s valor and composure in the aborted launch and promised to quickly give them a second chance into space.

“We don’t accept the risk blindly, we have mitigated it as much as we can, and we always plan to be successful,” Hague said.

Ovchinin stressed that the aborted launch in October was an “interesting and very useful experience” that “proved the reliability of the emergency rescue system.”

Since the 2011 retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet, Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft have been the only vehicles that can ferry crews to the space station.

NASA, however, is counting on SpaceX and Boeing to start launching astronauts this year. The SpaceX ship Dragon returned Friday from a six-day unmanned demonstration flight to the space station and could take astronauts there on its next flight as early as this summer.
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Sickle cell anemia afflicts many millions of people across the globe, mostly of African heritage and including some 100,000 African Americans in the United States. Now, researchers believe they may have discovered an effective treatment for the painful and debilitating disease. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Sickle cell anemia afflicts many millions of people across the globe, mostly of African heritage and including some 100,000 African Americans in the United States. Now, researchers believe they may have discovered an effective treatment for the painful and debilitating disease. Faith Lapidus reports.
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