New research shows vaccinating pregnant women helped protect their newborns from the common but scary respiratory virus called RSV that fills hospitals with wheezing babies each fall.

The preliminary results buoy hope that after decades of failure and frustration, vaccines against RSV may finally be getting close.

Pfizer announced Tuesday that a large international study found that vaccinating moms-to-be was nearly 82% effective at preventing severe cases of RSV in their babies’ most vulnerable first 90 days of life. At age 6 months, the vaccine still was proving 69% effective against serious illness — and there were no signs of safety problems in mothers or babies.

“Moms are always giving their antibodies to their baby,” said virologist Kena Swanson, Pfizer’s vice president of viral vaccines. “The vaccine just puts them in that much better position” to form and pass on RSV-fighting antibodies.

The vaccine quest isn’t just to protect infants. RSV is dangerous for older adults, too, and both Pfizer and rival GSK recently announced that their competing shots also proved protective for seniors.

None of the findings will help this year when an early RSV surge already is crowding children’s hospitals. But they raise the prospect that one or more vaccines might become available before next fall’s RSV season.

“My fingers are crossed,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. “We’re making inroads.”

Tuesday’s data was reported in a press release and hasn’t been vetted by independent experts.

Here’s a look at the long quest for RSV vaccines.

What is RSV?

For most healthy people, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a cold-like nuisance. But for the very young, the elderly and people with certain health problems, it can be serious, even life-threatening. The virus can infect deep in the lungs, causing pneumonia, and in babies, it can impede breathing by inflaming tiny airways.

In the U.S., about 58,000 children younger than 5 are hospitalized for RSV each year, and several hundred die. Among adults 65 and older, about 177,000 are hospitalized with RSV and 14,000 die annually.

Worldwide, RSV kills about 100,000 children a year, mostly in poor countries.

Why is there no vaccine?

A tragedy in the 1960s set back the whole field. Using the approach that led to the first polio vaccine, scientists made an experimental RSV vaccine by growing the virus in a lab and killing it. But testing in children found not only was the vaccine not protective, youngsters who caught RSV after vaccination fared worse. Two died.

“For a period of 20 years, even though science was advancing, nobody wanted to go near development of an RSV vaccine,” Schaffner said.

Even today’s modern RSV vaccine candidates were tested first in older adults, not children, he noted.

How did development get back on track?

Modern vaccines tend to target the outer surface of a virus — what the immune system sees when a germ invades. For RSV, that target is the so-called F protein that helps the virus latch onto human cells. Again, there was a hurdle: That protein is a shape-shifter, rearranging its form before and after it “fuses” to cells.

It turns out that the immune system only forms effective RSV-fighting antibodies when it spots what’s called the pre-fusion version of that protein, explained structural biologist Jason McLellan of the University of Texas at Austin.

In 2013, McLellan and virologist Barney Graham were working at the National Institutes of Health when they homed in on the correct shape and figured out how to freeze it in that form. That finding opened the way to today’s development of a variety of experimental RSV vaccine candidates.

(That same discovery was key to the hugely successful COVID-19 vaccines, as the coronavirus also is cloaked in a shape-shifting surface protein.)

What’s in the pipeline?

Several companies are creating RSV vaccines, but Pfizer and GSK are furthest along. Both companies recently reported final-stage testing in older adults. The competing vaccines are made somewhat differently but each proved strongly effective, especially against serious disease. Both companies plan to seek regulatory approval in the U.S. by the end of the year, as well as in other countries.

The older-adult data “looks fantastic,” said McLellan, who has closely followed the vaccine development. “I think we’re on the right track.”

And if vaccinating pregnant women pans out, it could be “a win for two individuals instead of just one,” by offering protection to both mom-to-be and baby, said Dr. Wilbur Chen of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Pfizer’s maternal vaccine is the same recipe that it tested successfully in older adults — and it also plans to seek Food and Drug Administration approval for those vaccinations by year’s end.

The new study included 7,400 pregnant women in 18 countries, including the U.S., and spanned multiple RSV seasons. Preliminary results reported Tuesday show the vaccine was most effective against severe disease. For milder illness, effectiveness was 51% to 57% — short of the study’s statistical requirements but a result that Pfizer still called clinically meaningful because it could mean fewer trips to the doctor’s office.
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Lebanon received a first batch of vaccines Monday to combat a worsening cholera outbreak – together with sharply worded criticism of its crumbling public health infrastructure from France, which facilitated the donation of the doses.

By Sunday, cases of cholera – a disease typically spread through contaminated water, food or sewage – stood at 1,447, with 17 deaths, since the first were recorded in the country a month ago, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Lebanon had been cholera-free since 1993, but its public services are suffering under a brutal economic crisis now in its fourth year, while infighting among the country’s faction-riven elite has paralyzed its political institutions.

The outbreak has reached Beirut, but authorities say most cases remain concentrated where it started in the northern town of Bebnine, where health authorities have set up an emergency field hospital.

The vaccines would play “an essential role” in limiting the disease’s spread, Health Minister Firass Abiad told reporters in the capital as he announced the first batch.

Standing next to Abiad, French ambassador Anne Grillo said the delivery comprised more than 13,000 doses. They had been donated by the philanthropic arm of French health care company Sanofi and the French government had facilitated their arrival to Lebanon.

“The origins of this epidemic, in which public health is at stake, must also be treated,” Grillo told reporters. The outbreak was “a new and worrying illustration of the critical decline in public provision of access to water and sanitary services in Lebanon.”

In the Bebnine field hospital, two young boys sat next to each other on one hospital bed, while a mother waited anxiously to confirm if her son, lying limp on another bed and being treated by a doctor and a nurse, had also caught the disease.

Nearby, Syrian children in a makeshift refugee camp played in dirty water chocked with rubbish and medical waste and fed by an outflow from an open pipe.

The World Health Organization has linked cholera’s comeback in Lebanon to an outbreak in neighboring Syria, to where it had spread from Afghanistan via Iran and Iraq.
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On Tuesday, Nov. 1, Australia’s most populous state is banning a range of single-use plastic, including straws, cutlery and bowls.

Polystyrene foam food containers are also banned under the new rules in New South Wales, along with some face, body and hair products that contain plastic micro beads.   

Businesses that breach the regulations could face fines of tens of thousands of dollars.  

Minister for Environment and Heritage James Griffin said in a statement in September that the ban was just the start of a “massive shift away from single-use plastic.”  

He has predicted the ban would stop 2.7 billion items of plastic ending up as litter over the next 20 years. 

The laws in New South Wales are part of a nationwide push to curb waste. State authorities in Queensland and Victoria will bring in similar bans next year.  

Environmental campaigners have welcomed the laws but insist much more needs to be done. Australia currently recycles 16% of its plastic packaging, below the national target of 70%.   

Shane Cucow of the Australian Marine Conservation Society told VOA that recycling needs to be improved, because “Every wrap, pack and snack at a supermarket these days is covered in plastic.”

He added that, “We can get rid of some of those single-use plastics that are highly littered and regularly ending up in our oceans like cups and straws and take-away containers and plastic bags, and that is really important, but at the same time there is just so much plastic packaging on everything that is not able to be recycled properly and so it has got nowhere to go except being buried in landfill or washing out into our oceans.”

In June, New South Wales also banned lightweight plastic bags.
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Research in Africa found a one-time dose of an experimental drug protected adults against malaria for at least six months, the latest approach in the fight against the mosquito-borne disease. 

Malaria killed more than 620,000 people in 2020 and sickened 241 million, mainly children under 5 in Africa. The World Health Organization is rolling out the first authorized malaria vaccine for children, but it is about 30% effective and requires four doses. 

The new study tested a very different approach — giving people a big dose of lab-made malaria-fighting antibodies instead of depending on the immune system to make enough of those same infection-blockers after vaccination.

“The available vaccine doesn’t protect enough people,” said Dr. Kassoum Kayentao of the University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies in Bamako, Mali, who helped lead the study in the villages of Kalifabougou and Torodo. 

In those villages during malaria season, other research has shown, people are bitten by infected mosquitoes on average twice a day. 

The experimental antibody, developed by researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was given by IV — difficult to deliver on a large scale. But the encouraging findings bode well for an easier-to-administer shot version from the same scientists that’s in early testing in infants, children and adults.

The U.S. government research was published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a medical meeting in Seattle. 

The antibody works by breaking the life cycle of the parasite, which is spread through mosquito bites. It targets immature parasites before they enter the liver where they can mature and multiply. It was developed from an antibody taken from a volunteer who received a malaria vaccine. 

The research involved 330 adults in Mali who got either one of two different antibody doses or a dummy infusion. All were tested for malaria infection every two weeks for 24 weeks. Anyone who got sick was treated. 

Infections were detected by blood test in 20 people who got the higher dose, 39 people who got the lower dose and 86 who got the placebo. 

The higher dose was 88% effective, compared to the placebo. The lower dose was 75% effective. 

Protection might last during the several months of a malaria season. The idea is to someday use it alongside other malaria prevention methods such as malaria pills, mosquito nets and vaccines. Cost is uncertain, but one estimate suggests lab-made antibodies could be given for as little as $5 per child per malaria season. 

Lab-made antibodies are used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and COVID-19, said Dr. Johanna Daily of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who was not involved in the study. 

“The good news is now we have another, immune-based therapy to try to control malaria,” Daily said. 
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China’s third and final module docked with its permanent space station Tuesday to further a decadeslong effort to maintain a constant crewed presence in orbit, as its competition with the United States grows increasingly fierce.

The Mengtian module arrived at the Tiangong station early Tuesday morning, state broadcaster CCTV said, citing the China Manned Space Agency.

Mengtian was blasted into space on Monday afternoon from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island province of Hainan. It was expected to take about 13 hours to complete the flight and docking mission.

A large crowd of amateur photographers, space enthusiasts and others watched the lift-off from an adjoining beach.

Many waved Chinese flags and wore T-shirts emblazoned with the characters for China, reflecting the deep national pride invested in the space program and the technological progress it represents.

“The space program is a symbol of a major country and a boost to the modernization of China’s national defense,” said Ni Lexiong, a professor at Shanghai University of political science and law, underscoring the program’s close military links.

“It is also a boost to the confidence of the Chinese people, igniting patriotism and positive energy,” Ni said.

Mengtian, or “Celestial Dream,” joins Wentian as the second laboratory module for the station, collectively known as Tiangong, or “Celestial Palace.” Both are connected to the Tianhe core module where the crew lives and works.

Like its predecessors, Mengtian was launched aboard a Long March-5B carrier rocket, a member of China’s most powerful family of launch vehicles.

Tiangong is currently populated by a crew of three astronauts — two males and one female, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

Chen Dong, Cai Xuzhe and Liu Yang arrived in early June for a six-month stay on board, during which they will complete the station’s assembly, conduct space walks and carry out additional experiments.

Following Mengtian’s arrival, an additional uncrewed Tianzhou cargo craft is due to dock with the station next month, with another crewed mission scheduled for December, at which time crews may overlap, as Tiangong has sufficient room to accommodate six astronauts.

Mengtian weighs in at about 23 tons, is 17.9 meters long and has a diameter of 4.2 meters. It will provide space for science experiments in zero gravity, an airlock for exposure to the vacuum of space and a small robotic arm to support extravehicular payloads.

The already orbiting 23-ton Wentian, or “Quest for the Heavens” laboratory is designed for science and biology experiments and is heavier than any other single-module spacecraft currently in space.

Next year, China plans to launch the Xuntian space telescope, which, while not a part of Tiangong, will orbit in sequence with the station and can dock occasionally with it for maintenance.

No other future additions to the space station have been publicly announced.

In all, the station will have about 110 cubic meters of pressurized interior space, including the 32 cubic meters added by Mengtian.

China’s crewed space program is officially three decades old this year, with the Mengtian launch being its 25th mission. But it truly got underway in 2003, when China became only the third country after the U.S. and Russia to put a human into space using its own resources.

The program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, and has proceeded methodically and almost entirely without outside support. The U.S. excluded China from the International Space Station because of its program’s military ties.

Despite that, China is collaborating with the European Space Agency on experiments aboard Mengtian and is cooperating with France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Pakistan and the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) on a range of projects from aerospace medicine to microgravity physics, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Prior to launching the Tianhe module, China’s Manned Space Program launched a pair of single-module stations that it crewed briefly as test platforms.

The permanent Chinese station will weigh about 66 tons — a fraction of the size of the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 465 tons.

With a lifespan of 10 to 15 years, Tiangong could one day find itself the only space station still running, if the International Space Station adheres to its 30-year operating plan.

China has also chalked up successes with uncrewed missions, and its lunar exploration program generated media buzz last year when its Yutu 2 rover sent back pictures of what was described by some as a “mystery hut” but was most likely only a rock. The rover is the first to be placed on the little-explored far side of the moon.

China’s Chang’e 5 probe returned lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s in December 2000, and another Chinese rover is searching for evidence of life on Mars. Officials are also considering a crewed mission to the moon.

The program has also drawn controversy. In October 2021, China’s Foreign Ministry brushed off a report that China had tested a hypersonic missile two months earlier, saying it had merely tested whether a new spacecraft could be reused.

China is also reportedly developing a highly secret space plane.

China’s space program has proceeded cautiously and largely gone off without a hitch.

Complaints, however, have been leveled against China for allowing rocket stages to fall to Earth uncontrolled twice before. NASA accused Beijing last year of “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris” after parts of a Chinese rocket landed in the Indian Ocean.

China’s increasing space capabilities was also featured in the latest Pentagon defense strategy released Thursday.

“In addition to expanding its conventional forces, the PLA is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic and informational warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare,” the strategy said.

The U.S. and China are at odds on a range of issues, especially the self-governing island of Taiwan that Beijing threatens to annex with force. China responded to a September visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by firing missiles over the island, holding wargames and staging a simulated blockade.
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A tiny mountain-dwelling wren was the surprise winner Monday of New Zealand’s controversial bird of the year competition, which even had Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in a flap.   

The piwauwau rock wren punched above its 20-gram weight, flying under the radar to win the annual contest ahead of popular fellow native contenders, the little penguin and the kea.   

Fans of the wren set up a Facebook page to help the outsider soar up the final rankings when the fortnight-long poll closed Monday.   

“It’s not the size, it’s the underbird you vote for that counts,” wrote one supporter.   

The annual competition ruffled voters’ feathers in years past after a native bat was allowed to enter, then won, the 2021 title.   

There was also outcry this year after the flightless kakapo — a twice previous winner dubbed the world’s fattest parrot — was barred from running to give others a chance.   

The annual avian beauty contest run by environmental group Forest and Bird is popular with New Zealanders, including the country’s top politicians.   

The leader of the opposition, Christopher Luxon, took to Twitter — where else? — over the weekend to endorse the wrybill, a river bird with a distinctive bent beak.   

On Monday, New Zealand’s prime minister was momentarily ruffled live on air when asked if she had voted for her favorite bird.   

“No I haven’t yet — you can’t just chuck a controversial question at me without a warning!,” Ardern said with a smile.   

New Zealand’s leader revealed she will “always and forever” be loyal to the black petrel, which only breeds on the North Island but can fly as far as Ecuador, and she hopes the 2023 competition “will be its year”.  
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In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where health workers are trying to vaccinate children to eliminate endemic poliovirus, six-year-old Ismail is partially paralyzed on his left side, due to the disabling disease. His father says it is devastating news for the family. Abu Baker Alizai has the report, narrated by Roshan Noorzai.
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Former CIA disguise expert Robert Barron has been making prosthetics for people affected by injury or disease for almost three decades. Karina Bafradzhian talked to Barron about his work.
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Thousands of demonstrators defied an official ban to march Saturday against the deployment of new water storage infrastructure for agricultural irrigation in western France, some clashing with police.

Clashes between paramilitary gendarmes and demonstrators erupted with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin reporting that 61 officers had been hurt, 22 seriously.

“Bassines Non Merci,” which organized the protest, said around 30 demonstrators had been injured. Of them, 10 had to seek medical treatment and three were hospitalized.

The group brings together environmental associations, trade unions and anti-capitalist groups against what it claims is a “water grab” by the “agro-industry” in western France.

Local officials said six people were arrested during the protest and that 4,000 people had turned up for the banned demonstration. Organizers put the turnout at 7,000.

The deployment of giant water “basins” is underway in the village of Sainte-Soline, in the Deux-Sevres department, to irrigate crops, which opponents claim distorts access to water amid drought conditions.

Around 1,500 police were deployed, according to the prefect of the Deux-Sevres department Emmanuelle Dubee.

Dubee said Friday she had wanted to limit possible “acts of violence,” referring to the clashes between demonstrators and security forces that marred a previous rally in March. 

The Sainte-Soline water reserve is the second of 16 such installations, part of a project developed by a group of 400 farmers organized in a water cooperative to significantly reduce water usage in the summer.

The open-air craters, covered with a plastic tarpaulin, are filled by pumping water from surface groundwater in winter and can store up to 650,000 square meters of water. 

This water is used for irrigation in summer, when rainfall is scarcer. 

Opponents claim the “mega-basins” are wrongly reserved for large export-oriented grain farms and deprive the community of access to essential resources.
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Fishing regulators and the seafood industry are grappling with the possibility that some once-profitable species that have declined with climate change might not come back.

Several marketable species harvested by U.S. fishermen are the subject of quota cuts, seasonal closures and other restrictions as populations have fallen and waters have warmed. In some instances, such as the groundfishing industry for species like flounder in the Northeast, the changing environment has made it harder for fish to recover from years of overfishing that already taxed the population.

Officials in Alaska have canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest and winter snow crab harvest, dealing a blow to the Bering Sea crab industry that is sometimes worth more than $200 million a year, as populations have declined in the face of warming waters. The Atlantic cod fishery, once the lifeblood industry of New England, is now essentially shuttered. But even with depleted populations imperiled by climate change, it’s rare for regulators to completely shut down a fishery, as they’re considering doing for New England shrimp.

The Northern shrimp, once a seafood delicacy, has been subject to a fishing moratorium since 2014. Scientists believe warming waters are wiping out their populations and they won’t be coming back. So the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is now considering making that moratorium permanent, essentially ending the centuries-old harvest of the shrimp.

It’s a stark siren for several species caught by U.S. fishermen that regulators say are on the brink. Others include softshell clams, winter flounder, Alaskan snow crabs and Chinook salmon.

Exactly how many fisheries are threatened principally by warming waters is difficult to say, but additional cutbacks and closures are likely in the future as climate change intensifies, said Malin Pinsky, director of the graduate program in ecology and evolution at Rutgers University.

“This pattern of climate change and how it ripples throughout communities and coastal economies is something we need to get used to,” Pinsky said. “Many years are pushing us outside of what we have experienced historically, and we are going to continue to observe these further novel conditions as years go by.”

While it’s unclear whether climate change has ever been the dominant factor in permanently shutting down a U.S. fishery, global warming is a key reason several once-robust fisheries are in increasingly poor shape and subject to more aggressive regulation in recent years. Warming temperatures introduce new predators, cause species to shift their center of population northward, or make it harder for them to grow to maturity, scientists said.

In the case of the Northern shrimp, scientists and regulators said at a meeting in August that the population has not rebounded after nearly a decade of no commercial fishing. Regulators will revisit the possibility of a permanent moratorium this winter, said Dustin Colson Leaning, a fishery management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States commission. Another approach could be for the commission to relinquish control of the fishery, he said.

The shrimp prefer cold temperatures, yet the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. Scientists say warming waters have also moved new predators into the gulf.

But in Maine, where the cold-water shrimp fishery is based, fishermen have tried to make the case that abundance of the shrimp is cyclical and any move to shutter the fishery for good is premature.

“I want to look into the future of this. It’s not unprecedented to have a loss of shrimp. We went through it in the ’50s, we went through it in the ’70s, we had a tough time in the ’90s,” said Vincent Balzano, a shrimp fisherman from Portland. “They came back.”

Another jeopardized species is winter flounder, once highly sought by southern New England fishermen. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has described the fish as “significantly below target population levels” on Georges Bank, a key fishing ground. Scientists with University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management wrote that the fish have struggled to reach maturity “due to increased predation related to warming winters” in a report last year.

On the West Coast, Chinook salmon face an extinction risk due to climate change, NOAA has reported. Drought has worsened the fish’s prospects in California, at the southern end of its range, scientists have said.

Fishermen on the East Coast, from Virginia to Maine, have dug softshell clams from tidal mud for centuries, and they’re a staple of seafood restaurants. They’re used for chowder and fried clam dishes and are sometimes called “steamers.”

But the clam harvest fell from about 3.5 million pounds (1.6 million kilograms) in 2010 to 2.1 million pounds (950,000 kilograms) in 2020 as the industry has contended with an aging workforce and increasing competition from predators such as crabs and worms. Scientists have linked the growing predator threat to warming waters.

The 2020 haul in Maine, which harvests the most clams, was the smallest in more than 90 years. And the 2021 catch still lagged behind typical hauls from the 2000s, which were consistently close to 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms) or more.

Predicting what the clam harvest will look like in 2022 is difficult, but the industry remains threatened by the growing presence of invasive green crabs, said Brian Beal a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias. The crabs, which eat clams, are native to Europe and arrived in the U.S. about 200 years ago and have grown in population as waters have warmed.

“There seem to have been, relative to 2020, a ton more green crabs that settled,” Beal said. “That’s not a good omen.”

One challenge of managing fisheries that are declining due to warming waters is that regulators rely on historical data to set quotas and other regulations, said Lisa Kerr, a senior research scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. Scientists and regulators are learning that some fish stocks just aren’t capable of returning to the productivity level of 40 years ago, she said.

Back then, U.S. fishermen typically caught more than 100 million pounds (45.4 million kilograms) of Atlantic cod per year. Now, they usually catch less than 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms), as overfishing and environmental changes have prevented the population from returning to historical levels.

The future of managing species that are in such bad shape might require accepting the possibility that fully rebuilding them is impossible, Kerr said.

“It’s really a resetting of the expectations,” she said. “We’re starting to see targets that are more in line, but under a lower overall target.”
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Marine archaeologists in Sweden say they have found the sister vessel of a famed 17th century warship that sank on its maiden voyage and is now on display in a popular Stockholm museum.

The wreck of the royal warship Vasa was raised in 1961, remarkably well preserved, after more than 300 years underwater in the Stockholm harbor. Visitors can admire its intricate wooden carvings at the Vasa Museum, one of Stockholm’s top tourist attractions.

Its sister warship, Applet (Apple), was built around the same time as the Vasa on the orders of Swedish King Gustav II Adolf.

Unlike the Vasa, which keeled over and sank just minutes after leaving port in 1628, the sister ship was launched without incident the following year and remained in active service for three decades. It was sunk in 1659 to become part of an underwater barrier mean to protect the Swedish capital from enemy fleets.

The exact location of the wreck was lost over time but marine archaeologists working for Vrak — the Museum of Wrecks in Stockholm — say they found a large shipwreck in December 2021 near the island of Vaxholm, just east of the capital.

“Our pulses spiked when we saw how similar the wreck was to Vasa,” said Jim Hansson, one of the archaeologists. “Both the construction and the powerful dimensions seemed very familiar.”

Experts were able to confirm that it was the long-lost Applet by analyzing its technical details, wood samples and archival data, the museum said in a statement on Monday.

Parts of the ship’s sides had collapsed onto the seabed but the hull was otherwise preserved up to a lower gun deck. The fallen sides had gun ports on two different levels, which was seen as evidence of a warship with two gun decks.

A second, more thorough dive was made in the spring of 2022, and details were found that had so far only been seen in Vasa. Several samples were taken and analyses made, and it emerged that the oak for the ship’s timber was felled in 1627 in the same place as Vasa’s timber just a few years earlier.

Experts say the Vasa sunk because it lacked the ballast to counterweigh its heavy guns. Applet was built broader than Vasa and with a slightly different hull shape. Still, ships that size were difficult to maneuver and Applet probably remained idle for most of its service, though it sailed toward Germany with more than 1,000 people on board during the Thirty Years’ War, the Vrak museum said.

No decision has been taken on whether to raise the ship, which would be a costly and complicated endeavor.
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Heat waves, intensified by climate change, have cost the global economy trillions of dollars in the past 30 years, a study published Friday found, with poor countries paying the steepest price.

And those lopsided economic effects contribute to widening inequalities around the world, according to the research. 

“The cost of extreme heat from climate change so far has been disproportionately borne by the countries and regions least culpable for global warming,” Dartmouth College professor Justin Mankin, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Science Advances, told AFP. “And that’s an insane tragedy.”

“Climate change is playing out on a landscape of economic inequality, and it is acting to amplify that inequality,” he said.

Periods of extreme heat cost the global economy about $16 trillion between 1992 and 2013, the study calculated. 

But while the richest countries have lost about 1.5% of their annual per capita GDPs dealing with heat waves, poorer countries have lost about 6.7% of their annual per capita GDPs. 

The reason for that disparity is simple: poor countries are often situated closer to the tropics, where temperatures are warmer anyway. During heat waves, they become even hotter.

The study comes just days ahead of the start of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, where the question of compensation for countries that are disproportionately vulnerable to but least responsible for climate change is expected to be one of the key topics. 

The costs of heat waves come from several factors: effects on agriculture, strains on health systems, less productive workforces and physical damage to infrastructure, such as melting roads. 

Study researchers examined five days of weather considered extreme for a specific region each year. 

“The general idea is to use variation in extreme heat, which is effectively randomly assigned to all these economic regions and see the extent to which that accounts for variation in economic growth” in a given region, Mankin explained. 

“Then the second part is to say, ‘OK, how has human-caused warming influenced extreme heat?'” he added.

Despite these calculations, the study results almost certainly underestimate the true cost of extreme heat, according to the paper — only studying five days per year does not reflect the increased frequency of such heat events, and not all potential costs were included. 

Previous studies on the subject had focused on the costs of heat to specific sectors, though scientists say it is important to look at the price tag of climate change wholistically. 

“You want to know what those costs are, so that you have a frame of reference against which to compare the cost of action,” Mankin said, such as establishing cooling centers or installing air conditioners, versus “the cost of inaction.”

“The dividends economically of responding to the five hottest days of the year could be quite great,” he said.

But according to Mankin, the most important response is to reduce carbon emissions to slow global warming at the source. 

“We need to adapt to the climate we have now, and we also need to deeply invest in mitigation,” he said.
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YouTube announced Thursday it wants to help people make informed health care decisions by allowing more medical sources to share videos on its platform.  

“At YouTube, we’re working to make it easier for people to find authoritative information to help answer their questions, and we’re putting health professionals at the core of our efforts to connect people with helpful content,” the company said on its website. 

Doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals can now apply to have their video channels certified to participate in You Tube’s health features, something that, until now, has only been available to educational institutions, public health departments, hospitals and government entities.

“The reality is that the majority of healthcare decisions are made outside the doctor’s office, in the everyday lives of our patients,” YouTube said.  “That’s why YouTube Health has been working on additional ways to help doctors, nurses, mental health professionals and health care information providers to bring high quality health information into the spaces that people visit throughout their day – like their favorite video-sharing app. 

“This new step will allow us to expand to include high quality information from a wider group of health care channels,” the company said.

YouTube has been criticized in the past for being home to some misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines but has since banned the misleading information.
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Tuberculosis case numbers increased from 2019 to 2021, reversing years of progress as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted access to treatment and testing, the World Health Organization said Thursday. 

“For the first time in nearly two decades, WHO is reporting an increase in the number of people falling ill with TB and the drug-resistant tuberculosis, alongside an increase in TB related deaths,” said Tereza Kasaeva, director of the U.N. health agency’s global TB program. 

A WHO report released Thursday stated that more than 10 million people got tuberculosis in 2021, a 4.5% increase from 2020. Roughly 450,000 cases involved individuals infected with the drug-resistant TB strain, a 3% increase from 2020 to 2021. Most of these cases were reported in India, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines.

The COVID-19 pandemic “continues to have a damaging impact on access to TB diagnosis and treatment,” WHO said. COVID-19 restrictions, such as lockdowns and physical distancing, resulted in fewer people being diagnosed and getting the necessary treatment. With fewer people being diagnosed and treated for TB, more patients unknowingly spread the disease to others. As a result, more than a decade of progress was lost, said Dr. Mel Spigelman, president of the nonprofit TB Alliance. 

Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that attack the lungs. The disease is mainly spread through the air and, after COVID-19, tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest infectious disease. It primarily affects adults, particularly those who are malnourished or immunocompromised, in developing countries. More than 95% of cases are in developing countries.

The downturn of the global economy during the pandemic worsened the problem, as families faced unbearable costs due to their treatment, especially in developing countries. 

Dr. Hannah Spencer, with Doctors Without Borders in South Africa, suggested lowering the prices of tuberculosis treatment to no more than $500 to help low-income patients. WHO also suggested that more countries should cover the cost of TB diagnosis and treatment. 

“If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that with solidarity, determination, innovation and the equitable use of tools, we can overcome severe health threats,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a news release Thursday. “Let’s apply those lessons to tuberculosis. It is time to put a stop to this long-time killer.” 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Hawaii officials are warning residents of the Big Island that the world’s largest active volcano, Mauna Loa, is sending signals that it may erupt.

Scientists say an eruption isn’t imminent, but they are on alert because of a recent spike in earthquakes at the volcano’s summit. Experts say it would take just a few hours for lava to reach homes closest to vents on the volcano, which last erupted in 1984.

Hawaii’s civil defense agency is holding meetings across the island to educate residents about how to prepare for a possible emergency. They recommend having a “go” bag with food, identifying a place to stay once they leave home and making a plan for reuniting with family members.

“Not to panic everybody, but they have to be aware of that you live on the slopes of Mauna Loa. There’s a potential for some kind of lava disaster,” said Talmadge Magno, the administrator for Hawaii County Civil Defense.

The volcano makes up 51% of the Hawaii Island landmass, so a large portion of the island has the potential to be affected by an eruption, Magno said.

There’s been a surge of development on the Big Island in recent decades — its population has more than doubled to 200,000 today from 92,000 in 1980 — and many newer residents weren’t around when Mauna Loa last erupted 38 years ago. All the more reason why Magno said officials are spreading the word about the science of the volcano and urging people to be prepared.

Mauna Loa, rising 13,679 feet (4,169 meters) above sea level, is the much larger neighbor to Kilauea volcano, which erupted in a residential neighborhood and destroyed 700 homes in 2018. Some of its slopes are much steeper than Kilauea’s so when it erupts, its lava can flow much faster.

During a 1950 eruption, the mountain’s lava traveled 15 miles (24 kilometers) to the ocean in less than three hours.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey, said Mauna Loa has been in a state of “heightened unrest” since the middle of last month when the number of summit earthquakes jumped from 10 to 20 per day to 40 to 50 per day.

Scientists believe more earthquakes are occurring because more magma is flowing into Mauna Loa’s summit reservoir system from the hot spot under the earth’s surface that feeds molten rock to Hawaii’s volcanoes.

The temblors have declined in frequency in recent days but could rise again.

More than 220 people attended a community meeting last weekend that county civil defense officials held in Ocean View, a neighborhood that lava could reach in hours if molten rock erupts through vents on Mauna Loa’s southwest flank.

Bob Werner, an Ocean View resident who didn’t attend the meeting, said it’s wise to be aware of a possible eruption but not to fear it. He’s not concerned that the neighborhood would be completely cut off, if lava flows across the only road connecting it to the bigger towns of Kailua-Kona and Hilo, where many people do their shopping.

The “greater concern is it will be extremely annoying to drive an extra hour or two hours to get the same stuff,” he said.

Ryan Williams, the owner of the Margarita Village bar in Hilo, said the volcanic unrest wasn’t worrying customers who are used to warnings.

There could still be a heightened sense of urgency since officials have been holding town hall meetings, urging people to prepare.

“But everything I’ve read or heard, they trying to kind of assure people that conditions have not changed,” Williams said. “There’s no imminent eruption, but just to be alert.”

Magno said his agency is talking to residents now because communities closest to vents likely wouldn’t have enough time to learn how to respond and prepare once the observatory raises its alert level to “watch,” which means an eruption is imminent.

The current alert level is “advisory” meaning the volcano is showing signs of unrest yet there’s no indication an eruption is likely or certain.

Residents in other parts of the island would have more time to react.

Lava from Mauna Loa’s northeast flank could take days or weeks to reach residential communities. That’s because the mountain’s slopes on that side are relatively gentle and because towns are farther from volcanic vents.

Frank Trusdell, research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said all of Mauna Loa’s eruptions in recorded history have started in its summit crater. About half of them stayed there, while the other half later spewed lava from vents lower down the mountain.

Lava erupting from the summit generally doesn’t travel far enough to reach residential areas.

Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843. It last erupted in 1984 when lava flowed down its eastern flank only to stop 4.5 miles (7.2 kilometers) short of Hilo, the Big Island’s most populous town.

Mauna Loa also has a history of disgorging huge volumes of lava.

In the 1950 eruption, which lasted for 23 days, Mauna Loa released 1,000 cubic meters (1,307 cubic yards) of lava per second. In contrast, Kilauea released 300 cubic meters (392 cubic yards) per second in 2018.

The earthquakes could continue for a while before any eruption: increased seismic activity lasted for a year before a 1975 eruption and a year-and-a-half before the 1984 one. Alternatively, the temblors could subside and Mauna Loa may not erupt this time.

Trusdell said residents should look at his agency’s maps and learn how quickly lava may show up in their neighborhood. He also urged people living in one of the short-notice areas to pay attention if the summit turns red.

“All you got to do is look up there and see the glow. You grab your stuff, throw it in the car and drive. Go!” he said.

They can always go home after if the lava ultimately doesn’t flow into their neighborhood, he said.
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