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DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — Undeterred by wars at home, delegations from Ukraine and the Palestinian territories are active at COP28, determined to call attention not only to the environmental threats facing their homelands but also to emphasize their places in the global community.

Ukraine, attending its second COP international conference, is using its pavilion in Dubai to highlight the extensive environmental damage caused by Russia’s invasion and propose preventive measures against ecocide on a global scale.

Ruslan Strilets, Ukraine’s minister of environmental protection and natural resources, told VOA that the delegation aims not only to showcase the environmental and climate consequences of the war, but also to unite and engage the international community in achieving justice and peace.

Ukraine is committed to fighting climate change, Strilets said.

“Despite the war, Ukraine is finalizing the development of its climate architecture and consistently fulfilling its climate commitments. At COP28, we plan to gather even more partners around our country for a greener future for Ukraine and the entire world,” he said.

The Ukraine pavilion’s exposition is organized into three key blocks. One block recounts a catastrophic explosion at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam in June, which flooded dozens of towns and villages and killed more than 50 people.

A second block illustrates Ukrainians’ efforts to swiftly rebuild what the war has destroyed, and the third block details the impact the war is having on the environment.

During a visit this week to the Ukrainian Pavilion, Moldova Energy Minister Victor Parlicov expressed his country’s endorsement of the COP28 Environmental Declaration and reiterated that Russia should be held responsible for the environmental harm resulting from the war.

Other visitors to the pavilion have included Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova and Keit Kasemets, first deputy minister of climate for Estonia.

In the Palestinian pavilion, Ahmed Abuthaher, director general of the West Bank-based Environment Quality Authority, told VOA his delegation is in Dubai “to tell people to look at us as humanitarians, and this conference is for human beings.”

“For climate change, we need to have easy access to the financial resources. We have water shortage and in some areas we have desertification,” he said, expressing hope for help from a Loss and Damage Fund announced on the first day of the conference.

A June 2022 report prepared by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that 78% of piped water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption.

According to the COP28 official webpage of their pavilion, the Palestinian leadership recognizes that collective efforts across sectors are crucial to the fulfillment of the conference’s climate commitments and ensuring a sustainable and resilient future.

Abuthaher emphasized the Palestinian commitment to participating in COP28 while calling for the global community to take meaningful action to address the issues faced by the Palestinian people.

The environmental damage inflicted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been documented in several studies, including an October 2022 report from the U.N. Environment Program finding that almost 1 million hectares (3,800 square miles) of land have experienced significant impact, with 812 specific sites facing threats.

VOA reported in January that the repercussions of the war extend as far as Indian-administered Kashmir, where ornithologists have cited its contribution to a scarcity of migratory birds.

COP28 delegate Ievgeniia Kopytsia, an associate of Oxford Net Zero at the University of Oxford in the U.K., said the war is also increasing carbon emissions that are widely blamed for rising temperatures worldwide.

“On top of the local pollution caused by the warfare,” she told VOA, a significant amount of greenhouse gas has been emitted into the atmosphere “caused by the consumption of fuel for military purposes, use of munitions, fires caused by shelling, bombing and mine-laying operations, and reconstruction of the civilian infrastructure.”

In July 2022, during a head-of-states conference in Lugano, Switzerland, the Ukrainian government unveiled the initial version of its 10-year national recovery plan, outlining proposed recovery pathways for major sectors at an estimated cost of $750 billion.

Kopytsia said participation in events such as COP28 can help turn that vision into a reality.

“Engaging with the global community in climate initiatives may foster diplomatic relations and provide opportunities for assistance in conflict resolution,” she said.

The impact of conflict on the environment must be addressed not only in Ukraine and Gaza but around the world, argued Simon Chambers, the director of ACT Alliance, a global alliance of more than 145 churches and other organizations from over 120 countries that provides humanitarian aid for poor and marginalized people.

“Climate justice is possible to be achieved, as is a just transition” to cleaner sources of energy, he said to VOA, but it will require all parts of society to come together — governments, nongovernmental organizations and businesses.

“We need to put the needs of the creation, of people and the planet ahead of profit and power,” he said. “If we all act in the face of the urgency of the climate emergency, it is possible to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and to do so in a way that is just.”
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Five countries in East and southern Africa are in the middle of outbreaks of the anthrax disease, with more than 1,100 suspected cases and 20 deaths this year, the World Health Organization said Monday. 

A total of 1,166 suspected cases had been reported in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Thirty-seven cases had been confirmed by laboratory tests, according to the WHO, which also said the five countries have seasonal outbreaks every year, but Zambia was experiencing its worst since 2011 and Malawi reported its first human case this year. Uganda had reported 13 deaths. 

Anthrax usually affects livestock like cattle, sheep and goats, as well as wild herbivores. Humans can be infected if they are exposed to the animals or contaminated animal products. Anthrax isn’t generally considered to be contagious between humans, although there have been rare cases of person-to-person transmission, WHO says. 

Anthrax is caused by spore-forming bacteria and is sometimes associated with the weaponized version used in the 2001 attacks in the United States, when five people died and 17 others fell sick after being exposed to anthrax spores in letters sent through the mail. 

Anthrax bacteria also occurs naturally in soil. 

In a separate assessment of the Zambia outbreak, which was the most concerning, WHO said that 684 suspected cases had been reported in the southern African nation as of November 20, with four deaths. Human cases of anthrax had been reported in nine out of Zambia’s 10 provinces. In one instance, 26 people were suspected of contracting the disease from eating contaminated hippopotamus meat. 

WHO said there was a high risk that the Zambian outbreak would spread to neighboring countries. 

The outbreaks in all five countries were “likely being driven by multiple factors, including climatic shocks, food insecurity, low-risk perception and exposure to the disease through handling the meat of infected animals,” the WHO said. 
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The U.N.’s climate body has published a draft of what is set to be its final agreement from the COP28 climate summit, which ends Tuesday.

Activists have condemned the draft as moving away from previously expected language, and not containing measures that would tackle the global warming that scientists blame for sea rise, increasing droughts and other trends that threaten hundreds of millions across the world. 

Specifically, activists are upset that the draft, which was written by the COP28 presidency, run by an Emirati oil company CEO, does not call for a phasing out of all fossil fuels, something that was asked for by over 100 nations.

In referring to fossil fuels, the draft says that countries must engage in the “phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.”

The COP28 presidency viewed the draft as a success, calling it a “huge step forward.”

“We have a text and we need to agree on the text,” COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber said. “The time for discussion is coming to an end and there’s no time for hesitation. The time to decide is now.”

Discussions are ongoing with the summit expected to end at 11 a.m. Tuesday. Fossil fuels are at the forefront of negotiations.

The presidency of the conference “recognizes that for this to be viewed as a success, we need to find some agreement on fossil fuels,” said Steven Guilbeault, Canadian environment minister and one of eight “super-negotiators.”

“I think if we can’t do that, people will see this as a failure, even though we’ve agreed on lots of other good things,” Guilbeault said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on delegates at COP28 to go into “overdrive,” to ensure that a deal gets done before the conclusion of the event.

“We can’t keep kicking the can down the road. We are out of road – and almost out of time,” Guterres said. 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended Britain’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday, telling an official inquiry he did not recognize testimony describing a dysfunctional government and saying his hospitality scheme was supported at the time.  

The inquiry is examining Britain’s response to the pandemic which killed more than 230,000 people in the country. It has heard that the government of then-prime minister Boris Johnson was gripped by infighting and incompetence, and unable to make a decision.  

Sunak was a relatively unknown politician when he was promoted to finance minister on the eve of the pandemic, appearing to be sure-footed as he set out hundreds of billions of pounds of support to keep companies and livelihoods afloat. 

He has come under fire during the inquiry from other witnesses over his “Eat out to help out” subsidized meal scheme, which encouraged people to visit restaurants and pubs in August 2020.  

Some scientists have questioned whether Sunak’s policy may have contributed to a wave of infections, but Sunak said scientists and other ministers did not raise any objections during meetings in the month leading up to the scheme. 

He said that “Eat out to help out” took place within guidelines for the safe reopening of hospitality which had happened in July and that was why the policy went ahead.  

“My primary concern was protecting millions of jobs of particularly vulnerable people who worked in this industry (hospitality),” Sunak told the inquiry.  

The inquiry has also heard testimony from scientists and officials who questioned whether Sunak prioritized the economy over public health, as economic output contracted by 10% in 2020.  

He told the inquiry on Monday that he wanted to say how “deeply sorry” he was to those who had lost loved ones, and that he was there in the spirit of wanting to learn how the government could do better in any future pandemic.  

But he echoed Johnson in saying the fact that “debates raged” was not necessarily a bad thing.  

“It’s right that there was vigorous debate because these were incredibly consequential decisions for tens of millions of people in all spheres, whether it was health, whether it’s education, whether it was economic, whether it was social, whether it was a long-term impact.  

“These were incredibly big decisions, the likes of which no prime minister has taken in decades, if ever,” he said.  

Sunak became prime minister in October 2022 after Johnson and his successor Liz Truss were forced out of office.  
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Renowned Chinese doctor and activist Gao Yaojie who exposed the AIDS virus epidemic in rural China in the 1990s, has died at the age of 95 at her home in the United States. Gao’s outspokenness about the virus outbreak embarrassed the Chinese government and drove her to live in self-exile for over a decade in Manhattan, New York.

Gao became China’s most well-known AIDS activist after speaking out against blood-selling schemes that infected thousands with HIV. Her contributions were ultimately acknowledged to a certain extent by the Chinese government, which was forced to grapple with the AIDS crisis well into the 2000s. She moved to the U.S. in 2009, where she began holding talks and writing books about her experiences.

Renowned Chinese doctor and activist Gao Yaojie who exposed the AIDS virus epidemic in rural China in the 1990s died Sunday at the age of 95 at her home in the United States.

Gao’s outspokenness about the virus outbreak — which some gauged to have infected tens of thousands — embarrassed the Chinese government and drove her to live in self-exile for over a decade in Manhattan, New York.

Columbia University professor Andrew J. Nathan, an expert in Chinese politics who had Gao’s legal power of attorney and managed some of her affairs, confirmed her death.

Gao became China’s most well-known AIDS activist after speaking out against blood-selling schemes that infected thousands with HIV, mainly in her home province of Henan in central China. Her contributions were ultimately acknowledged to a certain extent by the Chinese government, which was forced to grapple with the AIDS crisis well into the 2000s.

Gao’s work received recognition from international organizations and officials. She moved to the U.S. in 2009, where she began holding talks and writing books about her experiences.

She told the Associated Press in a previous interview that she withstood government pressure and persisted in her work because “everyone has the responsibility to help their own people. As a doctor, that’s my job. So it’s worth it.”

She said she expected Chinese officials to “face the reality and deal with the real issues — not cover it up.”

A roving gynecologist who used to spend days on the road treating patients in remote villages, Gao met her first HIV patient in 1996 — a woman who had been infected from a transfusion during an operation. Local blood bank operators would often use dirty needles, and after extracting valuable plasma from farmers, would pool the leftover blood for future transfusions — a disastrous method almost guaranteed to spread viruses such as HIV.

At the time, Gao investigated the crisis by traveling to people’s homes. She would sometimes encounter devastating situations where parents were dying from AIDS and children were being left behind. Some estimates put the number of HIV infections from that period at tens of thousands, though no national survey was undertaken as the government was trying to conceal the crisis.

Gao delivered food, clothes and medicine to ailing villagers. She spoke out about the AIDS epidemic, capturing the attention of local media and angering local governments, which often backed the reckless blood banks. Officials repeatedly tried to prevent her from traveling abroad, where she was being celebrated for her work.

In 2001, the government refused to issue her a passport to go to the U.S. to accept an award from a United Nations group. In 2007, Henan officials kept her under house arrest for about 20 days to prevent her from traveling to Beijing to get a U.S. visa to receive another award. They were eventually overruled by the central government, which allowed her to leave China. Once in Washington, D.C., Gao thanked then-President Hu Jintao for allowing her to travel.

Gao was born on Dec. 19, 1927, in the eastern Shandong province. She grew up during a tumultuous time in China’s history, which included a Japanese invasion and a civil war that brought the Communist Party to power under Mao Zedong.

Her family moved to Henan, where she studied medicine at a local university. During the Cultural Revolution, a turbulent decade beginning in 1966, she endured beatings from Maoist “red guards” due to her family’s previous “landlord” status. She remained critical of Mao into her later years.

After news of her death circulated on Monday, Chinese social media was flooded with messages of condolences, while some criticized her move to the U.S. and her stance against the Chinese government.

“We can say Dr Gao Yaojie has dedicated everything to AIDS patients,” wrote a commenter on the social media platform Weibo, “and people with a conscience will always remember her.”
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After seven weeks held hostage in the tunnels of Gaza, they are finally free to laugh and chat and play. But some of the children who have come back from captivity are still reluctant to raise their voices above a whisper.

In theory, they can eat what they want, sleep as much as they choose and set aside their fears. In practice, some have had to be convinced there’s no longer a need to save a cherished bit of food in case there is none later.

At last, the 86 Israelis released during a short-lived truce between their government and Hamas are home. But the October 7 terror attack by Hamas on roughly 20 towns and villages left many of the children among them without permanent homes to go back to. Some of their parents are dead and others are still held hostage, foreshadowing the difficulty of the days ahead.

And so, step by step, these children, the mothers and grandmothers who were held alongside them, and their families are testing the ground for a path to recovery. No one, including the physicians and psychologists who have been treating them, is sure how to get there or how long it might take.

“It’s not easy in any way. I mean, they’re back. They’re free. But you can definitely see what they went through,” said Yuval Haran, whose family is celebrating the reunion with his two nieces, their mother and grandmother, while yearning for the return of the girls’ father, who remains a captive.

“We’re trying to give them love, to give them hugs, to give them control back of their life,” said Haran, visibly exhausted by the stress of the past two months, but every bit as busy now as he rushes to fix bicycles and set up bank accounts for those who have returned. “I think that’s the most important thing, to give them the sense that they can decide now.”

It was clear as soon as the youngest were helped from helicopters that captivity had been brutal.

“They looked like shadows of children,” said Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev of Schneider Children’s Medical Center in suburban Tel Aviv, who helped treat more than two dozen former captives, most of them youngsters.

Some had not been allowed to bathe during the entirety of their captivity. Many had lost up to 15% of their total weight, but they were reluctant to eat the food they were served.

Asked why, the answer came in whispers: “Because we have to keep it for later.”

One 13-year-old girl recounted how she’d spent the entirety of captivity believing that her family had abandoned her, a message reinforced by her kidnappers, Bron-Harlev said.

“They told me that nobody cares for you anymore. Nobody’s looking for you. Nobody wants you back. You can hear the bombs all around. All they want to do is kill you and us together,” the girl told her doctors.

After enduring such an experience, “I don’t think it’s something that will leave you,” said Dr. Yael Mozer-Glassberg, who treated 19 of the children released. “It’s part of your life story from now on.”

“Be very, very quiet”

In the days since the hostages were freed, nearly all have been released from hospitals and rejoined their families, including some welcomed back by thousands of well-wishers.

Doctors and others charged with treating the former hostages spent weeks preparing for their return. But the reality of caring for so many who endured such extremes has stunned physicians, starting with the reluctance of many children to speak.

“Most of them talk about needing to be very quiet. At all times. Not to stand up. Not to talk. Of course, not to cry. Not to laugh. Just to be very, very quiet,” said Bron-Harlev, the physician.

“What these children have gone through is simply unimaginable.”

Despite that, at times now some appear to be thriving.

Noam Avigdori, 12, who was released with her mother, has spent the past week trading jokes with her father and meeting with friends, and has even ventured out to a store.

“When I say, ‘Noam, do this, go do that,’ she says, ‘Dad, you know what happened to me.’ And she knows that she can squeeze that lemon and … she’s enjoying it,” her father, Hen Avigdori, said in an interview.

But there are also nights when his daughter wakes up screaming, Avigdori said this week at a separate news conference.

Nearly all those who have been freed have said little publicly about the conditions of their captivity. Their families say officials have told them not to disclose details of their individual treatment, for fear of putting those still being held in further jeopardy.

But interviews with their families, doctors and mental health professionals, as well as statements released by officials and others, make clear that while all the hostages suffered, their experiences in captivity varied significantly.

Different experiences

Some were isolated from their fellow hostages. Others, like Noam Avigdori and her mother, Sharon, were held together with relatives, making it possible for the 12-year-old to act as something like an older sibling to the young cousins who were held with her.

“Everyone who was with a family member or with friends was in much better condition” when they were released, said Dani Lotan, a clinical psychologist at Scheider who treated some of the former hostages.

That varies, though, even within families.

In the weeks they were imprisoned, Danielle Aloni and her 5-year-old daughter, Emilia, established a close friendship with one of the imprisoned Thai farm workers, Nutthawaree Munkan. Last week, after all were released, the girl sang to a delighted Munkan when they were reunited in a video call, reciting the numbers she learned in Thai during captivity.

But Emilia’s cousins, 3-year-old twins, are having a difficult time since their return.

In captivity, Sharon Aloni was held with her husband and one of the twin girls in a small room, together with eight or so others. The couple spent “10 agonizing days” believing their other daughter had been killed, when she was snatched away shortly after they were taken into Gaza, Aloni’s brother Moran Aloni told reporters.

That lasted until the day Sharon insisted to her husband that she could hear the cries of their missing daughter, Emma. Minutes later, a woman appeared without explanation to bring them the child, a joyous reunion that allowed mother and daughters to stay together throughout the remainder of their captivity. But a couple of days before they were released, the girls’ father was taken away and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Now free, the girls wake up crying in the middle of the night, Moran Aloni said. Emma won’t allow anyone to leave her side. They have gotten used to speaking up again, but their mother still whispers.

Varying amounts of food

Many former hostages have recounted being given meager amounts of food. But the rations seemed to vary from group to group with little explanation, said Mozer-Glassberg, a senior physician at Schneider.

One family told doctors they each were given a biscuit with tea at 10 every morning and, from time to time, a single dried date. At 5 p.m., they were served rice. It wasn’t enough, but day after day of worry left their appetites withered.

One 15-year-old girl recounted not eating for days so she could give her share of the food to her 8-year-old sister.

Some of the 23 Thai hostages released recently told caregivers they were each given roughly a half liter of water and then had to make it last for three days. Sometimes, they said, it was saltwater.

One group of former captives reported being allowed to bathe three times over seven weeks with buckets of cold water. But one child never bathed at all, doctors say.

“Many of them talk about feeling very hungry. Very, very hungry. Many of them talk about feeling very dirty, not being able to clean, not being able to go to the bathroom,” Bron-Harlev said.

Recuperation will be difficult

The process of recuperation from such prolonged trauma will be slow and piecemeal, doctors say. And while the adults may be better able to process what they have experienced, their recovery poses its own challenges.

Many, particularly the older and infirm, remain weak after losing 9 kilos (20 pounds) or more because of the meager rations provided by their captors. When they speak, their families hear notes of resilience, but also of fragility.

Margalit Moses, a 78-year-old cancer survivor who has long struggled with multiple health problems, is back on the medications she was deprived of as a captive. But she remains too weak to walk more than a few steps.

“I think two months was up to the very, very last limit of her body hanging in there,” her niece Efrat Machikawa said.

In the days since Moses returned, she has been savoring pleasures that once seemed trivial, such as peeling a fresh orange and lingering over crossword puzzles, her niece said.

Yaffa Adar, 85, a Holocaust survivor who was seized from her kibbutz and hustled into Gaza on golf cart, talks at length with her family about her time in captivity. But the days since have become more difficult as she grapples with what happened to her and the community she cherished, granddaughter Adva Adar said.

“She’s incredibly mentally strong, but you can see how the hell got into her soul,” the younger Adar said. “It’s in the way she looks at the world, the way she looks at people.”

In the hospitals, doctors, social workers and psychologists were careful about how they talked with the former hostages, not wanting to magnify their trauma. But as they settle in, both children and adults are confronting the toll of the October attack that captivity kept hidden from them.

Throughout the seven weeks she was held, Shoshan Haran, her daughters and grandchildren had to wonder what had happened to her husband.

“We had to tell them my father was murdered,” Yuval Haran said.

In the days ahead, he and others acknowledge, they will face questions about how to move forward without those who were killed or remain missing. But for most, it is far too soon.
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Majestic cedar trees towered over dozens of Lebanese Christians gathered outside a small mid-19th century chapel hidden in a mountain forest to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, the miracle in which Jesus Christ, on a mountaintop, shined with light before his disciples.

The sunset’s yellow light coming through the cedar branches bathed the leader of Lebanon’s Maronite Church, Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, as he stood at a wooden podium and delivered a sermon. Then the gathering sang hymns in Arabic and the Aramaic language.

For Lebanon’s Christians, the cedars are sacred, these tough evergreen trees that survive the mountain’s harsh snowy winters. They point out with pride that Lebanon’s cedars are mentioned 103 times in the Bible. The trees are a symbol of Lebanon, pictured at the center of the national flag.

The iconic trees in the country’s north are far from the clashes between Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops along the Lebanon-Israel border in recent weeks against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war.

The long-term survival of the cedar forests is in doubt for another reason, as rising temperatures due to climate change threaten to wipe out biodiversity and scar one of the country’s most iconic heritage sites for its Christians.

The lush Cedars of God Forest, some 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) above sea level near the northern town of Bcharre, is part of a landscape cherished by Christians. The preserve overlooks the Kadisha Valley — Aramaic for “sacred” — where many Christians took refuge from persecution over Lebanon’s tumultuous history. One of the world’s largest collections of monasteries remains hidden among the thick trees, caves and rocky outcroppings along the deep, 35-kilometer (22-mile) valley.

The United Nations’ culture agency UNESCO in 1998 listed both the cedar forest and the valley as World Heritage Sites. They’ve become popular destinations for hikers and environmentalists from around the world. A growing number of Lebanese of all faiths visit as well, seeking fresh air away from the cities.

“People from all religions visit here, not just Christians … even Muslims and atheists,” said Hani Tawk, a Maronite Christian priest, as he showed a crowd of tourists around the Saint Elisha Monastery. “But we as Christians, this reminds us of all the saints who lived here, and we come to experience being in this sacred dimension.”

Climate change and mismanagement

Environmentalists and residents say the effects of climate change, exacerbated by government mismanagement, pose a threat to the ecosystem of the valley and the cedar forest.

“Thirty or 40 years from now, it’s quite possible to see the Kadisha Valley’s biodiversity, which is one of the richest worldwide, become much poorer,” said Charbel Tawk, an environmental engineer and activist in Bcharre — unrelated to Hani Tawk.

Lebanon for years has felt the heat of climate change, with farmers decrying lack of rain and forest fires wreaking havoc on pine forests north of the country, similar to blazes that scorched forests in neighboring Syria and nearby Greece. Residents across much of the country, struggling with rampant electricity cuts, could barely handle the summer’s soaring heat.

Temperatures have been above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in Bcharre, not uncommon along Lebanon’s coastal cities but unusual for the mountainous northern town.

Nuns in the medieval Qannoubin Monastery, perched on the side of a hill in the Kadisha Valley, fanned themselves and drank water in the shade of the monastery’s courtyard. They reminisced about when they could sleep comfortably on summer nights without needing much electricity.

Impact already seen

Already, there are worrying signs of the impact on the cedars and Kadisha.

Warmer temperatures have brought larger colonies of aphids, which feed on the bark of cedar trees and leave a secretion that can cause mold, Charbel Tawk said. Bees normally remove the secretion, but they have become less active. Aphids and other pests also last longer in the season and reach higher altitudes because of warmer weather.

Such pests threaten to stunt or damage cedar growth.

Tawk worries that if temperatures continue to change like this, cedars at lower altitudes might not be able to survive. Fires are becoming more of a potential danger.

Cedar trees usually grow at an altitude from 700 up to 1,800 meters (about 1 mile) above sea level. Tawk’s organization has planted some 200,000 cedars over the years at higher altitudes and in areas where they were not present. Some 180,000 survived.

“Is it climate change or whatever it is happening in nature that these cedars are able to survive at 2,100 to 2,400 meters?” Tawk asked, while checking on a grove of cedars on a remote hilltop.

Mitigating solutions

Local priests and environmental activists have urged Lebanon’s government to work with universities to do a wide-ranging study on temperature changes and the impact on biodiversity.

But Lebanon has been in the throes of a crippling economic crisis for years. State coffers are dried up, and many of the country’s top experts are rapidly seeking work opportunities abroad.

“There is nothing today called the state. … The relevant ministries, even with the best intentions, don’t have the financial capabilities anymore,” Bcharre Mayor Freddy Keyrouz said. He and the mayors of nearby towns have asked residents to help with conservation initiatives and Lebanese diaspora abroad to help with funding.

The Maronite Church has strict rules to protect the Cedars of God Forest, including keeping development out of it. Kiosks, tourist shops and a large parking lot have been set far away from the forest.

“We don’t allow anything that is combustible to be brought into the sacred forest,” said Charbel Makhlouf, a priest at Bcharre’s Saint Saba Cathedral.

The Friends of the Cedar Forest Committee, to which Tawk belongs, has been looking after the cedar trees for almost three decades, with the church’s support. It has installed sensors on cedar trees to measure temperature, wind and humidity, watching for worsening conditions that could risk forest fires.

Trouble beyond the forest

Below the forest, in the Kadisha Valley, Tawk points to other concerns.

In particular, the spread of cypress trees threatens to crowd out other species, “breaking this equilibrium that we had in the valley,” he said.

“We’ve seen them increase and tower over other species, whether it’s taking sunlight, wind or expanding their roots,” he said. “It will impact other plants, birds, insects and all the reptile species down there.”

Steps to protect the valley have actually hurt its biodiversity by removing human practices that had been beneficial, Tawk said.

In the past, herders grazing their goats and other livestock in the valley helped prevent the spread of invasive species. Their grazing also reduced fire hazards, as did local families collecting deadwood to burn in the winter.

But residents left the valley when it became a heritage site and the Lebanese government implemented strict regulations. Few live there now other than a handful of priests and nuns.

“Trees have overtaken places where people lived and farmed,” Tawk said. “Now a fire could move from one end of the valley to the other.”

Sitting in a cave near the Qannoubine Monastery, Father Hani Tawk listened to the variety of birds chirping in the valley. He said he believes in the community’s faith and awareness of nature, engrained since their ancestors took refuge here.

“When you violate that tree, you’re intruding on a long history, and possibly the future of your children,” he said.
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One of the biggest and brightest stars in the night sky will momentarily vanish as an asteroid passes in front of it to produce a one-of-a-kind eclipse.

The rare and fleeting spectacle, late Monday into early Tuesday, should be visible to millions of people along a narrow path stretching from central Asia’s Tajikistan and Armenia, across Turkey, Greece, Italy and Spain, to Miami and the Florida Keys and finally, to parts of Mexico.

The star is Betelgeuse, a red supergiant in the constellation Orion. The asteroid is Leona, a slowly rotating, oblong space rock in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Astronomers hope to learn more about Betelgeuse and Leona through the eclipse, which is expected to last no more than 15 seconds. By observing an eclipse of a much dimmer star by Leona in September, a Spanish-led team recently estimated the asteroid to be about 55 kilometers wide and 80 kilometers long.

There are lingering uncertainties over those predictions as well as the size of the star and its expansive atmosphere. It’s unclear if the asteroid will obscure the entire star, producing a total eclipse. Rather, the result could be a “ring of fire” eclipse with a miniscule blazing border around the star. If it’s a total eclipse, astronomers aren’t sure how many seconds the star will disappear completely, perhaps up to 10 seconds.

“Which scenario we will see is uncertain, making the event even more intriguing,” said astronomer Gianluca Masa, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project, which will provide a live webcast from Italy.

An estimated 700 light-years away, Betelgeuse is visible with the naked eye. Binoculars and small telescopes will enhance the view. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.

Betelgeuse is thousands of times brighter than our sun and some 700 times bigger. It’s so huge that if it replaced our sun, it would stretch beyond Jupiter, according to NASA.

At just 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is considerably younger than the 4.6 billion-year-old sun. Scientists expect Betelgeuse to be short-lived, given its mass and the speed at which it’s burning through its material.

After countless centuries of varying brightness, Betelgeuse dimmed dramatically in 2019 when a huge bunch of surface material was ejected into space. The resulting dust cloud temporarily blocked the starlight, NASA said, and within a half year, Betelgeuse was as bright as before.

Scientists expect Betelgeuse to go supernova in a violent explosion within 100,000 years.
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European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of technology used in popular generative AI services such as ChatGPT that have promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity. 

Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc’s 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points, including generative AI and police use of facial recognition surveillance, to sign a tentative political agreement for the Artificial Intelligence Act. 

“Deal!” tweeted European Commissioner Thierry Breton, just before midnight. “The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI.” 

The result came after marathon closed-door talks this week, with the initial session lasting 22 hours before a second round kicked off Friday morning. 

Officials were under the gun to secure a political victory for the flagship legislation but were expected to leave the door open to further talks to work out the fine print, likely to bring more backroom lobbying. 

Out front

The EU took an early lead in the global race to draw up AI guardrails when it unveiled the first draft of its rulebook in 2021. The recent boom in generative AI, however, sent European officials scrambling to update a proposal poised to serve as a blueprint for the world. 

The European Parliament will still need to vote on it early next year, but with the deal done, that’s a formality, Brando Benifei, an Italian lawmaker co-leading the body’s negotiating efforts, told The Associated Press late Friday. 

“It’s very, very good,” he said by text message after being asked if it included everything he wanted. “Obviously we had to accept some compromises but overall very good.”  

The eventual law wouldn’t fully take effect until 2025 at the earliest and threatens stiff financial penalties for violations of up to $38 million (35 million euros) or 7% of a company’s global turnover. 

Generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have exploded into the world’s consciousness, dazzling users with the ability to produce humanlike text, photos and songs but raising fears about the risks the rapidly developing technology poses to jobs, privacy and copyright protection, and even human life itself. 

Now, the U.S., U.K., China and global coalitions like the Group of Seven major democracies have jumped in with their own proposals to regulate AI, though they’re still catching up to Europe. 

‘A powerful example’

Strong and comprehensive regulation from the EU “can set a powerful example for many governments considering regulation,” said Anu Bradford, a Columbia Law School professor who’s an expert on EU and digital regulation. Other countries “may not copy every provision but will likely emulate many aspects of it.” 

AI companies that will have to obey the EU’s rules will also likely extend some of those obligations to markets outside the continent, she said. “After all, it is not efficient to retrain separate models for different markets,” she said. 

Others are worried that the agreement was rushed through. 

“Today’s political deal marks the beginning of important and necessary technical work on crucial details of the AI Act, which are still missing,” said Daniel Friedlaender, head of the European office of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a tech industry lobby group. 

The AI Act was originally designed to mitigate the dangers from specific AI functions based on their level of risk, from low to unacceptable. But lawmakers pushed to expand it to foundation models, the advanced systems that underpin general purpose AI services like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot. 

Foundation models looked set to be one of the biggest sticking points for Europe. However, negotiators reached a tentative compromise early in the talks, despite opposition led by France, which called instead for self-regulation to help homegrown European generative AI companies competing with big U.S. rivals, including OpenAI’s backer Microsoft. 

Also known as large language models, these systems are trained on vast troves of written works and images scraped off the internet. They give generative AI systems the ability to create something new, unlike traditional AI, which processes data and completes tasks using predetermined rules. 

Under the deal, the most advanced foundation models that pose the biggest “systemic risks” will get extra scrutiny, including requirements to disclose more information, such as how much computing power was used to train the systems. 

Elevation of threats

Researchers have warned that these powerful foundation models, built by a handful of big tech companies, could be used to supercharge online disinformation and manipulation, cyberattacks or creation of bioweapons. 

Rights groups also caution that the lack of transparency about data used to train the models poses risks to daily life because they act as basic structures for software developers building AI-powered services. 

What became the thorniest topic was AI-powered facial recognition surveillance systems, and negotiators found a compromise after intensive bargaining. 

European lawmakers wanted a full ban on public use of facial scanning and other “remote biometric identification” systems because of privacy concerns, while governments of member countries wanted exemptions so law enforcement could use them to tackle serious crimes like child sexual exploitation or terrorist attacks. 

Civil society groups were more skeptical. 

“Whatever the victories may have been in these final negotiations, the fact remains that huge flaws will remain in this final text,” said Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Access Now. Along with the law enforcement exemptions, he also cited a lack of protection for AI systems used in migration and border control, and “big gaps in the bans on the most dangerous AI systems.” 
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Thousands of tons of dead sardines have washed up on a beach in northern Japan for unknown reasons, officials said Friday.

The sardines and some mackerel washed ashore in Hakodate on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday morning, creating a silver blanket along a stretch of beach about a kilometer long.

Residents said they have never seen anything like it. Some gathered the fish to sell or eat.

The town, in a notice posted on its website, urged residents not to consume the fish.

Takashi Fujioka, a Hakodate Fisheries Research Institute researcher, said he has heard of similar phenomena before, but it was his first time to see it.

He said the fish may have been chased by larger fish, become exhausted due to a lack of oxygen while moving in a densely packed school, and were washed up by the waves.

The fish also may have suddenly entered cold waters during their migration, he said.

The decomposing fish could lower oxygen levels in the water and affect the marine environment, he said.

“We don’t know for sure under what circumstances these fish were washed up, so I do not recommend” eating them, Fujioka said.
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In a letter leaked to news organizations this week, OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais urged member nations to reject any agreement from the U.N. climate summit targeting fossil fuels rather than emissions.

In the letter dated Wednesday referencing a draft agreement on climate change action at the 28th U.N. climate conference — known as COP28 — in Dubai, the OPEC leader said, “It seems that the undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences.”

The letter goes on to say, “I … respectfully urge all esteemed OPEC Member Countries and Non-OPEC Countries participating in the CoC and their distinguished delegations in the COP 28 negotiations to proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions.”

The contents of the letter were reported Friday by multiple news organizations, including Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Bloomburg, which verified the letter’s authenticity. OPEC declined when asked to comment.

The reports come as negotiations among 197 countries on a final climate summit agreement are underway ahead of a deadline Tuesday, when the conference is scheduled to end.

Fossil fuels — oil, coal and natural gas — have been a focus of the discussions since COP28 opened last week, with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for an end to their use.

At least 80 countries have called for a COP28 deal that calls for an eventual end to fossil fuel use, as scientists urge ambitious action to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

The focus is on meeting the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement: keeping global temperature increase this century less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

At Friday’s climate summit plenary session, COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber, from OPEC member nation and summit host United Arab Emirates, said, once again, that a shift away from fossil fuels is “inevitable” and “essential.” He added, though, that any energy transition “must be orderly and responsible.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday approved a pair of gene therapies for sickle cell disease, including the first treatment based on the breakthrough CRISPR gene editing technology. 

The agency approved Lyfgenia from bluebird bio, and a separate treatment called Casgevy by partners Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. 

Both the therapies were approved for people aged 12 years and older. 

The Vertex/CRISPR gene therapy uses the breakthrough gene editing technology that won its inventors the Nobel Prize in 2020. 

Sickle cell disease is a painful, inherited blood disorder that can be debilitating and lead to premature death. It affects an estimated 100,000 people in the United States, most of whom are Black. 

In sickle cell disease, the body makes flawed, sickle-shaped hemoglobin, impairing the ability of red blood cells to properly carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. 

The sickle cells tend to stick together and can block small blood vessels, causing intense pain. It also can lead to strokes and organ failure. 

U.S.-listed shares of CRISPR therapeutics were up 1.6%, while Vertex Pharmaceuticals stock was down 1.4%. Shares of bluebird bio were halted for trading ahead of the news. 

Makers of both the therapies have pitched them as one-time treatments, but data on how long their effect lasts is limited. The only longer-term treatment for sickle cell disease is a bone marrow transplant. 

“I actually am very reticent to call them a cure. I prefer to call them a transformative therapy because patients will still have sickle cell disease on the other side of gene therapy,” said Dr Sharl Azar, medical director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Bluebird bio’s sickle cell therapy is designed to work by inserting modified genes into the body through disabled viruses to help the patient’s red blood cells produce normal hemoglobin. 

For Vertex’s therapy, patients must have stem cells harvested from their bone marrow. The cells are then sent to manufacturing facilities where they are edited using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Once the cells are incubated, they are infused back into the patient during a month-long hospital stay. 

Both gene therapies can take several months and involve high-dose chemotherapy, but this has potential risks of infertility. 

“Not everybody who undergoes chemotherapy will end up having infertility, but the majority of them will,” said Dr Azar.  

While the risk can be managed by fertility preservation methods like freezing eggs and sperm banking, this is only covered by insurance for cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy and not those receiving gene therapy, said Dr. Azar. 

He said the out-of-pocket expense on it can be as high as $40,000. 

FDA staff in documents released ahead of an October meeting of a panel of independent experts on Vertex’s therapy had also flagged concerns of unintended genomic alterations from the treatment. 

The company plans to assess potential long-term safety risks through a 15-year follow-up study after approval. 

Vertex’s CRISPR therapy is also under an FDA review for another blood disease, transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia, with a decision expected by March 30. 
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Black people make up about 38% of Mississippi’s population, but a new study shows that Black women were four times more likely to die of causes directly related to pregnancy than white women in the state in 2020.

“It is imperative that this racial inequity is not only recognized, but that concerted efforts are made at the institutional, community, and state levels to reduce these disparate outcomes,” wrote Dr. Michelle Owens and Dr. Courtney Mitchell, leaders of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee that conducted the study.

The Mississippi State Department of Health published the findings Wednesday.

The committee said 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in Mississippi between 2016 and 2020 were considered preventable, and cardiovascular disease and hypertension remain top contributors to maternal mortality.

Women need comprehensive primary care before, during and after pregnancy, but many people live in areas where health care services are scarce, Owens and Mitchell wrote.

“A substantial portion of this care is being shouldered by smaller hospitals with limited resources, many of whom are facing possible closure and limiting or discontinuing the provision of obstetrical services, further increasing the burdens borne by the individuals and their communities,” they wrote.

The Maternal Mortality Review Committee was formed in 2017, and its members include physicians, nurses, public health experts and others who work in health care.

The committee found that from 2016 to 2020, Mississippi’s pregnancy-related mortality rate was 35.2 deaths per 100,000 live births. The study did not provide a comparable five-year number for the U.S. but said the national rate was 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 and 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020.

Mississippi has long been one of the poorest states in the U.S., with some of the highest rates of obesity and heart disease.

A state health department program called Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies offers care management and home visits for pregnant women and for infants who are at risk of having health problems.

“Losing one mother is too many,” Dr. Daniel Edney, the state health officer, said in a news release about the maternal mortality study.

The committee recommended that Mississippi leaders expand Medicaid to people who work in lower-wage jobs that don’t provide private health insurance — a policy proposal that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has long opposed.

Earlier this year, Reeves signed a law allowing postpartum Medicaid coverage for a full year, up from two months.

Medicaid expansion is optional under the health care overhaul that then-President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010, and Mississippi is one of 10 states that have not taken the option. The non-expansion states have Republican governors, Republican-controlled Legislatures or both.

“Medicaid expansion should be incorporated for rural hospitals to remain open and include access to telehealth services,” the Maternal Mortality Review Committee leaders wrote. “There is a need for rural healthcare facilities to provide higher levels of critical care, recruit and retain adequate providers, and have access to life saving equipment, especially in the most vulnerable areas of the state.”

The study examined deaths that occurred during or within one year after pregnancy. It defined pregnancy-related deaths as those “initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiologic effects of pregnancy” and pregnancy-associated deaths as those “from a cause that is not related to pregnancy.”

Pregnancy-related deaths during the five years included 17 homicides and four suicides, plus 26 instances of substance abuse disorder contributing to the maternal death and 30 instances of mental health conditions other than substance abuse disorder contributing to a death.

The study also said obesity contributed to 32 maternal deaths and discrimination contributed to 22. It noted that some pregnancy-related deaths could have more than one contributing factor.

The committee recommended that health care providers develop procedures and training to address maternal patients with severe complaints for the same health concern, including training to eliminate bias or discrimination.
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Environmental watchdogs accused a Mexico-based startup Thursday of violating international trade law by selling a health supplement made from endangered totoaba fish to several countries including the U.S. and China.

Advocates told The Associated Press they also have concerns that the company, The Blue Formula, could be selling fish that is illegally caught in the wild.

The product, which the company describes as “nature’s best kept secret,” is a small sachet of powder containing collagen taken from the fish that is designed to be mixed into a drink.

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, to which Mexico and the U.S. are both signatories, any export for sale of totoaba fish is illegal, unless bred in captivity with a particular permit. As a listed protected species, commercial import is also illegal under U.S. trade law.

The environmental watchdog group Cetacean Action Treasury first cited the company in November. Then on Thursday, a coalition of environmental charities — The Center for Biological Diversity, National Resources Defense Council and Animal Welfare Institute — filed a written complaint to CITES.

The Blue Formula did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment.

The company claims on its website to operate “100%” sustainably by sourcing fish from Cygnus Ocean, a farm which has a permit to breed totoaba, and using a portion of their profits to release some farmed fish back into the wild.

However, Cygnus Ocean does not have a permit for commercial export of their farmed fish, according to the environmental groups. The farm also did not immediately respond to a request from the AP for comment.

While the ecological impact of breeding totoaba in captivity is much smaller relative to wild fishing, advocates like Alejandro Olivera, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Mexico representative, fear the company and farm could be used as a front.

“There is no good enforcement of the traceability of totoaba in Mexico,” said Olivera, “so it could be easily used to launder wild totoaba.”

Gillnet fishing for wild totoaba is illegal and one of the leading killers of critically endangered vaquita porpoise, of which recent surveys suggest less than a dozen may exist in the wild.

Gillnetting is driven by the exorbitant price for totoaba bladders in China, where they are sold as a delicacy for as much as gold. The Blue Formula’s supplement costs just under $100 for 200 grams.

In October U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over $1 million worth of totoaba bladders in Arizona, hidden in a shipment of frozen fish. Roughly as much again was seized in Hong Kong the same month, in transit from Mexico to Thailand.
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