Scientists are wondering if global warming and El Nino have an accomplice in fueling this summer’s record-shattering heat.

The European climate agency Copernicus reported that July was one-third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the old record. That’s a bump in heat that is so recent and so big, especially in the oceans and even more so in the North Atlantic, that scientists are split on whether something else could be at work.

Scientists agree that by far the biggest cause of the recent extreme warming is climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that has triggered a long upward trend in temperatures. A natural El Nino, a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, adds a smaller boost. But some researchers say another factor must be present.

“What we are seeing is more than just El Nino on top of climate change,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said.

One surprising source of added warmth could be cleaner air resulting from new shipping rules. Another possible cause is 165 million tons (150 million metric tons) of water spewed into the atmosphere by a volcano. Both ideas are under investigation.

The cleaner air possibility

Florida State University climate scientist Michael Diamond says shipping is “probably the prime suspect.”

Maritime shipping has for decades used dirty fuel that gives off particles that reflect sunlight in a process that actually cools the climate and masks some of global warming.

In 2020, international shipping rules took effect that cut as much as 80% of those cooling particles, which was a “kind of shock to the system,” said atmospheric scientist Tianle Yuan of NASA and the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

The sulfur pollution used to interact with low clouds, making them brighter and more reflective, but that’s not happening as much now, Yuan said. He tracked changes in clouds that were associated with shipping routes in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, both hot spots this summer.

In those spots, and to a lesser extent globally, Yuan’s studies show a possible warming from the loss of sulfur pollution. And the trend is in places where it really can’t be explained as easily by El Nino, he said.

“There was a cooling effect that was persistent year after year, and suddenly you remove that,” Yuan said.

Diamond calculates a warming of about 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) by midcentury from shipping regulations. The level of warming could be five to 10 times stronger in high shipping areas such as the North Atlantic.

A separate analysis by climate scientists Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth and Piers Forster of the University of Leeds projected half of Diamond’s estimate.  

Did the volcano do it?

In January 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai undersea volcano in the South Pacific blew, sending more than 165 million tons of water, which is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas as vapor, according to University of Colorado climate researcher Margot Clyne, who coordinates international computer simulations for climate impacts of the eruption.

The volcano also blasted 550,000 tons (500,000 metric tons) of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere.

The amount of water “is so absolutely crazy, absolutely ginormous,” said Holger Vomel, a stratospheric water vapor scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who published a study on the potential climate effects of the eruption.

Volmer said the water vapor went too high in the atmosphere to have a noticeable effect yet, but that effects could emerge later.

A couple of studies use computer models to show a warming effect from all that water vapor. One study, which has not yet undergone the scientific gold standard of peer review, reported this week that the warming could range from as much as 1.5° C (2.7° F) of added warming in some places to 1° C (1.8° F) of cooling elsewhere. 

But NASA atmospheric scientist Paul Newman and former NASA atmospheric scientist Mark Schoeberl said those climate models are missing a key ingredient: the cooling effect of the sulfur.

Normally huge volcanic eruptions, like 1991’s Mount Pinatubo, can cool Earth temporarily with sulfur and other particles reflecting sunlight. However, Hunga Tonga spouted an unusually high amount of water and low amount of cooling sulfur.

The studies that showed warming from Hunga Tonga didn’t incorporate sulfur cooling, which is hard to do, Schoeberl and Newman said. Schoeberl, now chief scientist at Science and Technology Corp. of Maryland, published a study that calculated a slight overall cooling — 0.04° C (0.07°F).

Just because different computer simulations conflict with each other “that doesn’t mean science is wrong,” University of Colorado’s Clyne said. “It just means that we haven’t reached a consensus yet. We’re still just figuring it out.”

Lesser suspects

Lesser suspects in the search include a dearth of African dust, which cools like sulfur pollution, as well as changes in the jet stream and a slowdown in ocean currents.

Some nonscientists have looked at recent solar storms and increased sunspot activity in the sun’s 11-year cycle and speculated that Earth’s nearest star may be a culprit. For decades, scientists have tracked sunspots and solar storms, and they don’t match warming temperatures, Berkeley Earth chief scientist Robert Rohde said.

Solar storms were stronger 20 and 30 years ago, but there is more warming now, he said. 

Look no further

Still, other scientists said there’s no need to look so hard. They say human-caused climate change, with an extra boost from El Nino, is enough to explain recent temperatures.

University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann estimates that about five-sixths of the recent warming is from human burning of fossil fuels, with about one-sixth due to a strong El Nino.

The fact that the world is coming out of a three-year La Nina, which suppressed global temperatures a bit, and going into a strong El Nino, which adds to them, makes the effect bigger, he said.

“Climate change and El Nino can explain it all,” Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto said. “That doesn’t mean other factors didn’t play a role. But we should definitely expect to see this again without the other factors being present.” 
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The U.S. government said Friday it will spend up to $1.2 billion for two pioneering facilities to vacuum carbon out of the air, a historic gamble on a still developing technology to combat global warming that is criticized by some experts.

The two projects — in Texas and Louisiana — each aim to eliminate 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent in total to the annual emissions of 445,000 gas-powered cars.

It is “the world’s largest investment in engineered carbon removal in history,” the Energy Department said in a statement.

“Cutting back on our carbon emissions alone won’t reverse the growing impacts of climate change,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in the statement. “We also need to remove the CO2 that we’ve already put in the atmosphere.”

Direct Air Capture (DAC) techniques — also known as Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) — focus on CO2 that has already been emitted into the air, which is helping to fuel climate change and extreme weather.

Each of the projects will remove 250 times more CO2 from the air than the largest carbon capture site currently in operation, the Energy Department said.

The U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere one of the methods necessary to combat global warming.

But the sector is still marginal — there are just 27 existing carbon capture sites commissioned worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency, though at least 130 projects are under development.

And some experts worry that use of the technology will be a pretext for continuing to emit greenhouse gases, rather than switching more quickly to clean energies.

Direct capture “requires a lot of electricity for extracting CO2 from the air and compressing it for pipes,” Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson told AFP.

“Even in the best case, where the electricity is renewable, that renewable electricity is then prevented from replacing a fossil electricity source on the grid, such as coal or gas.”

That means such technology is nothing more than a “gimmick,” he said, adding: “It will only delay our solution to the climate problem.”

Storing CO2 underground

U.S. nonprofit Battelle is the prime contractor on the Louisiana project, which will inject captured CO2 for storage deep underground.

It will partner with another American company, Heirloom, and the Swiss firm Climeworks, already a sector leader that operates a plant in Iceland with an annual capacity to capture 4,000 tons of CO2 from the air.

The Texas project will be led by the American company Occidental and other partners, including Carbon Engineering. It could be developed to eliminate up to 30 million tons of CO2 per year, according to a statement from Occidental.

“The rocks in the subsoil of Louisiana and Texas are sedimentary rocks, very different from Icelandic basalts, but they are perfectly viable for storing CO2,” Helene Pilorge, an associate researcher at the University of Pennsylvania studying carbon capture, told AFP.

The two projects should create 4,800 jobs, according to the Energy Department. No start date is yet confirmed for either.

They will be funded by President Joe Biden’s major infrastructure bill passed in 2021.

The Energy Department previously announced plans to invest in four projects to the tune of $3.5 billion.

Direct capture differs from carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems at source, such as factory chimneys, which prevent additional emissions from reaching the atmosphere.

In May, the Biden administration announced a plan to reduce CO2 emissions from gas-fired and coal-fired power plants, focusing in particular on this second technique.
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Monsoon season can exacerbate the outbreak as infected people overwhelm hospitals
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About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which posted the numbers, has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II.

“There’s something wrong. The number should not be going up,” said Christina Wilbur, a 45-year-old Florida woman whose son shot himself to death last year.

“My son should not have died,” she said. “I know it’s complicated, I really do. But we have to be able to do something. Something that we’re not doing. Because whatever we’re doing right now is not helping.”

Experts caution that suicide is complicated, and that recent increases might be driven by a range of factors, including higher rates of depression and limited availability of mental health services.

But a main driver is the growing availability of guns, said Jill Harkavy-Friedman, senior vice president of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Suicide attempts involving guns end in death far more often than those with other means, and gun sales have boomed — placing firearms in more and more homes.

A recent Johns Hopkins University analysis used preliminary 2022 data to calculate that the nation’s overall gun suicide rate rose last year to an all-time high. For the first time, the gun suicide rate among Black teens surpassed the rate among white teens, the researchers found.

“I don’t know if you can talk about suicide without talking about firearms,” Harkavy-Friedman said.

U.S. suicides steadily rose from the early 2000s until 2018, when the national rate hit its highest level since 1941. That year saw about 48,300 suicide deaths — or 14.2 for every 100,000 Americans.

The rate fell slightly in 2019. It dropped again in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some experts tied that to a phenomenon seen in the early stages of wars and natural disasters, when people pull together and support each other.

But in 2021, suicides rose 4%. Last year, according to the new data, the number jumped by more than 1,000, to 49,449 — about a 3% increase vs. the year before. The provisional data comes from U.S. death certificates and is considered almost complete, but it may change slightly as death information is reviewed in the months ahead.

The largest increases were seen in older adults. Deaths rose nearly 7% in people ages 45 to 64, and more than 8% in people 65 and older. White men, in particular, have very high rates, the CDC said.

Many middle-aged and elderly people experience problems like losing a job or losing a spouse, and it’s important to reduce stigma and other obstacles to them getting assistance, said Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer.

Suicides in adults ages 25 to 44 grew about 1%. The new data indicates that suicide became the second leading cause of death in that age group in 2022, up from No. 4 in 2021.

Despite the grim statistics, some say there is reason for optimism. A national crisis line launched a year ago, meaning anyone in the U.S. can dial 988 to reach mental health specialists.

The CDC is expanding a suicide program to fund more prevention work in different communities. And there’s growing awareness of the issue and that it’s OK to ask for help, health officials say.

There was a more than 8% drop in suicides in people ages 10 to 24 in 2022. That may be due to increased attention to youth mental health issues and a push for schools and others to focus on the problem, CDC officials said.

But even the smaller number masks tragedy for families.

Christina Wilbur lost her 21-year-old son, Cale, on June 16 last year. He died in her home in Land O’ Lakes, Florida.

Cale Wilbur had lost two friends and an uncle to suicide and had been dealing with depression. On that horrible morning, he and his mother were having an argument. She had confronted him about his drug use, his mother said. She left his bedroom and when she returned he had a gun.

“I was begging him not too, and to calm down,” she said. “It looked like he relaxed for a second, but then he killed himself.”

She describes her life since as black hole of emptiness and sorrow, and had found it hard to talk to friends or even family about Cale.

“Everything reminds me of what’s missing,” she said.

It’s hard to find professionals to help, and those that are around can be expensive, she said. She turned to support groups, including an organization called Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors that operates a 24/7 online forum.

“There’s nothing like being with people who get it,” she said.
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Russia launched its first mission to the moon in nearly 50 years on Friday, racing to land on the lunar south pole before a spacecraft from India gets there.

The launch of the Luna-25 craft to the moon was Russia’s first since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union, and is being conducted without assistance from the European Space Agency, which ended cooperation with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian lunar lander is expected to reach the moon on August 23, about the same day as an Indian craft that was launched July 14.

Only three governments have managed successful moon landings: the Soviet Union, the United States and China. India and Russia are aiming to be the first to land at the moon’s south pole.

Study ‘is not the goal’

Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, said it wants to show Russia “is a state capable of delivering a payload to the moon,” and “ensure Russia’s guaranteed access to the moon’s surface.”

“Study of the moon is not the goal,” said Vitaly Egorov, a popular Russian space analyst. “The goal is political competition between two superpowers — China and the USA — and a number of other countries which also want to claim the title of space superpower.”

Sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine make it harder for it to access Western technology, impacting its space program. The Luna-25 was initially meant to carry a small moon rover, but that idea was abandoned to reduce the weight of the craft for improved reliability, analysts say.

“Foreign electronics are lighter, domestic electronics are heavier,” Egorov said. “While scientists might have the task of studying lunar water, for Roscosmos the main task is simply to land on the moon — to recover lost Soviet expertise and learn how to perform this task in a new era.”

The Luna-25 was launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East. The spaceport is a pet project of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is key to his efforts to make Russia a space superpower and move Russian launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Previous crash

A previous Indian attempt to land at the moon’s south pole in 2019 ended when the lander crashed into the moon’s surface.

The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water. The frozen water in the rocks could be transformed by future explorers into air and rocket fuel.

“The moon is largely untouched and the whole history of the moon is written on its face,” said Ed Bloomer, an astronomer at Britain’s Royal Observatory, Greenwich. “It is pristine and like nothing you get on Earth. It is its own laboratory.”

The Luna-25 is to take samples of moon rock and dust. The samples are crucial to understanding the moon’s environment ahead of building any base there. “Otherwise, we could be building things and having to shut them down six months later because everything has effectively been sandblasted,” Bloomer said.
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Nearly a third of U.S. hospital pharmacists say they were forced to ration, delay or cancel treatments as drug shortages in the United States approach an all-time high, according to a survey released Thursday.  

The shortages are especially critical for chemotherapy drugs used in cancer treatment regimens, with more than half of the 1,123 pharmacists surveyed saying they had to limit the use of such treatments.  

The survey was conducted June 23-July 14 by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), an association that represents more than 60,000 pharmacists and technicians. 

The drugs in shortage include vital therapies such as steroids, cancer treatments and antibiotics.  

According to the survey, while spikes in demand cause short-term scarcity such as for diabetes drug Ozempic, most severe and persistent shortages are driven by economic factors including extreme price competition among generic drugmakers. 

“Purchasing at the cheapest price has led to a race to the bottom, which has basically disincentivized any investment in quality and manufacturing,” said Michael Ganio, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at ASHP.  

The number of U.S. drugs in shortfall — at 309 by the end of the second quarter — is already near a 10-year peak, according to the association, compared with an all-time high of 320 drugs.  

“In some cases, there are no alternatives to the affected drugs, which puts patients at risk. This issue requires quick action from Congress to address the underlying causes of shortages,” said ASHP CEO Paul Abramowitz.  

In June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was seeking new suppliers to ease shortages of methotrexate, one of the most commonly used cancer drugs, building on its push to shore up two other scarce chemotherapy medicines.
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The World Health Organization says traditional medicine plays a pivotal role in the health and well-being of people and the planet and should be seen as complementary to modern medicine and be integrated into national health systems.

Traditional healers have used their knowledge of plants and potions for centuries to treat people with multiple ailments. Much traditional indigenous and ancestral knowledge of traditional medicine is frequently used in health care across the world.

“We are seeing a lot of increasing demand and increasing interest in traditional medicine at the moment,” said Rudi Eggers, WHO director for integrated health services. “Traditional medicine has become a global phenomenon.”

He said 170 out of 194 countries have reported to WHO “that they used traditional medicine in some form, such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, yoga, and indigenous medicine in their countries. In fact, for millions of people, of course, it is the first choice for health care. In some cases, the only choice for health care.”

The WHO says that around 40 percent of modern pharmaceutical products have roots in traditional medicine.

“Many traditional medicines were the basis for some of the classic scientific and medical technologies that have led to some of the major medical breakthroughs, including drugs like aspirin or artemisinin for malaria, and even smallpox inoculation,” said Shyama Kuruvilla, the WHO lead for the Global Center for Traditional Medicine.

Next week, WHO is convening the Traditional Medicine Global Summit in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. The two-day high-level meeting will explore the role of “traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine in addressing pressing global health challenges.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted the “important and catalytic role” traditional medicine can play in achieving the goal of universal health coverage and in meeting global health-related targets that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said, “Bringing traditional medicine into the mainstream of health care…can help bridge access gaps for millions of people around the world” and would be an important step toward people-centered and holistic approaches to health and well-being.

Kuruvilla agreed that holistic well-being is at the core of all traditional medicine systems, adding that there are existing legal measures and commitments aimed at achieving this goal.

“For example, at the United Nations, the heads of states and governments in 2019 committed to looking at evidence-based ways to integrate traditional medicine into national health systems,” she said. “There are many existing commitments and frameworks that now needed to be implemented.”

Evidence essential, say experts

WHO officials say traditional medicine has contributed to breakthrough discoveries and continues to hold out great promise of other game-changing achievements.

They caution, however, that recommendations on any new therapy or treatment must be based on solid scientific evidence.

“Advancing science on traditional medicine should be held to the same rigorous standards as in other fields of health,” said John Reeder, WHO director of both the department of research for health and the special program for research and training in tropical diseases.

“We need to treat traditional interventions with the same respect we give to other more Western medical interventions and that means examining them closely and critically and scientifically in the same way,” he said.

Summit will highlight best practices

WHO reports next week’s summit will explore research and evaluation of traditional medicine. It also will be an opportunity to showcase countries’ experiences, explore regional trends and discuss best practices.

While traditional medicine has proven its value over many centuries, WHO officials say it cannot replace modern medical care.

Kim Sungchol, head of WHO’s traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine unit, observed that traditional and modern medicines have two different but complementary approaches to health.

“There is a certain advantage of each system,” he said. “For example, modern medicine is quite good and good in emergency care, in communicable disease management, and antibiotics.

“On traditional medicine, one of the unique characteristics that it has is the more holistic approach. It is much advanced in the promotion and prevention, particularly linked to non-communicable diseases,” he said. “So, we have to see the two things differently. We have to identify the strengths of each system to work together to best serve the well-being of the people and planet. That is our purpose.”
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Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, including a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean.

The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness.

Cheers erupted from families and friends watching from below when the craft’s rocket motor fired after it was released from the plane that had carried it aloft. The rocket ship reached about 88 kilometers high.

Richard Branson’s company expects to begin offering monthly trips to customers on its winged space plane, joining Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the space tourism business.

Virgin Galactic passenger Jon Goodwin, who was among the first to buy a ticket in 2005, said he had faith that he would someday make the trip. The 80-year-old athlete — he competed in canoeing in the 1972 Olympics — has Parkinson’s disease and wants to be an inspiration to others.

“I hope it shows them that these obstacles can be the start rather than the end to new adventures,” he said in a statement.

Ticket prices were $200,000 when Goodwin signed up. The cost is now $450,000.

He was joined by sweepstakes winner Keisha Schahaff, 46, a health coach from Antigua, and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, 18, a student at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. Also on board: two pilots and the company’s astronaut trainer.

It was Virgin Galactic’s seventh trip to space since 2018, but the first with a ticket-holder. Branson, the company’s founder, hopped on board for the first full-size crew ride in 2021. Italian military and government researchers soared in June on the first commercial flight. About 800 people are currently on Virgin Galactic’s waiting list, according to the company.

Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship launches from the belly of an airplane, not from the ground, and requires two pilots in the cockpit. Once the mothership reaches a height of about 15 kilometers, the space plane is released and fires its rocket motor to make the final push to just over 80 kilometers up. Passengers can unstrap from their seats, float around the cabin for a few minutes and take in the sweeping views of Earth, before the space plane glides back home and lands on a runway.

In contrast, the capsules used by SpaceX and Blue Origin are fully automated and parachute back down.

Like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin aims for the fringes of space, quick ups-and-downs from West Texas. Blue Origin has launched 31 people so far, but flights are on hold following a rocket crash last fall. The capsule, carrying experiments but no passengers, landed intact.

SpaceX, is the only private company flying customers all the way to orbit, charging a much heftier price, too: tens of millions of dollars per seat. It’s already flown three private crews. NASA is its biggest customer, relying on SpaceX to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. since 2020.

People have been taking on adventure travel for decades, the risks underscored by the recent implosion of the Titan submersible that killed five passengers on their way down to view the Titanic wreckage. Virgin Galactic suffered its own casualty in 2014 when its rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot. Yet space tourists are still lining up, ever since the first one rocketed into orbit in 2001 with the Russians.

Branson, who lives in the British Virgin Islands, watched Thursday’s flight from a party in Antigua. He had held a virtual lottery to establish a pecking order for the company’s first 50 customers — dubbed the Founding Astronauts. Virgin Galactic said the group agreed Goodwin would go first, given his age and his Parkinson’s.
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Paris’ escape from record temperatures gripping parts of Europe this summer could be a short-term reprieve. A study finds the city could have the most heatwave-related deaths of any European capital by 2050 — when temperatures may soar to 50 C (122 F). For VOA, Lisa Bryant has more from Paris.
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Currently spreading COVID-19 variants such as EG.5, or Eris, do not represent a major shift in COVID variants, and updated vaccines in September will offer protection, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. 

“Right now, what we’re seeing with the changes in the viruses, they’re still susceptible to our vaccine, they’re still susceptible to our medicines, they’re still picked up by the tests,” Dr. Mandy Cohen said in an interview on former Biden administration adviser Andy Slavitt’s “In the Bubble” podcast. “We’re seeing small changes that are what I would call subtypes of what we’ve seen before.” 

Updated vaccines should be available by mid- to late September, she said. 

COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have created new versions of their vaccine, which were updated to target the so-called XBB.1.5 subvariant that was dominant earlier this year, in order to more closely resemble the circulating virus.  

“We anticipate that they are going to be available for most folks by the third or fourth week of September,” Cohen said. The vaccines still need to be authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the CDC needs to make its recommendations, she said.  

“We are likely to see this as a recommendation as an annual COVID shot just like we have an annual flu shot,” she said. 

Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax have all said they expect to have supplies of the updated vaccine ready for the rollout this autumn. 

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization classified the EG.5 coronavirus strain, circulating in the United States and China, as a “variant of interest” but said it did not seem to pose more of a threat to public health than other variants. Eris is the fasting-growing COVID-19 subvariant in the U.S., estimated to be responsible for around 17% of current COVID cases, according to the CDC. 
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Indonesia’s capital Jakarta topped the list as the world’s most polluted city on Wednesday, having consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May, according to data by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.  

Jakarta, which has a population of over 10 million, registers unhealthy air pollution levels nearly every day, according to IQAir.  

Resident Rizky Putra lamented that the worsening air quality was putting his children’s health at risk.  

“I think the situation is very worrying,” Rizky, 35, told Reuters TV by the side of a road in downtown Jakarta.  

“So many children are sick with the same complaints and symptoms such as coughs and cold,” he said.  

Jakarta residents have long complained of toxic air from chronic traffic, industrial smoke and coal-fired power plants. Some of them launched and won a civil lawsuit in 2021 demanding the government take action to control air pollution.  

The court at the time ruled President Joko Widodo must establish national air quality standards to protect human health, and the health minister and Jakarta governor must devise strategies to control air pollution.  

Still, Nathan Roestandy, co-founder of air quality app Nafas Indonesia, said the pollution level has continued to deteriorate.  

“We take more than 20,000 breaths a day. If we take in polluted air everyday, (it could lead to) respiratory and pulmonary diseases, even asthma. It can affect cognitive development of children or even mental health,” he said.  

Asked about Jakarta’s pollution problem on Tuesday, President Widodo told reporters the solution would be to move the country’s capital city from Jakarta to Nusantara, which his government is currently building from the ground up on Borneo island.  

Indonesia is set to name Nusantara as the new capital next year and at least 16,000 civil servants, military and police are due to move there.
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U.N. agencies warn health conditions are deteriorating in Sudan and neighboring countries as growing numbers of people flee escalating fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Before the conflict erupted on April 15, 4.5 million Sudanese already were displaced — more than 3.7 million inside Sudan and another 800,000 as refugees in Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.

Since the rival generals went to war, the U.N. refugee agency says nearly an equal number — more than four million people — have become newly displaced.

“The situation inside Sudan, where UNHCR teams are present, is untenable as needs far outweigh what is humanly possible to deliver with available resources,” said William Spindler, UNHCR spokesman.

He said a lack of medicine and a shortage of staff to care for the sick and wounded in White Nile State severely hampered health and nutrition services in all 10 refugee camps, “where over 144,000 newly displaced refugees from Khartoum have arrived since the conflict started.”

He said many families that have been on the move for weeks, with very little food and medicine, were arriving at border entry points and transit centers in neighboring countries in desperate condition.

As a result, he said malnutrition rates have been rising, as have disease outbreaks and related deaths.

“Between 15 May and 17 July, over 300 deaths, mainly among children under five years, were reported due to measles and malnutrition,” he said.

“In addition, severe cholera and malaria cases are expected in the coming months due to flooding from the continuing rains and inadequate sanitation facilities.”

Now in its fourth month of conflict, the World Health Organization says insecurity, as well as limited access to medicine, medical supplies, electricity and water pose a challenge to the delivery of health care.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said attacks on health facilities were increasing, preventing the sick and wounded from accessing medical treatment. He said the WHO has verified 53 attacks on health care, causing 11 deaths and 38 injuries, between April 15 and July 31.

“Attacks on health care are a gross violation of international humanitarian law and the right to health. They must stop. Humanitarian workers need assurances of safety and security in order to continue delivering critical humanitarian and health response,” he said.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warns Sudan is facing a deepening food crisis, noting that “20.3 million individuals in Sudan face severe hunger, a figure that has nearly doubled since last year.”

Maximo Torero, FAO chief economist, said a recent U.N. food assessment shows “the level of acute food insecurity in Sudan has increased substantially to more than 11 million people because of the conflict. So, the situation is deteriorating.”

Meanwhile, in a bit of welcome news, the U.N. Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, confirmed Tuesday that the first humanitarian convoy since the start of the conflict had arrived in the East Darfur state after nine days on the road and that “those supplies have been distributed to more than 15,000 people in remote villages in the state.”

Additionally, OCHA said that the FAO had provided 430 tons of agricultural seeds “to be distributed to farmers across the state by the Ministry of Agriculture.”

U.N. agencies agree that the competing generals’ power grab has deepened Sudan’s humanitarian crisis. They warn the lives of many people are hanging by a thread, lives that will be lost without more donor support.

The Federal Ministry of Health says 12,200 people have been injured and 1,205 killed since April 15, figures U.N. agencies believe are greatly underestimated.
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Darwin, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory, can be brutally hot and humid.   Many of its 150,000 residents seek refuge from the tropical elements in air-conditioned homes, offices and cars.

But research from the Australian National University, the ANU, suggests that air-conditioning, which is often set at 21 degrees Celsius, is making people more vulnerable to heat-related death.

Heatwaves are Australia’s deadliest natural hazard.  They kill more people than bushfires, floods and storms put together.

The ANU asserts that “climate change is increasing heat-associated mortality particularly in hotter parts of the world.” 

Simon Quilty, the study’s lead author, is from the Australian National University’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. He told VOA that avoiding the heat and humidity may prevent people from adapting to the climate.

“Being exposed regularly to the prevailing climate in which you live actually acclimatizes your body,” he said. “e know that acclimatization takes roughly 14-days to occur for a human body and that changes the way that we sweat, it changes the way that we breathe, it changes our kidneys and it even changes the way that our hearts pump.  What is happening now is that our entire lives are set at 21 degrees Celsius and so for people who are living in very hot climates like the Northern Territory that deacclimatization is actually probably increasing heat vulnerability.”

Quilty said the research also finds that First Nations communities in the Northern Territory are less vulnerable to heat because they are often less inclined or able to use air-conditioning.

“Yes, it is very, very uncomfortable in really hot weather in Darwin and other places in the Tropics around the world, but we do not all need to live at 21 degrees Celsius,” Quilty said.  “And certainly, my experience of Aboriginal people is they really do not like over air-conditioned environments.  They feel very uncomfortable in it.”       

Quilty says that First Nations people have shown “extraordinary resilience to extreme weather” over thousands of years.

The Australian National University study believes that “hot climate communities need to start considering socio-cultural means of adapting to hotter weather.”  

Indigenous Australians invariably stay out of the hot afternoon sun and reduce physical exertion in warmer parts of the day.  The study recommends that housing in hot climates should also be designed to ensure passive cooling to reduce energy costs.

The Australian research also asserts that a siesta – or an afternoon nap – during the warmest part of the day can help the body to acclimatize to the heat.    

The study is published in the journal, the Lancet Planetary Health.
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The World Meteorological Organization says the global average temperature for July 2023 is confirmed to be the highest on record for any month.

“The month is estimated to have been around 1.5 degrees warmer than the average for 1850 to 1900s. So, the average of pre-industrial times,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

Some measurements began in 1850, but it was not until 1880 that scientists started to estimate average temperatures for the entire planet.

Burgess said scientists who look at historical and paleoclimate and proxy records from cave deposits and other calcifying organisms, such as corals and shells, find that the observational records go back tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years.

“So, the longest records we have are ice core records that go back 800,000 years, which give us changes in concentrations of the ratio of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere.”

She noted that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report found it has not been this warm, combining observational records and paleo-climate records for the last 120,000 years.

The WMO says that heat waves were experienced throughout July in multiple regions of the Northern Hemisphere, including southern Europe, and that temperatures well above average occurred over several South American countries and around much of Antarctica.

“We know from our long-term monitoring of the climate that the Earth has been warming since pre-industrial times. And we are seeing this as a clear and dramatic warming, decade on decade, and has been since the 1970s,” said Chris Hewitt, director of climate services for the WMO.

He said 2015 to 2022 were the eight warmest years on record, going back 170 years. That, he said, happened despite persistent La Nina conditions, which cause cooler than normal waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

On the other hand, he said that El Nino conditions, which lead to warmer than average sea surface temperatures, were developing now in the tropical Pacific, with global temperatures likely to peak in 2024.

“It is very likely that one of the next five years will actually be the warmest on record and a 66 percent chance — and more likely than not — that we will temporarily exceed 1.5 degrees of pre-industrial value.

“So, the Paris agreement will temporarily exceed 1.5 degrees for at least one of the next five years,” he said.

More than 190 nations and the European Union who joined the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement committed to keeping global warming to well below the 2 degrees Celsius level, while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“I know this is not good news,” said Hewitt. “This extreme heat should not come as a surprise, though really, it is consistent with what scientists have been predicting for years. Unless we decrease the greenhouse gases, we will continue to exceed that 1.5-degree limit.”

Burgess noted that there was a direct correlation between the concentration of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which leads to global warming, and the impacts on air temperature, sea surface temperature and land temperatures, as well.

She warned of dire consequences “for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events.”

“The impact of deforestation means that we will have less biodiversity and less of the carbon sink in forests to draw down that carbon from the atmosphere,” she said.

“So, ultimately, the less trees and the less organisms that photosynthesize means the less ability the planet will have to have a natural way of removing greenhouse gas concentration from the atmosphere.”

Hewitt agreed that the warming temperatures “will cause problems for various habitats.”

He said it was important “to keep monitoring the climate system, increase the observations of the climate system … and provide early warnings” around the world.

But ultimately, “We need to reduce the greenhouse gases, and we need to be prepared for heat waves, droughts, whatever it might be,” to protect ourselves from “the impacts of the changing climate,” Hewitt said.
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Here we go again: COVID-19 hospital admissions have inched upward in the United States since early July in a small-scale echo of the three previous summers.

With an updated vaccine still months away, this summer bump in new hospitalizations might be concerning, but the number of patients is far lower than before. A look at what we know:

How bad is the spike?

For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week.

But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022.

“It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It’s likely that infections are rising too, but the data is scant. Federal authorities ended the public health emergency in May, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states no longer track the number of positive test results.

What about deaths?

Since early June, about 500 to 600 people have died each week. The number of deaths appears to be stable this summer, although past increases in deaths have lagged behind hospitalizations.

How are we tracking the virus?

The amount of the COVID-19 virus in sewage water has been rising since late June across the nation. In the coming weeks, health officials say they’ll keep a close eye on wastewater levels as people return from summer travel and students go back to school.

Higher levels of COVID-19 in wastewater concentrations are being found in the Northeast and South, said Cristin Young, an epidemiologist at Biobot Analytics, the CDC’s wastewater surveillance contractor.

“It’s important to remember right now the concentrations are still fairly low,” Young said, adding it’s about 2.5 times lower than last summer.

And while one version of omicron — EG.5 — is appearing more frequently, no particular variant of the virus is dominant. The variant has been dubbed “eris” but it’s an unofficial nickname and scientists aren’t using it.

“There are a couple that we’re watching, but we’re not seeing anything like delta or omicron,” Young said, referencing variants that fueled previous surges.

And mutations in the virus don’t necessarily make it more dangerous.

“Just because we have a new subvariant doesn’t mean that we are destined to have an increase in bad outcomes,” Dowdy said.

When is the new vaccine coming?

This fall, officials expect to see updated COVID-19 vaccines that contain one version of the omicron strain, called XBB.1.5. It’s an important change from today’s combination shots, which mix the original coronavirus strain with last year’s most common omicron variants.

It’s not clear exactly when people can start rolling up their sleeves for what officials hope is an annual fall COVID-19 shot. Pfizer, Moderna and smaller manufacturer Novavax all are brewing doses of the XBB update but the Food and Drug Administration will have to sign off on each, and the CDC must then issue recommendations for their use.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new CDC director, said she expects people will get their COVID-19 shots where they get their flu shots — at pharmacies and at work — rather than at dedicated locations that were set up early in the pandemic as part of the emergency response.

“This is going to be our first fall and winter season coming out of the public health emergency, and I think we are all recognizing that we are living with COVID, flu, and RSV,” Cohen told The Associated Press last week. “But the good news is we have more tools than ever before.”
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