The rivers of the world are full of antibiotics. That’s the headline of a new survey that sampled rivers all over the world. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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One of the ways astronomers learn about planets beyond Earth is by studying our own. And there are satellites doing just that, monitoring the Earth’s health, and our own. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A remarkable fossils exhibition opens at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington on Saturday. Located in the newly restored fossil hall, it contains over 700 fossils, including dinosaurs, plants and insects going back billions of years. But as we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block, among these ancient remains is an underlying message about the future… and the importance of protecting the earth
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It was a bad day 70 million years ago for a triceratops dinosaur, whose remains are displayed beneath a fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton — posed as if it were still alive and ready for dinner.  

Huge dinosaurs and other ancient creatures like an elephant-sized ground sloth are part of a remarkable new fossils exhibition that opened June 8 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Instead of the typical static poses usually seen in museums, the new exhibition has positioned the animals so they look more real and animated — like a Dire Wolf that appears to be chasing prey.

“Did you know that all birds descended from dinosaurs?” said Matthew Carrano, the Curator of Dinosaurs.

”We now know dinosaurs were fast growing, and very lively animals,” Carrano said. “Many of the dinosaurs you see here didn’t necessarily live together.  Each species lasted a million years ago or so and then another species would appear.  So many different dinosaur ecosystems in the world, just like there’s many different ecosystems in the world today.”

Located in the large, newly restored fossil hall, the exhibition called Deep Time is all about ancient life on earth, and how its climate, ecosystems and geology evolved over 3.7 billion years.  It contains over 700 fossils, including plants, insects, reptiles, and mollusks going back billions of years.  

A fossilized palm tree unearthed in the Arctic shows that area used to be tropical. A tiny ancestor of today’s horses lived 52 million years ago. There’s even some fossilized dinosaur feces.

While wandering through the variety of ecosystems, modern interactive exhibits allow visitors to learn more about the earth’s past, and a glass-walled lab where they can see fossils being prepared for scientific study.

But among these remains is an underlying message about the future and the importance of protecting the Earth.

“We explain and let you explore for yourself what the meaning is in something that might have happened 55 million years ago to tell us a lot about the impact we are having now, because it’s not just a past story it’s also our story right now,” explained Sioban Starrs, the exhibition project manager.  

The objects on display illustrate how much the Earth has changed, affected by shifts in the climate. Scientists say 66 million years ago, the impact of a huge asteroid transformed the environment so much the dinosaurs and most other forms of life couldn’t survive. But today the exhibition points out, humans are the culprit that are causing devastating environmental problems.

“It’s a scientific fact and there’s evidence showing that we are having an impact on this planet that’s unprecedented,” Starrs said. “It’s unprecedented in the scale, and in the rate, and it’s unprecedented that it’s one singular species causing all of these changes.”

“There’s lots of specific things you can do to ameliorate the impacts of climate change,” said Kirk Johnson, the head of the museum. “Decrease climate change and help preserve species and habitats. There’s a lot of things that are happening in the world today that don’t have to be happening.”

Starrs hopes the 5 million people visiting the exhibition each year will think about what they can do to help.

“I would really like to see people getting connected to this story of the impact that we’re having on the planet, and to really wake up and start making smart choices,” she said. “Start looking at the things that people are doing around the world to direct our planet toward a hopeful, positive future.”
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To save babies from brain-damaging birth defects, University of Pittsburgh scientist Carolyn Coyne studies placentas from fetuses that otherwise would be discarded — and she’s worried this kind of research is headed for the chopping block.

The Trump administration is cracking down on fetal tissue research , with new hurdles for government-funded scientists around the country who call the special cells vital for fighting a range of health threats. Already, the administration has shut down one university’s work using fetal tissue to test HIV treatments, and is ending other fetal tissue research at the National Institutes of Health.

“I knew this was something that’s going to trickle down to the rest of us,” said Coyne. She uses the placenta, which people may not think of as fetal tissue but technically is classified as such because the fetus produced it, to study how viruses such as Zika get past that protective barrier early in pregnancy.

“It seems to me what we’re moving toward is a ban,” she added. If so, when it comes to unraveling what happens in pregnancy and fetal development, “we’re going to stay ignorant to a lot of things.”

Different types of tissue left over from elective abortions have been used in scientific research for decades, and the work has been credited with leading to lifesaving vaccines and other advances. Under orders from President Donald Trump, the Health and Human Services Department abruptly announced on Wednesday the new restrictions on taxpayer-funded research, but not privately funded work.

Aside from the cancellation of an HIV-related project at the University of California, San Francisco, university-led projects that are funded by the NIH — estimated to be fewer than 200 — aren’t affected right away.

But as researchers seek to renew their funding or propose new studies, HHS said it will have to pass an extra layer of review, beyond today’s strict scientific scrutiny. Each project will have a federal ethics board appointed to recommend whether NIH should grant the money.

HHS hasn’t offered details but under the law authorizing the review process, that board must include not just biomedical experts but a theologian, and the nation’s health secretary can overrule its advice.

“I predict over time we will see a slow and steady elimination of federal funding for research that uses fetal tissue, regardless of how necessary it is,” said University of Wisconsin law professor Alta Charo, a nationally recognized bioethics expert.

Necessity is the crux of a fierce debate between abortion foes and scientists about whether there are alternatives to fetal tissue for research.

Zika offers a glimpse at the difficulty. Somehow, the Zika virus can sneak from the mother’s bloodstream across the placenta, which protects and nourishes the fetus, and target the fetus’ brain. It’s something researchers hope to learn to block.

Studying the placentas of small animals or even monkeys isn’t a substitute because they differ from the human organ, said Emory University researcher Mehul Suthar. For example, the specific type of placental cell where Zika can lurk in humans isn’t thought to be present in mouse placentas.

And because the placenta continually changes as the fetus that created it grows, first-trimester tissue may show a very different vulnerability than a placenta that’s expelled during full-term birth, when it’s no longer defined as fetal tissue but as medical waste.

Suthar recently submitted a new grant application to study first- and second-trimester placental tissue, and is worried about its fate under the still uncertain ethics provision.

It “sounds a bit murky as to what the impact could be,” he said. It could be small, “or it could be an outright ban on what we’re doing.”

Anti-abortion groups argue there are alternatives, such as stem cells, growing organ-like clumps of cells in lab dishes, or using tissue taken from newborns as they have heart surgery.

Indeed, NIH is funding a $20 million program to research alternatives to fetal tissue and to prove whether they work as well.

“Taxpayer funding ought to go to promote alternatives that are already being used in the production of treatments, vaccines and medicines, and to expand approaches that do not depend on the destruction of unborn children,” said Mallory Quigley of the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect anti-abortion candidates to public office.

But dozens of medical and science organizations have told HHS there is no substitute for fetal tissue in studying certain — not all — health disorders, such as HIV, Zika, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injury, and a variety of eye diseases.

To Pittsburgh’s Coyne, part of the political debate is a “completely unsubstantiated belief that not allowing research and science is going to prevent or stop abortions, which is not the case.”

Medical research using fetal tissue won’t stop but will move to other countries, said Charo, who advised the Obama administration. The United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and China are among the countries using fetal tissue to seek breakthroughs.

“Other countries work with this in a regulated fashion and they will continue to outstrip us,” she said. “We have allowed patients’ interests to become collateral damage in the abortion wars.”
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Space travel for private citizens is no longer science fiction.

NASA is opening parts of the International Space Station to more commercial opportunities. NASA announced the plan Friday, and said it will allow companies to use the space station’s facilities in a number of ways, including private astronaut missions.

NASA has balked at commercial ventures in the past, but the cost of operating the space station, which is one of the agency’s greatest expenses, currently runs $3 billion to $4 billion a year – that’s more than $8 million a day.

NASA leadership has made it clear the agency wants to eventually transition control of the space station and its region of space, low Earth orbit, to the private sector. 

“What this is, is an investment in the future for demand for low-Earth platforms” Mike Read, manager of Commercial Space Utilization at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told VOA News. “What we want to do is leverage the station and try to enable others to turn a business model … while we have the infrastructure of the space station.” 

By handing control of the space station over to commercial ventures, NASA could have more money to pursue more ambitious missions, such as building a new space station around the moon and sending humans back to the lunar surface. 

In late 2018, the agency selected 12 companies to study the potential growth of a low-Earth orbit economy and how to best stimulate demand for human space flight. (Low-Earth orbit means altitudes below 2,000 km or 1,240 miles.)

This group brainstormed ways companies could turn a profit at the space station, and the members decided that allowing corporations to build and market their products using space station resources would help ignite the economy NASA is seeking to build on. 

But getting to space is not cheap. 

Private astronaut missions will be limited to two flights per year, or about 12 astronauts per year, and will come at a significant cost. The cost of travel and accommodations will have to be picked up by the private sector. 

As of now, the only ways to get to the space station are spacecraft developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing, so “whatever prices Boeing and SpaceX set is on them,” said Jeff DeWit, NASA’s chief financial officer. 

NASA pays about $80 million per seat, a price that it is working to trim to $50 million per seat, to send its astronauts. 

Apart from the cost of getting there, companies hoping to work on the space station will have to pay to stay there: One night’s stay would be about $35,000 for one person, DeWit said. 

“It’s now up to you to use your creativity — your ingenuity — and figure out how you can generate potential revenue,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration. 

‘Learning experience’

“This is the beginning of us actively starting open dialogue with the industry to figure out how we can open up space to commercial activities, where revenue can be generated from private sector companies. … This is going to be a growing and learning experience for both [sides].” 

NASA’s Read points out a key element, though, to this new venture: “We are a government bureaucracy that is trying to enable development of a new economy. That’s pretty different,” he said. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday criticized NASA for aiming to put astronauts back on the moon by 2024 and urged the space agency to focus instead on “much bigger” initiatives like going to Mars, undercutting his previous support for the lunar initiative. 

“For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago,” the president wrote on Twitter. “They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!” 

Trump’s statement, tweeted from Air Force One as he returned from Europe, appeared at odds with his administration’s recent push to return humans to the lunar surface by 2024 “by any means necessary,” five years sooner than the previous goal of 2028. 

Space outpost

NASA plans to build a space outpost in lunar orbit that can relay astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024, part of a broader initiative to use the moon as a staging ground for eventual missions to Mars. 

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Trump was only reaffirming NASA’s space plan. 

“As @POTUS said, @NASA is using the Moon to send humans to Mars!” he said on Friday in a tweet referring to the president of the United States. 

The accelerated timetable to land humans on the moon by 2024 ran into early trouble when the Trump administration asked a skeptical Congress in May to increase NASA’s 2020 budget proposal by $1.6 billion as a “down payment” to accommodate the accelerated goal. 

The accelerated timetable for going to the moon was a key recommendation in March of the new National Space Council led by Vice President Mike Pence. 

‘Sustainable human presence’

NASA’s website on Friday said the Artemis program would send “the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024 and develop a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028.” The program takes its name from the twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology. 

NASA’s Apollo program landed the first men on the moon 50 years ago on July 20. 

The NASA website also provided details on the space agency’s plans for making the moon a jumping-off point for future missions to Mars and a place to test equipment and technology for other forays out into the solar system. 

Private companies are also joining the race to the moon. Billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos last month unveiled a mock-up of a lunar lander being built by his Blue Origin rocket company and touted his moon goals as part of a strategy aimed at capitalizing on the Trump administration’s push to establish a lunar outpost in just five years. 
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The 2019 Atlantic hurricane season is officially underway, yet many people haven’t recovered from some of last year’s storms. Meantime, tornados have torn up swaths of several U.S. states in the past few weeks, and floodwaters have wreaked even more damage.

Across the U.S. and elsewhere, tornados, flooding and fires have destroyed homes, sometimes entire communities. Victim after victim describes the trauma.

Preston Black in Oklahoma says a tornado threw his trailer home several meters into the air. His parents, wife and children were all inside. Then, he saw his wife in the debris.

 “To see her like that. … It was awful,” he said. “The worst thing I could ever see.”

She survived. But they lost everything they had.

Hurricane Michael

Last October, Hurricane Michael destroyed entire towns in Florida. Some people are still living in tents. Janelle Crosby lives in a trailer home full of health hazards.

“Rats. Critters. It’s disgusting. Mold. This they put up to try to contain the mold. It was pink, it’s now black.”

Natural disasters affect everyone differently. In California, Gwen Oesch found that the immediate impact of loss can’t always be anticipated.

“I didn’t realize how much my home means to me,” she said, with a sigh.

Solace in numbers

When a community is hit by a disaster, it can be less traumatic than an individual disaster like an accident, according to Dr. John Lauriello, a psychiatrist at the University of Missouri Health Care.

“I think there’s a shared understanding of the trauma, which I think can be very, very helpful because people feel like it wasn’t just them. It occurred to their community and, therefore, the community is going to work together, and the rebuilding will happen together.”

In Missouri, universities are housing people whose homes were destroyed by massive flooding and a tornado. Darrell Bonner says he’s grateful for a place to stay.

“It’s a blessing living here. A lot of financial burden has been let loose a little bit. There’s hope. There are people out there willing to help,” he said.

 

WATCH: Natural Disasters Take Psychological Toll on Survivors

Crosby says in her Florida community, people share whatever they have.

“We just all take care of each other. It’s hard, but like I said earlier, if one of us has generator gas, or if we have propane, we all get to cook that night. If not, we get out here and make fires on the grill and cook.”

For children, routine key

Psychiatrist Laine Young-Walker at the University of Missouri Health Care says the sooner parents can get their children back into a normal routine, the better off they will be.

“They thrive in and survive on structure and routine,” Young-Walker said. “So when a natural disaster like this happens and they get displaced, they’re not in their home anymore, their school is closed, they’re not able to go to the school. They don’t have that structure. They don’t have that routine and that consistency. And it can cause a lot of stress for them.”

If schools are destroyed, Young-Walker suggests finding ways to do class work.

Last year, a teacher turned her California home into a classroom when her students’ school was destroyed by fire. Eight-year-old Eleanor Weddig thought it was better than school.

 “I love it. It’s like more comfortable than our classroom, the chairs are cushy, that’s one thing that I like. And anyway it’s a house so it’s, like, more fancy and stuff and she cooks us great lunches. Like every lunch I love,” Eleanor said.

Californian Gwen Oesch credits community support with helping people who had lost their homes during the wildfires.

“It’s almost like a therapy thing, you know?” she said. “We’re all in the same place, and dealing with the same thing. We’re talking about the people who lost their homes and how sad it is. But, you know what? We’re resilient.”
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The 2019 Atlantic hurricane season is officially underway, yet people haven’t recovered from some of last year’s storms. Meantime, tornados have torn up swaths of several U.S. states in the past few weeks, while flood waters wreaked even more damage. All of this has a psychological toll, as VOA’s Carol Pearson reports.
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Efforts to recycle discarded plastic have not reduced piles of single-use products from landfills, and China will no longer import plastic waste for recycling. The United Nations says more than 8 million tons of plastic enters the ocean every year. Plastics are increasingly killing marine life and birds, threatening ecosystems and harming humans. Researchers are working to develop biodegradable materials to replace the durable plastic. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports on one such project in Israel.
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More than 1 million people across the world are diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections (STI) every day, the World Health Organization said.

In a study released Thursday, the U.N. health agency said 1 in every 25 people globally has at least one of four infections: chlamydia, gonorrhea, trichomoniasis and syphilis. Some people have more than one STI, also called sexually transmitted disease.

“These infections indicate people are taking risks with their health, with their sexuality and with their reproductive health,” said Dr. Melanie Taylor, lead author of the report.

The WHO said there were more than 376 million new cases of STIs among men and women aged 15 to 49 in 2016, the latest year for which data is available. The WHO report broke down the infection rates in 2016 to: 127 million new cases of chlamydia, 87 million of gonorrhea, 6 million of syphilis and 156 million of trichomoniasis.

STI’s are transmitted through unprotected vaginal, anal and oral sex. In some cases, the diseases are passed from mother to child during pregnancy. Syphilis can also be transmitted through contact with infected blood.

If left untreated, STIs can cause infertility, stillbirths, ectopic pregnancy and an increased risk of HIV. Syphilis alone causes more than 200,000 newborn deaths and stillbirths each year.

“This is a wake-up call for a concerted effort to ensure everyone, everywhere can access the services they need to prevent and treat these debilitating diseases,” WHO official Dr. Peter Salama said.
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Keep an eye on the sky this month as the mighty Jupiter puts on a show. 

NASA says Jupiter will make its closest approach to Earth in June — so close that skywatchers will be able to see it with the naked eye, and even some of its largest moons using simple equipment.

“The solar system’s largest planet is a brilliant jewel to the naked eye, but looks fantastic through binoculars or a small telescope, which will allow you to spot the four largest moons,” the U.S. space agency posted on its website.

Some might also “glimpse a hint of the banded clouds” that surround the planet, NASA said.

The best opportunity will be Monday when Jupiter, Earth and Saturn all fall into a straight line, an annual event called “opposition.” From June 14 to 19, amateur astronomers can see a “beautiful lineup” of the moon, Jupiter and Saturn, which will change each night as the moon orbits Earth.

“While you’re out marveling at this trio, there’s a really neat astronomy observation you can attempt yourself, just by paying attention to the moon’s movement from night to night,” the agency added on its website.

For those who would like an even closer look at the largest planet in our solar system, NASA suggests visiting its website for images sent back by Juno, the spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter. 
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The number of measles cases confirmed in the United States in 2019 has reached 1,001, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said this week.

As of last week, the total for 2019 had already reached the highest point in any year since 1992, when there were 2,237 cases of the infectious disease reported. 

 

“The Department of Health and Human Services has been deeply engaged in promoting the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, amid concerning signs that there are pockets of undervaccination around the country,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement Thursday. 

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Azar reinforced the importance of vaccines in combating the outbreak. 

 

“We cannot say this enough: Vaccines are a safe and highly effective public health tool that can prevent this disease and end the current outbreak. I encourage all Americans to talk to your doctor about what vaccines are recommended to protect you, your family, and your community from measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases,” he said. 

 

Measles is highly contagious. The disease is usually spread through sneezing and coughing. It can linger in the air for up to two hours. 

 

Cases have been reported in more than half of U.S. states. New York has had the highest total, with nearly 700 cases reported this year.  

  

Most of those cases have been in Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and Queens, where there are low vaccination rates. The New York City Department of Health said that as of Monday, 566 cases had been confirmed in those areas since September. 

 

Clark County in Washington state had the second-largest outbreak in the U.S. this year with more than 70 cases reported.  

  

According to the CDC, the outbreaks in New York City and Rockland County, N.Y., threaten to nullify the nation’s status of having officially eliminated measles.  

  

“That loss would be a huge blow for the nation and erase the hard work done by all levels of public health. The measles elimination goal, first announced in 1966 and accomplished in 2000, was a monumental task,”  the CDC said in a May press release. 

 

“Before widespread use of the measles vaccine, an estimated 3 [million] to 4 million people got measles each year in the United States, along with an estimated 400 to 500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalizations,” the release said. 
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A dramatic scene from the twilight of the age of dinosaurs —a T. rex feasting upon a horned plant-eater named Triceratops — will greet visitors when an ambitious new fossil hall opens on Saturday at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.

Construction of the hall at the federally administered Washington museum cost $110 million: $70 million in public funds and $40 million in private funds. It replaces a fossil hall that was last renovated in 1981 and closed in 2014, bringing up-to-date scientific information to an exhibit that had become out-of-date at one of the world’s leading natural history museums.

The Tyrannosaurus rex, found in Montana in 1988 by amateur fossil hunter Kathy Wankel, measures 38 feet long (11.5 meters). The Triceratops, nicknamed Hatcher, is 20 feet (6 meters) long.

The skeletons are mounted with the T. rex, one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs, standing over the fallen Triceratops.

“I knew that we needed something dramatic for what would inevitably be a centerpiece of the hall. And these are two dinosaur species that co-existed 68-66 million years ago in western North America, so it would represent a possible real-world interaction,” said Matthew Carrano, the museum’s curator of dinosauria.

“But we’ve deliberately left the scenario open, as to whether this represents T. rex killing Triceratops or scavenging an already dead individual. The idea is to better portray the role of an apex predator, which is often opportunistic. In life,I imagine that even T. rex would have favored easier meals than a healthy, adult Triceratops “ if such were available: young or sick or elderly individuals, for example,”

Carrano added.Triceratops was among the largest of four-legged horned dinosaurs called ceratopsians, reaching up to about 30 feet (9 meters) long, with horns above its eyes and nose, and a bony shield protecting its neck.

An asteroid impact 66 million years ago doomed the dinosaurs and many other land and sea creatures.

Other dinosaurs on display include: a rearing Camarasaurus — one of the long-necked, four-legged sauropods; a 90-foot-long (27-meter-long) Diplodocus, another sauropod; a meat-eating Allosaurus sitting, guarding a nest of eggs; and the tank-like armored Euoplocephalus.

The hall also displays fossils such as mammals and marine reptiles.

Carrano said he hopes visitors will gain “a sense of dinosaurs as once-living animals, in some ways not all that different from some animals today: they ate, slept, breathed, et cetera.”

“I don’t want them to seem entirely alien, even if they are awesome and bizarre in other ways,” Carrano said.
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They’re called biocurtains, and for one small firm they lie somewhere between environmental engineering and art. These unique installations are filled with algae that suck up carbon and emit oxygen, and could be one small element involved with engineering our way out of catastrophic climate change. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A deep-sea fish can hide its enormous, jutting teeth from prey because its chompers are virtually invisible – until it’s too late.

What’s the dragonfish’s secret? The teeth are transparent, and now scientists have discovered how the fish accomplished that trick. 

Findings were published Wednesday in the journal Matter.

The dragonfish is a small predator with jagged, needle-like teeth protruding from a jaw that can extend to bite into prey up to half its body size.

“They look like monsters,” said Marc Meyers of the University of California, San Diego. “But they’re mini monsters” – about as long as a pencil.

Despite their short stature, these fish are at the top of the food chain in their deep-ocean realm where it’s almost pitch black. 

To find food or mates, many animals carry bacteria that generate blue or red light. That’s called bioluminescence.

Using microscopes, Meyers and his research team examined the teeth of dragonfish they had dredged up from about a third of a mile (500 meters) underwater off the coast of San Diego. 

Dragonfish teeth are made of the same materials as human teeth – a protective layer of enamel on the surface and a tough, deeper layer of dentin. But the minerals have a much finer microscopic structure that is organized more haphazardly. 

“That was very surprising to us,” Meyers said. 

The result is that light in the environment or from bioluminescence- even from dragonfish themselves – doesn’t reflect off the teeth. Instead, most light passes through the teeth so they’re almost completely concealed. 

This, the researchers believe, makes the dragonfish a stealthier hunter.

Transparent teeth could be a common strategy among deep-sea predators, said Christopher Kenaley, a fish biologist at Boston College who wasn’t part of the study, noting that some other fish share this feature.

Among the most well-known of the others are anglerfish, stubby creatures that wave a glowing rod-like growth from their heads to lure prey.

Nobody has actually seen dragonfish feed in the wild, but the researchers make a good case that these transparent teeth are an evolutionary adaptation for hunting in the deep sea, Kenaley said.
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Kenyan farmer Abel Mutie Mathoka thought it must be a joke when he was told he could irrigate his drought-hit crops more cheaply, cleanly and efficiently using a pump fueled by cotton waste.

“Who could believe it’s possible to make a fuel better than diesel from cotton seeds? I didn’t!” laughed Mathoka, crouching down to inspect the watermelons on his 10-acre (four-hectare) shared plot in Ituri village in Kenya’s southeast Kitui county.

“But it works,” he said, walking over to a nearby tree and plucking a large green pawpaw. “Irrigation with this biodiesel water pump has helped me get higher yields, especially during drought periods.”

Mathoka said his earnings had doubled in the two years he has been pumping water using biodiesel, which is both more efficient and 20 shillings ($0.20) per liter cheaper than regular diesel.

Good for farmer and planet

The biodiesel he is using is not just good news for him, it is also good news for the planet.

Unlike most biofuels, which are derived from crops such as maize, sugarcane, soybean, rapeseed and jatropha, it is made from a byproduct of the cotton-making process.

That means that as well as being cleaner and cheaper than regular fuel, it is more sustainable than other biofuels because no extra land is needed to produce it.

From Brazil to Indonesia, the rush to cultivate biofuel crops has driven forest communities off their land and pushed farmers to switch from crops-for-food to more profitable crops-for-fuel, exacerbating food shortages.

“Our biodiesel comes from crushing cotton seeds left over as waste after ginning — the process of separating the seeds from raw cotton,” said Taher Zavery, managing director of Zaynagro Industries Ltd, the Kitui-based company producing the biodiesel.

“We started producing and using it to power our cotton ginning factory in 2011. With increased production, we now use it for our trucks, sell it to the United Nations to run some of their buses, and also to local farmers for irrigation.”

More than 1,200 farmers in Kitui have so far invested in biodiesel pumps for irrigation as part of an initiative launched by Zaynagro in 2015, said Zavery.

Dry riverbeds

Climate change is taking a toll across east Africa and increasingly erratic weather is becoming commonplace in countries such as Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Ethiopia, resulting in lower rainfall.

The recurring dry spells are destroying crops and pastures and are starving animals, pushing millions of people in the Horn of Africa to the brink of extreme hunger.

The number of Kenyans in need of food aid in March surged by almost 70% over a period of eight months to 1.1 million, largely because of poor rains, according to government figures.

With almost half Kenya’s 47 counties declared to have a serious shortage of rain, humanitarian agencies are warning of increased hunger in the months ahead.

“Only light rainfall is forecast through June … and this is not expected to alleviate drought in affected areas of Kenya and Somalia,” said the Famine Early Warning Systems Network in its latest report. “Well-below-average crop production, poor livestock body conditions, and increased local food prices are anticipated, which will reduce poor households’ access to food.”

In Kitui’s Kyuso area, the signs are already evident.

Rivers, water pans and dams are drying up as a result of the prolonged dry spell.

Villagers complain of trekking longer distances, sometimes more than 10 km (6 miles), with their donkeys laden with empty jerry cans in search of water.

Small-scale farmers, most of whom are dependent on rain-fed agriculture, discuss plans to sell their goats to make ends meet if the harvest is poor.

Battling drought with biodiesel

But not all Kitui’s farmers are worried.

A small but growing number are shedding their burden of reliance on the weather and investing in irrigation systems powered by Zaynagro’s cotton seed biodiesel through a pay-as-you-go scheme launched more than three years ago.

Neighboring farmers band together to invest in the irrigation system, which includes the biodiesel pump, 12 meters of pipes and 10 liters of biodiesel, at costs starting from 32,000 shillings, depending on the size of the pump.

The farmers make an initial payment, then pay interest-free monthly installments until the total is paid off. They buy the biodiesel to run the pumps from Zaynagro at 80 shillings a liter.

Farmer Alex Babu Kitheka, 39, said the biodiesel pump allowed him to irrigate a larger portion of his 1-acre plot, where he grows a variety of vegetables including maize, tomatoes, spinach and sweet potatoes.

“With a diesel pump, maize yields were lower and I would get 15,000 shillings in three months. With the biodiesel pump, I can earn 45,000 shillings,” said Alex Babu Kitheka, standing near his plot in Ilangilo village, 40 km (25 miles) from Kitui town.

Circular economy

Other farmers point to the scheme as a major benefit in helping improve their output.

“The installment scheme is good. Most farmers don’t have the money and cannot easily get a loan to buy a pump like this,” said Maurice Kitheka Munyoki, 41, as he stood next to his blue biodiesel pump. “Having a scheme like this helps us a lot. Our yields are good, which means we can pay off the cost of the pump slowly in small amounts, and have money left over to pay the school fees.”

Zaynagro’s initiative is still in its early stages, with few farmers having repaid the full cost of the pumps.

But such biofuel schemes are promising because they create a circular economy by turning waste to biofuel for profit, said Sanjoy Sanyal, senior associate for Clean Energy Finance at the World Resources Institute.

The simplicity of the model — easy-to-use, robust technology, assured supply of biodiesel combined with a pay-as-you-go scheme — could help electrify rural Africa, he said.

“There is a mosaic of sustainable energy options in the world. The key issue is testing ideas and approaches in a collaborative fashion,” Sanyal said.

“Other cotton ginning factories in the region should try and learn from this experiment. Financial institutions should start experimenting with loans to groups of farmers. International donors and investors need to support experimentation.”
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As if life was not bad enough for Adnan Kadhim – he lives in a slum where municipal authorities dump Baghdad’s rubbish – now someone is setting the waste on fire, making his children sick.

As the United Nations marks World Environment Day on Wednesday, Iraq is suffering a pollution crisis, with trash piling up across the country and thick clouds of smoke produced by inefficient factories hovering above Baghdad.

“The dirt, our children are sick, our families are sick. My daughter has asthma, and I had to take my family to the hospital last night. We had to go at 2 am to give her oxygen. What have we done wrong to deserve this?” asks the 48-year-old, with mountains of rubbish behind him.

No one in his unplanned neighborhood within Baghdad’s southeastern Zaafaraniya district knows who is setting the rubbish on fire, and their complaints to government and municipal authorities have fallen on deaf ears because they are technically not supposed to be living in the area.

“For about a week or ten days now we haven’t been able to sleep or work. We just sitting around because of this smoke, said Jabbar, a builder.

“Every day, it starts at sunset and doesn’t stop until the morning. You can see the tractors (shoveling trash) in front of you. We are being destroyed. We implored the government, and no one did anything, we went to the municipality and still nothing,” he added.

Officials say Iraq suffers from the lack of a formal waste management system, but that they are working on introducing one which they hope will alleviate the country’s numerous environmental hazards which also include pollution from oil production – Iraq is OPEC’s second-largest producer of crude oil – and other industries.

“I am sorry to say there are no hygienic official landfills. All what we have are unorganized areas for waste collection,” said Deputy Environment Minister Jassim Humadi. “We are working hard today to issue legislation establishing the National Center for Waste Management.”

Increasing pollution rates and other “environmental challenges” could be linked to rising rates of chronic diseases such as cancer and respiratory issues, as well as birth deformities, he said.

Iraq is working with the international bodies on a plan to help it clean up, he added.

Change is Costly

Business owners say they are doing what they can to operate in a more environmentally-friendly manner but that it is too costly. The government needs to help them do so, they argue.

At a brick factory in Nahrawan, east Baghdad, ovens running on crude oil are releasing thick smoke, making it hard to breath, or see anything.

“Crude oil, if burned in an incorrect way, the way we burn it, of course has emissions. The new ovens which we are upgrading to will reduce these emissions by 60 percent, but that should not be the ceiling of our ambitions,” says Ali Rabeiy, the factory owner.

More environmentally-friendly ovens can fashion bricks and produce only 5 percent of the current harmful emissions, and some even produce none, he said, but they cost anywhere between 4 and 6 billion Iraqi dinars ($3.2-4.8 million), which is not financially feasible for a business like his.

($1 = 1,186.4300 Iraqi dinars)
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Working in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak in 2015, researcher Katherina Thomas noticed that while experts and aid workers had lots to say, no one was listening to ordinary people affected.

She and a team set about interviewing patients and community members about their experiences, creating an oral history archive which she believes could help responders struggling to gain the trust of Ebola-hit communities in Congo today.

Ebola has been spreading in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since August in the world’s second biggest outbreak, which has killed 1,354 people and surpassed 2,000 cases this week, according to government figures.

Struggling to contain outbreak

Aid workers have said they are struggling to contain the outbreak because of community resistance, with people refusing vaccines, concealing symptoms and attacking treatment centers.

“People are asking why community members don’t trust the responders, but I think we should be asking, why aren’t we trusting them?” said Thomas, currently a writer-in-residence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in the United States.

“They don’t have a seat at the table, but their voices and insights are so crucial,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Reasons for resistance

Community resistance was also a problem during the West Africa outbreak, which hit Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the reasons were sometimes surprising, said Thomas.

She and her colleagues interviewed the young men who attacked an Ebola quarantine center in Liberia in 2014 and found they believed they were saving their community, she said.

Although the context is different in eastern Congo, an active conflict zone, Thomas said some of the insights are relevant and she hopes to make the archive available for public use.

The Red Cross has been leading efforts to collect community feedback during the current outbreak with over 700 volunteers doing interviews by going door-to-door.

Perceptions are changing

By analyzing which comments are most frequent and where, they have been able to see how perceptions of Ebola are changing and what concerns need to be addressed, said Ombretta Baggio, senior advisor for community engagement at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

“If you start from where they are, they listen to you differently,” Baggio said of the people affected.

Right now, for example, there is a rumor going around that in treatment centers patients are given a pill to make them die, she said.

The West Africa outbreak reached a turning point when communities themselves became engaged in stamping out the disease, rather than just aid workers, she said.

“I think sharing those lessons learned — not by responders but by communities — would be so powerful,” said Baggio.
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Ahead of World Environment Day, a group of Haitian young professionals put into practice a famous line uttered by former U.S. president John F. Kennedy in his 1961 inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

With the help of the local Rotary Club’s Rotaract group, 6,000 trees were given to the town of Beret, a community in Haiti’s south that suffered heavy damage during Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

“We’re all responsible for the environment, so we are taking the lead. We’re not waiting for government to do it,” Justin Ovid, president of the Rotaract club, told VOA Creole. “We have our own role to play in the process, so that’s why we launched this initiative.”

The International Rotary Club, founded in 1905, has over a million members across the globe with a mission of creating “lasting change” in their communities.

Ovid said the demand for charcoal has had negative consequences on the community’s tree population.

“Deforestation, especially people cutting down trees to make charcoal, has a huge impact. So, (that’s why) we wanted to make our own contribution to the effort to reforest the country,” he said.

Haiti lost 9.5% of its forest foliage between 1990 and 2005, according to the environmental website Mongabay.com, which measures global deforestation. A survey by the nonprofit conservation group Societe Audubon Haiti warned the country could lose its forest cover in the next two decades if nothing is done to halt current deforestation trends.

The tree planting was done on Monday instead of Wednesday, June 5, when World Environment Day is observed internationally. Wednesday is market day in Beret, and Rotaract wanted to make sure members of the community could participate in the effort.

Samson Croisiere, a young resident of the town who participated in the tree planting event, vowed his community would continue to nurture the trees.

“This event is so important to our community,” he told VOA Creole. “Residents who are here will take some of the trees home to plant. They will protect them from insects and also water them to keep them healthy. That way, they will continue to benefit us in the years to come.”

 
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Senior U.S. and military officials are warning Congress about the potential threat to national security from melting ice in the Arctic.

 

Officials from the Office of National Intelligence and the Pentagon say climate change will open the Arctic to more ship traffic and commercial activities by Russia and China and create potential sources of conflict.

 

Peter Kiemel, counselor to the National Intelligence Council, says Russia and China are dramatically increasing their investment there.

 

Jeff Ringhausen, a Navy official, says that though Arctic shipping is likely to increase, it’ll still amount only to a small portion of overall global shipping.

 

He says the Russian government is “overly optimistic” regarding the increased shipping and investment in the Arctic.

 

The witnesses spoke at a hearing on climate change impacts on national security.

 

 
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Activists marking World Environment day are calling for action to tackle air pollution, which researchers say kills millions of people every year and impoverishes societies struggling to reduce its harmful effects.

“We are walking on” is a World Environment Day song inspired by childhood memories of a Japanese town fighting air pollution — and winning. The young, enthusiastic performers express their love for the environment.  Through their artistry, they hope to raise awareness of the dangers threatening the planet and to promote action to preserve its natural beauty.

The World Health Organization considers air pollution the world’s largest single environmental health risk, killing about seven million people every year. Millions more suffer long term health problems, such as asthma, stroke, lung cancer, and heart disease.

The World Bank estimates the global economic cost of breathing in dirty air at more than five trillion dollars every year. Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, Olga Algayerova called the human and economic costs arising from air pollution staggering.

But she said her agency has shown that effective action can be taken to combat this scourge. She noted that in 1979, 51 countries in Europe and North America signed the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, familiarly known as the Air Convention or CLRTAP.

The convention was reached under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE.)

“For instance, emissions of harmful substances including particulate matters and sulfur have been cut by 30 to 80 percent since 1990 in Europe and 30 to 40 percent in North America,” she added. “… People in Europe live 12 months longer due to our Air Convention.”

She said the one additional year of life expectancy gained by reducing air pollution is preventing 600,000 premature deaths annually in the European region.

Algayerova noted that the Air Convention is the only regional policy solution of this kind. Thanks to its success, she said other regions are looking to UNECE for advice on how they too can act to reduce air pollution.
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