Boeing anti-stall software forced down the nose of a doomed Ethiopian jet even after pilots had turned it off, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, as investigators scrutinize the role played by technology and crew in the fatal March 10 crash.

A preliminary Ethiopian report into the disaster is due to be published within days and may include evidence the software system kicked in as many as four times before the 737 MAX dived into the ground, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

A third person familiar with the findings confirmed the software had fired up again after pilots had initially switched it off, but said there was only one significant episode in which the plane pointed itself lower in the moments before the crash.

The so-called MCAS software is at the center of accident probes in both the crash of Ethiopian flight 302 and a Lion Air accident in Indonesia five months earlier that together killed 346 people.

It was not immediately clear whether the Ethiopian crew chose to re-deploy the system, which pushes the Boeing 737 MAX downwards to avoid stalling. But one of the sources said investigators were studying the possibility that the software started working again without human intervention.

In a statement on media reports about the investigation, Boeing said: “We urge caution against speculating and drawing conclusions on the findings prior to the release of the flight data and the preliminary report.”

Ethiopian investigators were not available for comment.

The Ethiopian crash led to a global grounding of 737 MAX jets and scrutiny of its certification process. Initial results of the accident investigation are due within days.

The stakes are high. The 737 MAX is Boeing’s top-selling jet with almost 5,000 on order. Ethiopian Airlines is also in the midst of an expansion drive, while other 737 MAX customers and victims’ families want answers, and potentially compensation.

Boeing shares were down 1.5 percent at 1450 GMT. They have lost more than 8.5 percent since the Ethiopian crash.

Emergency procedures

Getting the planes flying again depends partly on the role that Boeing design features are found to have played in the crash, though investigators are also paying attention to airline operations, crew actions and regulatory measures.

Boeing is upgrading the MCAS software and training while stressing that existing cockpit procedures enable safe flight.

People familiar with the investigation have already said the anti-stall software was activated by erroneous ‘angle of attack’ data from a key aircraft sensor.

Now, the investigation has turned towards how MCAS was initially disabled by pilots, but then appeared to resume sending automated instructions to point downwards before the jet plunged to the ground, the two sources said.

Boeing issued guidelines to pilots on how to disable the anti-stall system after the Indonesian crash, reminding pilots to use cut-out switches in the console to shut off the system in the event of problems.

Cockpit procedures call for pilots to leave the MCAS system off for the rest of the flight once it has been disengaged.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the pilots had initially followed Boeing’s emergency procedures but later deviated from them as they tried to regain control of the plane.

Disabling the system does not shut down MCAS completely but severs an electrical link between the software’s attempts to give orders to push the plane lower and the actual controls, a person familiar with the aircraft system said.

Investigators are studying whether there are any conditions under which MCAS could re-activate itself automatically, without the pilots intentionally reversing the cut-out maneuver.

Aerospace analyst Bjorn Fehrm said in a blog post for Leeham News that pilots may have deliberately re-activated the system in order to make it easier to trim or control the aircraft only to be overwhelmed too quickly by counter-moves from MCAS.

Safety experts stress the investigation is far from complete and most aviation disasters are caused by a unique combination of human and technical factors.
…

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Boeing anti-stall software forced down the nose of a doomed Ethiopian jet even after pilots had turned it off, sources told Reuters on Wednesday, as investigators scrutinize the role played by technology and crew in the fatal March 10 crash.

A preliminary Ethiopian report into the disaster is due to be published within days and may include evidence the software system kicked in as many as four times before the 737 MAX dived into the ground, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

A third person familiar with the findings confirmed the software had fired up again after pilots had initially switched it off, but said there was only one significant episode in which the plane pointed itself lower in the moments before the crash.

The so-called MCAS software is at the center of accident probes in both the crash of Ethiopian flight 302 and a Lion Air accident in Indonesia five months earlier that together killed 346 people.

It was not immediately clear whether the Ethiopian crew chose to re-deploy the system, which pushes the Boeing 737 MAX downwards to avoid stalling. But one of the sources said investigators were studying the possibility that the software started working again without human intervention.

In a statement on media reports about the investigation, Boeing said: “We urge caution against speculating and drawing conclusions on the findings prior to the release of the flight data and the preliminary report.”

Ethiopian investigators were not available for comment.

The Ethiopian crash led to a global grounding of 737 MAX jets and scrutiny of its certification process. Initial results of the accident investigation are due within days.

The stakes are high. The 737 MAX is Boeing’s top-selling jet with almost 5,000 on order. Ethiopian Airlines is also in the midst of an expansion drive, while other 737 MAX customers and victims’ families want answers, and potentially compensation.

Boeing shares were down 1.5 percent at 1450 GMT. They have lost more than 8.5 percent since the Ethiopian crash.

Emergency procedures

Getting the planes flying again depends partly on the role that Boeing design features are found to have played in the crash, though investigators are also paying attention to airline operations, crew actions and regulatory measures.

Boeing is upgrading the MCAS software and training while stressing that existing cockpit procedures enable safe flight.

People familiar with the investigation have already said the anti-stall software was activated by erroneous ‘angle of attack’ data from a key aircraft sensor.

Now, the investigation has turned towards how MCAS was initially disabled by pilots, but then appeared to resume sending automated instructions to point downwards before the jet plunged to the ground, the two sources said.

Boeing issued guidelines to pilots on how to disable the anti-stall system after the Indonesian crash, reminding pilots to use cut-out switches in the console to shut off the system in the event of problems.

Cockpit procedures call for pilots to leave the MCAS system off for the rest of the flight once it has been disengaged.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the pilots had initially followed Boeing’s emergency procedures but later deviated from them as they tried to regain control of the plane.

Disabling the system does not shut down MCAS completely but severs an electrical link between the software’s attempts to give orders to push the plane lower and the actual controls, a person familiar with the aircraft system said.

Investigators are studying whether there are any conditions under which MCAS could re-activate itself automatically, without the pilots intentionally reversing the cut-out maneuver.

Aerospace analyst Bjorn Fehrm said in a blog post for Leeham News that pilots may have deliberately re-activated the system in order to make it easier to trim or control the aircraft only to be overwhelmed too quickly by counter-moves from MCAS.

Safety experts stress the investigation is far from complete and most aviation disasters are caused by a unique combination of human and technical factors.
…

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U.S. health officials are investigating whether electronic cigarettes may trigger seizures in some people who use the nicotine-vaping devices.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it is reviewing 35 reports of seizures among e-cigarette users, particularly young people.

 

Regulators say it’s not yet clear whether vaping is responsible. But they say they’re concerned and want the public to report any information about the issue.

 

Most e-cigarettes heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable vapor. The battery-powered devices are a fast-growing industry though there are no rules on how much nicotine they deliver.

 

Nicotine poisoning can cause seizures, convulsions, vomiting and brain injury. The FDA has previously warned of nicotine poisoning in children who accidentally swallowed the formulas used for vaping.

 
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U.S. health officials are investigating whether electronic cigarettes may trigger seizures in some people who use the nicotine-vaping devices.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it is reviewing 35 reports of seizures among e-cigarette users, particularly young people.

 

Regulators say it’s not yet clear whether vaping is responsible. But they say they’re concerned and want the public to report any information about the issue.

 

Most e-cigarettes heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable vapor. The battery-powered devices are a fast-growing industry though there are no rules on how much nicotine they deliver.

 

Nicotine poisoning can cause seizures, convulsions, vomiting and brain injury. The FDA has previously warned of nicotine poisoning in children who accidentally swallowed the formulas used for vaping.

 
…

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A quarter of the world’s health facilities lack basic water services, impacting 2 billion people, the United Nations said on Wednesday, warning that unhygienic conditions could fuel the global rise of deadly superbugs.

In the poorest countries, about half of facilities do not have basic water services — meaning water delivered by pipes or boreholes that protect it from feces — putting birthing mothers and newborns in particular danger, new data showed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said more than 1 million deaths a year were associated with unclean births, and 15 percent of all patients attending a health facility developed infections.

“Hospitals are not necessarily points of care where you can heal, but points of almost infection. (We) are very alarmed by this,” WHO public health coordinator Bruce Gordon told a media briefing in Geneva.

Worldwide, nearly 900 million people have no water at all at their local health facility or have to use unprotected wells or springs. One in five facilities also lack toilets, impacting about 1.5 billion people, the agencies said.

One of the development goals agreed by world leaders in 2015 was for all to have access to safe water and sanitation by 2030.

“A health care facility without water is not really a health care facility,” said UNICEF statistician Tom Slaymaker.

“Sick people shed a lot more pathogens in their feces, and without toilets, staff, patients — this includes mothers and babies — are at a much greater risk of diseases caused and spread through human waste.”

The agencies said good water and sanitation services were crucial to reducing the spread of antimicrobial resistance, one of the greatest global health threats.

International charity WaterAid said rising rates of superbugs had been linked to poor sanitary conditions in health facilities which lead to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.

Helen Hamilton, WaterAid policy analyst, said the data revealed the “often-deplorable conditions” in which health workers were trying to help patients.

“The battle to save lives, and to slow the rise of deadly superbugs which threaten us all, cannot be won as long as these dedicated frontline staff are denied … the fundamentals of health care,” she said.

She urged governments to prioritize the issue when they meet at next month’s World Health Assembly in Geneva.

The data showed that West Africa had some of the lowest rates of access to water and sanitation.

WaterAid said this was alarming given that a lack of clean water and good hygiene had contributed to the spread of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak in the region, which killed more than 11,300 people between 2013 and 2016.
…

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A quarter of the world’s health facilities lack basic water services, impacting 2 billion people, the United Nations said on Wednesday, warning that unhygienic conditions could fuel the global rise of deadly superbugs.

In the poorest countries, about half of facilities do not have basic water services — meaning water delivered by pipes or boreholes that protect it from feces — putting birthing mothers and newborns in particular danger, new data showed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said more than 1 million deaths a year were associated with unclean births, and 15 percent of all patients attending a health facility developed infections.

“Hospitals are not necessarily points of care where you can heal, but points of almost infection. (We) are very alarmed by this,” WHO public health coordinator Bruce Gordon told a media briefing in Geneva.

Worldwide, nearly 900 million people have no water at all at their local health facility or have to use unprotected wells or springs. One in five facilities also lack toilets, impacting about 1.5 billion people, the agencies said.

One of the development goals agreed by world leaders in 2015 was for all to have access to safe water and sanitation by 2030.

“A health care facility without water is not really a health care facility,” said UNICEF statistician Tom Slaymaker.

“Sick people shed a lot more pathogens in their feces, and without toilets, staff, patients — this includes mothers and babies — are at a much greater risk of diseases caused and spread through human waste.”

The agencies said good water and sanitation services were crucial to reducing the spread of antimicrobial resistance, one of the greatest global health threats.

International charity WaterAid said rising rates of superbugs had been linked to poor sanitary conditions in health facilities which lead to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.

Helen Hamilton, WaterAid policy analyst, said the data revealed the “often-deplorable conditions” in which health workers were trying to help patients.

“The battle to save lives, and to slow the rise of deadly superbugs which threaten us all, cannot be won as long as these dedicated frontline staff are denied … the fundamentals of health care,” she said.

She urged governments to prioritize the issue when they meet at next month’s World Health Assembly in Geneva.

The data showed that West Africa had some of the lowest rates of access to water and sanitation.

WaterAid said this was alarming given that a lack of clean water and good hygiene had contributed to the spread of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak in the region, which killed more than 11,300 people between 2013 and 2016.
…

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Scientists working on developing vaccines against Ebola have found they can “harvest” antibodies from volunteers vaccinated in research trials and use them to make treatments for the deadly viral infection.

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports, the scientists said the approach could be used for Ebola and other newly emerging deadly diseases caused by viruses.

The technique, based on people exposed to the Ebola vaccine but not the Ebola virus itself, suggests protective therapies could be developed from people who are disease-free.

“It is a small, extra step that could lead to new antibody therapies from an increased pool of donors and with reduced risk,” said Alain Townsend, a professor at the MRC Human Immunology Unit at Britain’s Oxford University.

He noted that besides Ebola, many experimental vaccines for other life-threatening infections, such as H5N1 and H7N9 bird flu and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), are entering clinical trials and could offer similar opportunities for antibodies to be collected.

Ebola is now spreading in Democratic Republic of Congo, where World Health Organization data show at least 676 people have been killed and more than 700 others infected in an outbreak that started eight months ago.

The largest Ebola epidemic in history swept through Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea in 2013-2016, killing more than 11,000 people. That outbreak prompted a global push to develop vaccines and treatments — and some, including a protective shot developed by Merck and several antibody therapies for infected patients, have been deployed in the Congo outbreak.

Antibodies intended for treatment are normally collected from the blood of people who have survived infection. But they can also be tricky to obtain and carry heightened risks such as potential persistent viruses or other pathogens.

The Oxford team decided to try using blood from trial volunteers who had been given an experimental Ebola vaccine and whose immune system had responded to the shot by making antibodies. They successfully isolated 82 antibodies taken from 11 volunteers in trial at Oxford’s Jenner Institute.

They found that despite having less time to develop, a third of the antibodies were effective at neutralizing a strain of Ebola known as Zaire — the one causing the Congo outbreak.

The scientists then made a cocktail of four of the antibodies to create a treatment, which successfully cured six guinea pigs of Ebola when it was administered three days after infection.
…

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Scientists working on developing vaccines against Ebola have found they can “harvest” antibodies from volunteers vaccinated in research trials and use them to make treatments for the deadly viral infection.

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports, the scientists said the approach could be used for Ebola and other newly emerging deadly diseases caused by viruses.

The technique, based on people exposed to the Ebola vaccine but not the Ebola virus itself, suggests protective therapies could be developed from people who are disease-free.

“It is a small, extra step that could lead to new antibody therapies from an increased pool of donors and with reduced risk,” said Alain Townsend, a professor at the MRC Human Immunology Unit at Britain’s Oxford University.

He noted that besides Ebola, many experimental vaccines for other life-threatening infections, such as H5N1 and H7N9 bird flu and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), are entering clinical trials and could offer similar opportunities for antibodies to be collected.

Ebola is now spreading in Democratic Republic of Congo, where World Health Organization data show at least 676 people have been killed and more than 700 others infected in an outbreak that started eight months ago.

The largest Ebola epidemic in history swept through Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea in 2013-2016, killing more than 11,000 people. That outbreak prompted a global push to develop vaccines and treatments — and some, including a protective shot developed by Merck and several antibody therapies for infected patients, have been deployed in the Congo outbreak.

Antibodies intended for treatment are normally collected from the blood of people who have survived infection. But they can also be tricky to obtain and carry heightened risks such as potential persistent viruses or other pathogens.

The Oxford team decided to try using blood from trial volunteers who had been given an experimental Ebola vaccine and whose immune system had responded to the shot by making antibodies. They successfully isolated 82 antibodies taken from 11 volunteers in trial at Oxford’s Jenner Institute.

They found that despite having less time to develop, a third of the antibodies were effective at neutralizing a strain of Ebola known as Zaire — the one causing the Congo outbreak.

The scientists then made a cocktail of four of the antibodies to create a treatment, which successfully cured six guinea pigs of Ebola when it was administered three days after infection.
…

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Death rates from prostate cancer — the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men — have stabilized or declined in dozens of countries since the turn of the century, the American Cancer Society reported Tuesday.

In 33 of 44 countries surveyed, the incidence of prostate cancer had stabilized in the last five years for which data was available — and in seven countries, it was down, the report found.

Only four of the countries surveyed, including Bulgaria, saw an increased incidence of prostate cancer, it said.

“In the most recent five years of data examined, prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates are decreasing or stabilizing in most parts of the world,” the study’s author MaryBeth Freeman said.

Prostate cancer deaths were down in 14 countries surveyed and stable in 54 others. Only three countries experienced a rise in prostate cancer deaths, according to the study findings, which were presented Tuesday at a conference in Atlanta.

The United States had the biggest drop in prostate cancers, which Freeman attributed to a decline in the use of a controversial diagnostic test that identified too many non-dangerous tumors.

The incidence of prostate cancers rose in the U.S. during the 1980s and early 1990s when the PSA, or Prostate-Specific Antigen, blood test became widely available.

The test is imprecise, however, and yields too many false positives. It identifies higher than normal levels of PSA, a protein produced by the prostate, which could be a sign of cancer but is more often a symptom of other diseases.

Moreover, some prostate cancers are not aggressive and do not grow enough to pose a risk.

A false positive, on the other hand, can have harmful consequences for the patient: anxiety, complications linked to biopsies, or anti-cancer treatments.

In 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an expert panel that reviews the effectiveness of preventive clinical services, advised against use of the PSA test.

In 2018, it revised the recommendation to say that taking the test should be an “individual” decision for men 55 to 69. At 70 and after, it advised against its use.
…

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Death rates from prostate cancer — the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men — have stabilized or declined in dozens of countries since the turn of the century, the American Cancer Society reported Tuesday.

In 33 of 44 countries surveyed, the incidence of prostate cancer had stabilized in the last five years for which data was available — and in seven countries, it was down, the report found.

Only four of the countries surveyed, including Bulgaria, saw an increased incidence of prostate cancer, it said.

“In the most recent five years of data examined, prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates are decreasing or stabilizing in most parts of the world,” the study’s author MaryBeth Freeman said.

Prostate cancer deaths were down in 14 countries surveyed and stable in 54 others. Only three countries experienced a rise in prostate cancer deaths, according to the study findings, which were presented Tuesday at a conference in Atlanta.

The United States had the biggest drop in prostate cancers, which Freeman attributed to a decline in the use of a controversial diagnostic test that identified too many non-dangerous tumors.

The incidence of prostate cancers rose in the U.S. during the 1980s and early 1990s when the PSA, or Prostate-Specific Antigen, blood test became widely available.

The test is imprecise, however, and yields too many false positives. It identifies higher than normal levels of PSA, a protein produced by the prostate, which could be a sign of cancer but is more often a symptom of other diseases.

Moreover, some prostate cancers are not aggressive and do not grow enough to pose a risk.

A false positive, on the other hand, can have harmful consequences for the patient: anxiety, complications linked to biopsies, or anti-cancer treatments.

In 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an expert panel that reviews the effectiveness of preventive clinical services, advised against use of the PSA test.

In 2018, it revised the recommendation to say that taking the test should be an “individual” decision for men 55 to 69. At 70 and after, it advised against its use.
…

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NASA has made it clear they want astronauts back on the Moon in 2024, and now, they are zeroing in on the Red Planet – the US space agency confirmed that it wants humans to reach Mars by 2033.

Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, said Tuesday that in order to achieve that goal, other parts of the program – including a lunar landing – need to move forward more quickly.

“We want to achieve a Mars landing in 2033,” Bridenstine told lawmakers at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill.

“We can move up the Mars landing by moving up the Moon landing. The Moon is the proving ground,” added the former Republican congressman, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.

NASA is racing to enact the plans of Trump, who dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to announce that the timetable for once again putting man on the Moon had been cut by four years to 2024.

The new date is politically significant: it would be the final year in Trump’s eventual second term at the White House.

Many experts and lawmakers are concerned that NASA cannot make the deadline, especially given the major delays in development of its new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which is being built by aerospace giant Boeing.

Any mission to Mars would take at least two years, given the distance to be traveled. Getting there alone would take six months, as opposed to the three days needed to reach the Moon.

A round trip to Mars can only take place when the Red Planet is positioned on the same side of the Sun as Earth — that occurs about every 26 months, so the dates are 2031, 2033, and so on.

In 2017, a NASA budget bill set 2033 as the target date for the first manned mission to Mars, but NASA itself has talked about the “2030s” in its roadmap.

NASA wants to learn how to extract and use the tons of ice at the Moon’s south pole.

“Water ice represents air to breathe, it represents water to drink, it represents fuel,” Bridenstine said.

“The intent of course is to not just get humans to the surface of the Moon but prove that we can live and work on another world.”

Democratic lawmaker Eddie Bernice Johnson, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, asked Bridenstine to put a price tag on the new schedule.

The NASA chief said he would make his updated budget request by April 15.

 
…

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NASA has made it clear they want astronauts back on the Moon in 2024, and now, they are zeroing in on the Red Planet – the US space agency confirmed that it wants humans to reach Mars by 2033.

Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, said Tuesday that in order to achieve that goal, other parts of the program – including a lunar landing – need to move forward more quickly.

“We want to achieve a Mars landing in 2033,” Bridenstine told lawmakers at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill.

“We can move up the Mars landing by moving up the Moon landing. The Moon is the proving ground,” added the former Republican congressman, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.

NASA is racing to enact the plans of Trump, who dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to announce that the timetable for once again putting man on the Moon had been cut by four years to 2024.

The new date is politically significant: it would be the final year in Trump’s eventual second term at the White House.

Many experts and lawmakers are concerned that NASA cannot make the deadline, especially given the major delays in development of its new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which is being built by aerospace giant Boeing.

Any mission to Mars would take at least two years, given the distance to be traveled. Getting there alone would take six months, as opposed to the three days needed to reach the Moon.

A round trip to Mars can only take place when the Red Planet is positioned on the same side of the Sun as Earth — that occurs about every 26 months, so the dates are 2031, 2033, and so on.

In 2017, a NASA budget bill set 2033 as the target date for the first manned mission to Mars, but NASA itself has talked about the “2030s” in its roadmap.

NASA wants to learn how to extract and use the tons of ice at the Moon’s south pole.

“Water ice represents air to breathe, it represents water to drink, it represents fuel,” Bridenstine said.

“The intent of course is to not just get humans to the surface of the Moon but prove that we can live and work on another world.”

Democratic lawmaker Eddie Bernice Johnson, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, asked Bridenstine to put a price tag on the new schedule.

The NASA chief said he would make his updated budget request by April 15.

 
…

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One morning last fall, 4-year-old Joey Wilcox woke up with the left side of his face drooping.

It was the first sign of an unfolding nightmare.

Three days later, Joey was in a hospital intensive care unit, unable to move his arms or legs or sit up. Spinal taps and other tests failed to find a cause. Doctors worried he was about to lose the ability to breathe.

“It’s devastating,” said his father, Jeremy Wilcox, of Herndon, Virginia. “Your healthy child can catch a cold — and then become paralyzed.”

Joey, who survived but still suffers some of the effects, was one of 228 confirmed victims in the U.S. last year of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, a rare, mysterious and sometimes deadly paralyzing illness that seems to ebb and flow on an every-other-year cycle and is beginning to alarm public health officials because it is striking more and more children.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it may bear similarities to polio, which smoldered among humans for centuries before it exploded into fearsome epidemics in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Fauci, who published a report about the disease Tuesday in the journal mBio, said it is unlikely AFM will become as bad as polio, which struck tens of thousands of U.S. children annually before a vaccine became available in the 1950s.

But he warned: “Don’t assume that it’s going to stay at a couple of hundred cases every other year.”

While other countries have reported cases, including Canada, France, Britain and Norway, the size and pattern of the U.S. outbreaks have been more pronounced. More than 550 Americans have been struck this decade. The oldest was 32. More than 90% were children, most around 4, 5 or 6 years old.

Most had a cold-like illness and fever, seemed to get over it, then descended into paralysis. In some cases, it started in small ways — for example, a thumb that suddenly wouldn’t move. Some went on to lose the ability to eat or draw breath.

Many families say their children have regained at least some movement in affected limbs, but stories of complete recovery are unusual. Health officials cannot say how many recovered completely, partly or not at all, or how many have died, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says deaths are rare.

Scientists suspect the illness is being caused chiefly by a certain virus that was identified more than 55 years ago and may have mutated to become more dangerous. But they have yet to prove that.

Treatments, physical therapy

And while doctors have deployed a number of treatments singly or in combination — steroids, antiviral medications, antibiotics, a blood-cleansing process — the CDC says there is no clear evidence they work.

Many parents say that when they first brought their child to the emergency room, they quickly realized to their horror that the doctors were at sea, too.

“Everyone is desperate for some magical thing,” said Rachel Scott, a Tomball, Texas, woman whose son Braden developed AFM in 2016 and has recovered somewhat after intensive physical therapy but still cannot move his right arm and has trouble swallowing and moving his neck.

A growing number of experts agree that physical therapy makes a difference.

“These kids can continue to recover very slowly, year over year. … It’s driven by how much therapy they do,” said Dr. Benjamin Greenberg of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the condition.

Wilcox, Joey’s father, said his son made huge improvements that way. Joey can run and use his arms. Still, muscle tone is weak in his right leg and shoulder, and he still has left-side facial paralysis. “He can’t completely smile,” his dad said.

Other stories are more tragic.

Katie Bustamante’s son Alex developed AFM in 2016. The suburban Sacramento, California, mother realized something was wrong when she asked the boy, then 5, why he wasn’t eating his yogurt. Alex replied that his thumb had stopped working and he couldn’t hold his spoon.

That morning was the start of 17 months of hospital stays, surgeries, therapy, and struggles with doctors and insurers to find a way to restore his ability to breathe. It ended one morning last May, when Alex died of complications.

Government officials need to step up, Bustamante said.

“I want them to research it and find the cause, and I want them to find a way to prevent it,” she said. “This is growing. This shouldn’t be happening.”

Suspected cause

More and more experts feel certain the main culprit is an enterovirus called EV-D68, based on the way waves of AFM have coincided with spikes of respiratory illnesses caused by EV-D68. Enteroviruses are a large family of viruses, some of which, such as polio, can damage the central nervous system, while many others cause mild symptoms or none at all.

In the U.S., doctors began reporting respiratory illnesses tied to EV-D68 in 1987, though usually no more than a dozen in any given year.

Then, in what may have been one of the first signs of the AFM waves to come, a 5-year-old boy in New Hampshire died in 2008 after developing neck tenderness and fever, then weakened arms and deadened legs. The boy had EV-D68, and in a report published in an obscure medical journal, researchers attributed his death to the virus.

The first real burst of AFM cases hit in 2014, when 120 were confirmed, with the largest concentrations in California and Colorado.

What ensued was an even-year, odd-year pattern: Cases dropped to 22 in 2015, jumped to 149 in 2016, and fell again, to 35 in 2017. Last year they reached 228, a number that may grow because scores of illnesses are still being investigated.

In keeping with the cyclical pattern, just four cases have been confirmed this year so far.

CDC officials consider an illness AFM based on scans and other evidence showing a certain kind of damage to the spinal cord. Proof of an enterovirus infection is not required for a case to be counted, mainly because such evidence has been hard to come by. So far, CDC investigators have been able to find evidence of enteroviruses in the spinal fluid of only four of 558 confirmed cases.

Scientists are using more sensitive spinal-fluid tests in hopes of establishing the connection between AFM and EV-D68 more firmly. That, in turn, could spur more focused work on treatments and maybe even a vaccine.

Meanwhile, Fauci’s agency has put out a call for researchers to apply for federal funds, and is tapping a University of Alabama-anchored network of pediatric research centers to work on the illness.

The CDC is pledging a greater focus, too. Parents have accused the agency of doing little more than counting cases and have complained that when they tried to contact CDC, they encountered only automated phone trees and form responses.

CDC officials have begun holding meetings and calls with families, set up a scientific task force and working to monitor cases more closely.

Fauci suggested it would be a mistake to assume that surges will take place every other year forever. The next one “may be in 2019, for all we know,” he said.
…

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One morning last fall, 4-year-old Joey Wilcox woke up with the left side of his face drooping.

It was the first sign of an unfolding nightmare.

Three days later, Joey was in a hospital intensive care unit, unable to move his arms or legs or sit up. Spinal taps and other tests failed to find a cause. Doctors worried he was about to lose the ability to breathe.

“It’s devastating,” said his father, Jeremy Wilcox, of Herndon, Virginia. “Your healthy child can catch a cold — and then become paralyzed.”

Joey, who survived but still suffers some of the effects, was one of 228 confirmed victims in the U.S. last year of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, a rare, mysterious and sometimes deadly paralyzing illness that seems to ebb and flow on an every-other-year cycle and is beginning to alarm public health officials because it is striking more and more children.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it may bear similarities to polio, which smoldered among humans for centuries before it exploded into fearsome epidemics in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Fauci, who published a report about the disease Tuesday in the journal mBio, said it is unlikely AFM will become as bad as polio, which struck tens of thousands of U.S. children annually before a vaccine became available in the 1950s.

But he warned: “Don’t assume that it’s going to stay at a couple of hundred cases every other year.”

While other countries have reported cases, including Canada, France, Britain and Norway, the size and pattern of the U.S. outbreaks have been more pronounced. More than 550 Americans have been struck this decade. The oldest was 32. More than 90% were children, most around 4, 5 or 6 years old.

Most had a cold-like illness and fever, seemed to get over it, then descended into paralysis. In some cases, it started in small ways — for example, a thumb that suddenly wouldn’t move. Some went on to lose the ability to eat or draw breath.

Many families say their children have regained at least some movement in affected limbs, but stories of complete recovery are unusual. Health officials cannot say how many recovered completely, partly or not at all, or how many have died, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says deaths are rare.

Scientists suspect the illness is being caused chiefly by a certain virus that was identified more than 55 years ago and may have mutated to become more dangerous. But they have yet to prove that.

Treatments, physical therapy

And while doctors have deployed a number of treatments singly or in combination — steroids, antiviral medications, antibiotics, a blood-cleansing process — the CDC says there is no clear evidence they work.

Many parents say that when they first brought their child to the emergency room, they quickly realized to their horror that the doctors were at sea, too.

“Everyone is desperate for some magical thing,” said Rachel Scott, a Tomball, Texas, woman whose son Braden developed AFM in 2016 and has recovered somewhat after intensive physical therapy but still cannot move his right arm and has trouble swallowing and moving his neck.

A growing number of experts agree that physical therapy makes a difference.

“These kids can continue to recover very slowly, year over year. … It’s driven by how much therapy they do,” said Dr. Benjamin Greenberg of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the condition.

Wilcox, Joey’s father, said his son made huge improvements that way. Joey can run and use his arms. Still, muscle tone is weak in his right leg and shoulder, and he still has left-side facial paralysis. “He can’t completely smile,” his dad said.

Other stories are more tragic.

Katie Bustamante’s son Alex developed AFM in 2016. The suburban Sacramento, California, mother realized something was wrong when she asked the boy, then 5, why he wasn’t eating his yogurt. Alex replied that his thumb had stopped working and he couldn’t hold his spoon.

That morning was the start of 17 months of hospital stays, surgeries, therapy, and struggles with doctors and insurers to find a way to restore his ability to breathe. It ended one morning last May, when Alex died of complications.

Government officials need to step up, Bustamante said.

“I want them to research it and find the cause, and I want them to find a way to prevent it,” she said. “This is growing. This shouldn’t be happening.”

Suspected cause

More and more experts feel certain the main culprit is an enterovirus called EV-D68, based on the way waves of AFM have coincided with spikes of respiratory illnesses caused by EV-D68. Enteroviruses are a large family of viruses, some of which, such as polio, can damage the central nervous system, while many others cause mild symptoms or none at all.

In the U.S., doctors began reporting respiratory illnesses tied to EV-D68 in 1987, though usually no more than a dozen in any given year.

Then, in what may have been one of the first signs of the AFM waves to come, a 5-year-old boy in New Hampshire died in 2008 after developing neck tenderness and fever, then weakened arms and deadened legs. The boy had EV-D68, and in a report published in an obscure medical journal, researchers attributed his death to the virus.

The first real burst of AFM cases hit in 2014, when 120 were confirmed, with the largest concentrations in California and Colorado.

What ensued was an even-year, odd-year pattern: Cases dropped to 22 in 2015, jumped to 149 in 2016, and fell again, to 35 in 2017. Last year they reached 228, a number that may grow because scores of illnesses are still being investigated.

In keeping with the cyclical pattern, just four cases have been confirmed this year so far.

CDC officials consider an illness AFM based on scans and other evidence showing a certain kind of damage to the spinal cord. Proof of an enterovirus infection is not required for a case to be counted, mainly because such evidence has been hard to come by. So far, CDC investigators have been able to find evidence of enteroviruses in the spinal fluid of only four of 558 confirmed cases.

Scientists are using more sensitive spinal-fluid tests in hopes of establishing the connection between AFM and EV-D68 more firmly. That, in turn, could spur more focused work on treatments and maybe even a vaccine.

Meanwhile, Fauci’s agency has put out a call for researchers to apply for federal funds, and is tapping a University of Alabama-anchored network of pediatric research centers to work on the illness.

The CDC is pledging a greater focus, too. Parents have accused the agency of doing little more than counting cases and have complained that when they tried to contact CDC, they encountered only automated phone trees and form responses.

CDC officials have begun holding meetings and calls with families, set up a scientific task force and working to monitor cases more closely.

Fauci suggested it would be a mistake to assume that surges will take place every other year forever. The next one “may be in 2019, for all we know,” he said.
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The World Health Organization says insecurity and community mistrust in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu Province are major impediments to international health efforts to bring the deadly Ebola outbreak under control. Latest official figures put the number of Ebola cases in the Eastern DRC at 1,089, including 679 deaths.

The World Health Organization reports an increase in the number of Ebola cases. Last week, it says there were 72 recorded cases compared to 56 cases of the deadly disease the week before.

WHO Assistant Director-General for Emergencies Response Ibrahima-Soce Fall attributes the rise to insecurity and violence in the North Kivu hot spots of Butembo and Katwa. He says that has caused major disruptions in the ability of health workers to respond to the disease.

As a consequence, he says people in contact with infected individuals are unprotected. He says contacts cannot get vaccinated or be followed for signs of illness. He says burials are not conducted safely, resulting in some mourners becoming infected.

Speaking on a phone line from Butembo, Fall says the difficulty of getting people to understand that Ebola is a problem further complicates the situation.

“There are so many other problems like insecurity, being killed for many years, access to water, education and so on. So, it takes time to convince them that Ebola is the real problem for them,” he said. “And that is why we have started this community dialogue — to listen to them, to understand their problems and working with diplomatic partners, like World Bank and UNICEF to address the other problems they have been having for many, many years.”

As part of this outreach program, Fall says 40 young people from the local communities have been trained and are now part of the burial and disinfection team. He says the response to this and other measures requested by the community are beginning to have a positive impact.

The WHO estimates it will take at least six months before it gains control of the Ebola outbreak. It says it expects cases will continue to increase until full response measures can be put in place in all vulnerable areas.

 
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Vegetarian patties have long been available to Americans seeking healthier alternatives to hamburgers. Mainstream fast food chains also have been looking for healthier alternatives that would not compromise on flavor. Burger King teamed with California-based Impossible Foods to create a meatless hamburger that would taste as good as its world famous Whopper. The new meatless option was rolled out in 59 Burger King restaurants in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Vegetarian patties have long been available to Americans seeking healthier alternatives to hamburgers. Mainstream fast food chains also have been looking for healthier alternatives that would not compromise on flavor. Burger King teamed with California-based Impossible Foods to create a meatless hamburger that would taste as good as its world famous Whopper. The new meatless option was rolled out in 59 Burger King restaurants in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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New York will become the first U.S. city to impose congestion pricing, seen as a key weapon against global warming, following lawmakers’ approval on Monday of a state budget to fund the plan.

Drivers will have to pay to drive in busy midtown Manhattan, one of the city’s five boroughs, as part of an effort to reduce the number of cars and invest in public transit such as subways, officials said.

Fewer cars means lower emission of carbon dioxide, the leading gas that causes global warming, experts say.

Benefits are many

Fewer cars also means a better traffic flow, which creates lower emissions than cars idling, they say.

“You have to get fewer cars driving into Manhattan,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday.

“The traffic is so bad. I can’t tell you how many days myself, I just get out of the car and walk, because it’s so much faster.”

The plan is part of the state’s $175 billion budget that also includes a ban on disposable, single-use plastic bags.

New York becomes the first major U.S. city to follow the lead of London, which began levying a congestion charge on vehicles driving into the city center in 2003, and a handful of other international locations including Stockholm and Singapore.

The system has succeeded in reducing air pollution and traffic in London, which currently charges drivers £11.50 ($15.24) per day during weekday business hours.

Plan would start in  2021

After introduction of the congestion charge, bus ridership in central London increased by 37 percent in the first year, and traffic congestion dropped by about a quarter, research found.

Beginning in 2021, New York drivers will likely be charged more than $10 (7.70 British pounds) to travel below 60th Street in Manhattan, essentially south of Central Park in an area that includes Broadway theaters, Wall Street banks and high-end shopping.

The precise amount of the fees will be decided later as will be the possibility of exemptions for taxis, ride-sharing drivers and other issues, officials say.

While an earlier campaign for congestion effort failed more than a decade ago under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, this effort succeeded in part due to the promise of raising badly needed funds for the deteriorating subway system, experts said.
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New York will become the first U.S. city to impose congestion pricing, seen as a key weapon against global warming, following lawmakers’ approval on Monday of a state budget to fund the plan.

Drivers will have to pay to drive in busy midtown Manhattan, one of the city’s five boroughs, as part of an effort to reduce the number of cars and invest in public transit such as subways, officials said.

Fewer cars means lower emission of carbon dioxide, the leading gas that causes global warming, experts say.

Benefits are many

Fewer cars also means a better traffic flow, which creates lower emissions than cars idling, they say.

“You have to get fewer cars driving into Manhattan,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday.

“The traffic is so bad. I can’t tell you how many days myself, I just get out of the car and walk, because it’s so much faster.”

The plan is part of the state’s $175 billion budget that also includes a ban on disposable, single-use plastic bags.

New York becomes the first major U.S. city to follow the lead of London, which began levying a congestion charge on vehicles driving into the city center in 2003, and a handful of other international locations including Stockholm and Singapore.

The system has succeeded in reducing air pollution and traffic in London, which currently charges drivers £11.50 ($15.24) per day during weekday business hours.

Plan would start in  2021

After introduction of the congestion charge, bus ridership in central London increased by 37 percent in the first year, and traffic congestion dropped by about a quarter, research found.

Beginning in 2021, New York drivers will likely be charged more than $10 (7.70 British pounds) to travel below 60th Street in Manhattan, essentially south of Central Park in an area that includes Broadway theaters, Wall Street banks and high-end shopping.

The precise amount of the fees will be decided later as will be the possibility of exemptions for taxis, ride-sharing drivers and other issues, officials say.

While an earlier campaign for congestion effort failed more than a decade ago under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, this effort succeeded in part due to the promise of raising badly needed funds for the deteriorating subway system, experts said.
…

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China said Monday it is adding all fentanyl-related compounds to its list of controlled substances, beginning May 1. 

U.S. officials have long campaigned for the move. Fentanyl, and compounds that mimic its effects, are blamed for tens of thousands of opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. each year. 

“The U.S. is concerned about all variants (of fentanyl) and it’s all been resolved,” Liu Yuejin, the deputy director of China’s National Drug Commission said Monday. 

U.S. President Donald Trump said last year, if China placed controls on fentanyl, the move would be a “game changer.” 
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China said Monday it is adding all fentanyl-related compounds to its list of controlled substances, beginning May 1. 

U.S. officials have long campaigned for the move. Fentanyl, and compounds that mimic its effects, are blamed for tens of thousands of opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. each year. 

“The U.S. is concerned about all variants (of fentanyl) and it’s all been resolved,” Liu Yuejin, the deputy director of China’s National Drug Commission said Monday. 

U.S. President Donald Trump said last year, if China placed controls on fentanyl, the move would be a “game changer.” 
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Twelve years after the inaugural Earth Hour observance in Australia, countries around the world continue joining the grassroots gesture against manmade CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions. This year in the Philippines, armed with lightsabers, fans of the movie Star Wars joined the world with a nod to a galaxy far, far away. Arash Arabasadi has more.
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