In rural Malawi, families send girls as young as 12 years old for “initiation,” a traditional, cultural practice that marks a child’s entry into adulthood. But child rights campaigners say the ritual entices young girls into early sex, marriage, and teenage pregnancy — forcing many to drop out of school. One local organization is seeking to change this by teaching initiation counselors to give girls age-appropriate information. 

Madalitso Makosa was 13 years old when she underwent a traditional, Malawian initiation ritual to become an adult. 

She says after the initiation ceremony, the counselors advised her to perform a Kusasa Fumbi or “removing the dust” ritual with a man of my choice. She chose to sleep with her former boyfriend but, unfortunately, became pregnant.

“Removing the dust” refers to a girl losing her virginity, often without protection, to become an adult.  Those who become teenage mothers pay the price for this tradition.

Makosa says when she discovered she was pregnant, she was devastated because she had to drop out of school. She is now struggling to get support to take care of her baby.  She wished she had continued with her education.”

During the initiation, counselors show how they prepare girls for marriage and for sex.

Agnes Matemba, is an initiation counselor. 

She says she gives girls these lessons so that they should keep their man and prevent him from going out to look for another woman. Because, if he goes out and finds excitement in other women, he is likely to dump her.

Child rights campaigners say the initiation ritual fuels Malawi’s high rate of child marriage.  Half the girls here marry before age 18.

Malawian group Youthnet and Counselling, YONECO, wants to keep girls in school with a more age-appropriate initiation ritual.

MacBain Mkandawire is YONECO’s executive director.

“This is a traditional cultural thing that people believe in, and it will be very difficult to just say let us end initiation ceremonies,” Mkandawire said. “But what we are saying is that can we package the curriculum in such way the young people are accessing the correct curriculum at the correct time?”

YONECO is working with initiation counselors and traditional leaders to tone down Malawi’s initiations. Already, some areas are banning the practice of encouraging sex after the ceremony.

Aidah Deleza is also known as Senior Chief Chikumbu.

“We say no, no, no,” Chikumbu said. “This is why we have a lot of girls drop out from school, that is why the population has just shot so high just because of that, just because a lot of girls now they have got babies, most of them they are not in marriage.”

To further discourage teenage pregnancy, traditional leaders like Chikumbu are dividing girls’ initiation rituals into two camps.

One is a simple ceremony for teenage girls like Makosa, while the other provides some sex education for older girls who are preparing to marry.  
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In rural Malawi, families send girls as young as 12 years old for “initiation,” a traditional, cultural practice that marks a child’s entry into adulthood. But child rights campaigners say the ritual entices young girls into early sex, marriage, and teenage pregnancy — forcing many to drop out of school. One local organization is seeking to change this by teaching initiation counselors to give girls age-appropriate information. 

Madalitso Makosa was 13 years old when she underwent a traditional, Malawian initiation ritual to become an adult. 

She says after the initiation ceremony, the counselors advised her to perform a Kusasa Fumbi or “removing the dust” ritual with a man of my choice. She chose to sleep with her former boyfriend but, unfortunately, became pregnant.

“Removing the dust” refers to a girl losing her virginity, often without protection, to become an adult.  Those who become teenage mothers pay the price for this tradition.

Makosa says when she discovered she was pregnant, she was devastated because she had to drop out of school. She is now struggling to get support to take care of her baby.  She wished she had continued with her education.”

During the initiation, counselors show how they prepare girls for marriage and for sex.

Agnes Matemba, is an initiation counselor. 

She says she gives girls these lessons so that they should keep their man and prevent him from going out to look for another woman. Because, if he goes out and finds excitement in other women, he is likely to dump her.

Child rights campaigners say the initiation ritual fuels Malawi’s high rate of child marriage.  Half the girls here marry before age 18.

Malawian group Youthnet and Counselling, YONECO, wants to keep girls in school with a more age-appropriate initiation ritual.

MacBain Mkandawire is YONECO’s executive director.

“This is a traditional cultural thing that people believe in, and it will be very difficult to just say let us end initiation ceremonies,” Mkandawire said. “But what we are saying is that can we package the curriculum in such way the young people are accessing the correct curriculum at the correct time?”

YONECO is working with initiation counselors and traditional leaders to tone down Malawi’s initiations. Already, some areas are banning the practice of encouraging sex after the ceremony.

Aidah Deleza is also known as Senior Chief Chikumbu.

“We say no, no, no,” Chikumbu said. “This is why we have a lot of girls drop out from school, that is why the population has just shot so high just because of that, just because a lot of girls now they have got babies, most of them they are not in marriage.”

To further discourage teenage pregnancy, traditional leaders like Chikumbu are dividing girls’ initiation rituals into two camps.

One is a simple ceremony for teenage girls like Makosa, while the other provides some sex education for older girls who are preparing to marry.  
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The palm oil industry is deploying tactics similar to those of the alcohol and tobacco industries to influence research into the health effects of its product, a study published by the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Evidence of the health impact of palm oil is mixed, with some studies linking consumption to several ailments, including increased risk of death from heart disease caused by narrowing arteries, the report said.

The study, “The palm oil industry and non-communicable diseases,” called for more research and tighter regulation of the $60 billion industry, and said researchers should be wary of being influenced by lobbyists.

“The relationship between the palm oil and processed food industries, and the tactics they employ, resembles practices adopted by the tobacco and alcohol industries. However, the palm oil industry receives comparatively little scrutiny,” it said.

Palm oil plantations, mainly in Malaysia and Indonesia, cover an area roughly the size of New Zealand, and demand is expected to grow as more countries ban trans fats, which the WHO wants banned globally by 2023.

Trans fats are prepared in an industrial process that makes liquid oils solid at room temperature, and are now widely recognized as bad for health.

Palm oil is naturally more solid than most other vegetable oils, and the demise of trans fats will leave it as an easy choice for ultra-processed foods, said the study, co-authored by researchers at the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Britain’s University of Exeter.

The study said labeling is often unclear, and palm oil can be listed under any one of more than 200 alternative names, turning up frequently in foods such as biscuits and chocolate spread. “Consumers may be unaware of what they are eating or its safety,” the study said.

The authors of the study, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, said they found nine pieces of research showing overwhelmingly positive health associations, but four of them were authored by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board.

“The contested nature of the evidence suggests the need for independent, comprehensive studies of the health impact of palm oil consumption,” they wrote.

The study also pointed to the health effect of the production of palm oil in countries where it is grown, with slash-and-burn agriculture causing air pollution and haze linked to premature deaths, respiratory illness and cardiovascular diseases.

“Of major concern is the effect of exposure to particulate matter on fetal, infant and child mortality, as well as children’s cognitive, educational and economic attainment.”
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The palm oil industry is deploying tactics similar to those of the alcohol and tobacco industries to influence research into the health effects of its product, a study published by the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Evidence of the health impact of palm oil is mixed, with some studies linking consumption to several ailments, including increased risk of death from heart disease caused by narrowing arteries, the report said.

The study, “The palm oil industry and non-communicable diseases,” called for more research and tighter regulation of the $60 billion industry, and said researchers should be wary of being influenced by lobbyists.

“The relationship between the palm oil and processed food industries, and the tactics they employ, resembles practices adopted by the tobacco and alcohol industries. However, the palm oil industry receives comparatively little scrutiny,” it said.

Palm oil plantations, mainly in Malaysia and Indonesia, cover an area roughly the size of New Zealand, and demand is expected to grow as more countries ban trans fats, which the WHO wants banned globally by 2023.

Trans fats are prepared in an industrial process that makes liquid oils solid at room temperature, and are now widely recognized as bad for health.

Palm oil is naturally more solid than most other vegetable oils, and the demise of trans fats will leave it as an easy choice for ultra-processed foods, said the study, co-authored by researchers at the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Britain’s University of Exeter.

The study said labeling is often unclear, and palm oil can be listed under any one of more than 200 alternative names, turning up frequently in foods such as biscuits and chocolate spread. “Consumers may be unaware of what they are eating or its safety,” the study said.

The authors of the study, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, said they found nine pieces of research showing overwhelmingly positive health associations, but four of them were authored by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board.

“The contested nature of the evidence suggests the need for independent, comprehensive studies of the health impact of palm oil consumption,” they wrote.

The study also pointed to the health effect of the production of palm oil in countries where it is grown, with slash-and-burn agriculture causing air pollution and haze linked to premature deaths, respiratory illness and cardiovascular diseases.

“Of major concern is the effect of exposure to particulate matter on fetal, infant and child mortality, as well as children’s cognitive, educational and economic attainment.”
…

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After three years of decline, U.S. carbon emissions shot up last year, based on early estimates from an independent research group. The Rhodium Group routinely monitors carbon emissions and their preliminary estimates suggest U.S. output was up 3.4 percent in 2018.

This is the largest annual increase since 2010, when the nation was bouncing back from a financial crisis known as Great Recession.

The research also suggests that despite the Trump administration’s efforts to revive the coal industry, it continues to decline in the face of cheap and plentiful natural gas.

Bad news for coal

According to the Rhodium report, coal-fired plants generating 11.2 gigawatts of power had closed by October of last year, with more scheduled for closure over the following months. While the numbers are still preliminary, if they pan out, that would make 2018 the biggest coal plant closure year on record.

Far and away, natural gas is now the energy of choice in the U.S. with an increase of 166 million kilowatts per hour through October.

U.S. power consumption – and carbon emissions – increased in 2018. But the transportation sector of the economy contributed the most to the nation’s record emissions. The good news is that gasoline demand is down modestly, as the hybrid and electric car industry have begun to make a small dent in the demand for gasoline. But increases in the demand for diesel and jet fuel still made transportation the biggest source of carbon emissions throughout the U.S.

Another big source of emissions that often doesn’t get noticed, according to the report, is in the building sector of the economy. Emissions from buildings and homes was way up, due in part to an exceptionally cold winter in parts of the U.S. last year.

The Paris question

2018 is an anomaly because each year, since 2015, U.S. carbon emissions had been decreasing, if modestly, as the nation worked to reach its commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement. U.S emissions declined by 2.7 percent in 2015, 1.7 percent in 2016, and 0.8 percent in 2017. But even with those reductions, the U.S. was already off track to meet reductions agreed to by the Obama administration.

The U.S. joined almost 200 other countries to sign the agreement in 2015. Under the deal, the U.S. committed to cutting its carbon emissions by at least 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

But the Trump administration announced its intention to pull the U.S. out of the deal this year, and will formally exit the global compact in 2020.

 
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After three years of decline, U.S. carbon emissions shot up last year, based on early estimates from an independent research group. The Rhodium Group routinely monitors carbon emissions and their preliminary estimates suggest U.S. output was up 3.4 percent in 2018.

This is the largest annual increase since 2010, when the nation was bouncing back from a financial crisis known as Great Recession.

The research also suggests that despite the Trump administration’s efforts to revive the coal industry, it continues to decline in the face of cheap and plentiful natural gas.

Bad news for coal

According to the Rhodium report, coal-fired plants generating 11.2 gigawatts of power had closed by October of last year, with more scheduled for closure over the following months. While the numbers are still preliminary, if they pan out, that would make 2018 the biggest coal plant closure year on record.

Far and away, natural gas is now the energy of choice in the U.S. with an increase of 166 million kilowatts per hour through October.

U.S. power consumption – and carbon emissions – increased in 2018. But the transportation sector of the economy contributed the most to the nation’s record emissions. The good news is that gasoline demand is down modestly, as the hybrid and electric car industry have begun to make a small dent in the demand for gasoline. But increases in the demand for diesel and jet fuel still made transportation the biggest source of carbon emissions throughout the U.S.

Another big source of emissions that often doesn’t get noticed, according to the report, is in the building sector of the economy. Emissions from buildings and homes was way up, due in part to an exceptionally cold winter in parts of the U.S. last year.

The Paris question

2018 is an anomaly because each year, since 2015, U.S. carbon emissions had been decreasing, if modestly, as the nation worked to reach its commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement. U.S emissions declined by 2.7 percent in 2015, 1.7 percent in 2016, and 0.8 percent in 2017. But even with those reductions, the U.S. was already off track to meet reductions agreed to by the Obama administration.

The U.S. joined almost 200 other countries to sign the agreement in 2015. Under the deal, the U.S. committed to cutting its carbon emissions by at least 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

But the Trump administration announced its intention to pull the U.S. out of the deal this year, and will formally exit the global compact in 2020.

 
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Some 435-thousand people died of malaria in 2017, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in Burundi has developed a line of cosmetics that keep mosquitos, which carry malaria, at bay. More from Arash Arabasadi.
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Some 435-thousand people died of malaria in 2017, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in Burundi has developed a line of cosmetics that keep mosquitos, which carry malaria, at bay. More from Arash Arabasadi.
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A leading geneticist who ran the conference where a Chinese scientist said he had made the world’s first “gene-edited” babies condemned him on Monday for potentially jeopardizing lives and having no biology training.

Robin Lovell-Badge, organizer of the November 2018 event where China’s He Jiankui made his controversial presentation, described him as a rich man with a “huge ego” who “wanted to do something he thinks will change the world.”

He Jiankui, associate professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, sparked an international scientific and ethical row when he said he had used a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls born in November.

He could not be immediately reached to respond to Lovell-Badge’s comments. Chinese authorities are investigating him and have meanwhile halted this kind of research.

In videos posted online and at the conference, He said he believed his gene editing would help protect the girls from infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Lovell-Badge, a professor and gene expert at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute who led the organizing committee for the November Human Genome Editing Summit at Hong Kong University, said it was impossible to know what He had actually done.

“If it’s true (that he edited the genomes in the way he says) then it is certainly possible that he has put the children’s lives at risk,” he told journalists in London. “No-one knows what these mutations will do.”

Lovell-Badge said he originally invited He to the conference after hearing in scientific circles that he was “up to something.” Lovell-Badge hoped that asking He to interact with specialists would encourage him to “control his urges.”

“Pretty much everyone he talked to had said to him: ‘Don’t do it,'” he said. “But clearly it was all too late.”

Lovell-Badge said he learned of He’s claims on the eve of the conference, and had an emergency meeting with him.

“He thought that he was doing good, and that what he was doing was the next big thing,” Lovell-Badge said. But he had “no basic training in biology” and the experiments he said he had carried out “ignored all the norms of how you conduct any clinical trial or clinical experiment.”

“He should certainly be stopped from doing anything like this again,” he said.

Lovell-Badge said he had not heard from He since early December, but understood he was in Shenzhen in a guarded apartment during the probe.

Chinese authorities and institutions, as well as hundreds of international scientists, have condemned He and said any application of gene editing on human embryos for reproductive purposes was against the law and medical ethics of China.
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A group of more than 1,400 iguanas have been reintroduced to an Ecuadoran island in the Galapagos archipelago around two centuries after they disappeared from there, authorities said on Monday.

The Galapagos land iguanas from North Seymour Island were freed onto Santiago Island as part of an ecological restoration program, the National Galapagos Park authority said in a statement.

The last recorded sighting of iguanas in Santiago Island had been made by British naturalist Charles Darwin in 1835.

“Almost two centuries later, this ecosystem will once again count on this species through the restoration initiative,” said the park authority.

Its director, Jorge Carrion, said the iguanas became extinct due to the introduction of predators such as the feral pig, which was eradicated in 2001.

The program is also aimed at protecting the population of iguanas on North Seymour, said to number around 5,000, where food is limited.

“The land iguana is a herbivore that helps ecosystems by dispersing seeds and maintaining open spaces devoid of vegetation,” said Danny Rueda, the park authority’s ecosystems director.

The Galapagos archipelago, some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the Ecuador coast, contains unique wildlife and vegetation, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

But it has one of the most fragile ecosystems in the world.
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A group representing Indian scientists say they will screen speakers at their yearly meeting more carefully after several made outlandish claims during their lectures.

“We have decided that all the people, even the top scientists who want to interact with anybody at the Science Congress, would be asked to submit their abstracts, not to deviate … and we will place one of our members there as a moderator,” Indian Science Congress general secretary Premendu Mathur said Monday.

One speaker at the just-completed congress doubted the findings and achievements of Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.

Another insisted the people of ancient India had airplanes and missile technology, carried out stem-cell research, and created test tube babies.

Scientists in several Indian cities held silent demonstrations and carried signs to protest the speeches and the damage that such claims can do.

“This is very harmful for the growth of scientific temper because these ideas are being propagated through the Science Congress which gives it reproducibility,” retired professor Dhruba Mukhopadhyay said.
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High up in the Bolivian cloud forest, a woman tends to her bees, smoker in hand, working from hive to hive under a canopy of leaves to delicately gather panels of honeycomb. It’s a bucolic scene that experts say won’t last, for the bees are dying.

The culprit — as in so many other cases across the world — is pesticide. The difference in Bolivia is that pesticide use, along with the coca plantations it is being used to protect, is on the rise.

Environmentalists and beekeepers like Rene Villca say the bee population is being decimated by massive and intensive use of chemical pesticides to protect the region’s biggest cash crop.

Here in the idyllic Nor Yungas region north of the cloud-high capital La Paz, the pesticides are taking a toll on Villca’s hives.

“Of the 20 hives I have, 10 are producing normally and 10 are not.”

On another part of the mountain where Nancy Carlo Estrada tends to her bees, a canopy of protective netting around her head, Exalto Mamami wades through a waist-high coca plantation, pumping out liquid pesticide from a canister on his back, face covered with a long cloth against harmful blowback from the spray.

He is all too aware of the pesticide’s toxicity, but has other priorities.

“We use pesticides because the pests eat through the coca leaves and this affects our income. The plants can dry out and that way we as coca farmers lose out economically,” said Mamani.

The sale of coca leaves — the base component of cocaine — is legal in this part of Bolivia. They are sold openly for traditional use in the local towns. It is chewed, used for making teas, and in religious and cultural ceremonies.

According to the latest survey by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Bolivia has 24,500 hectares under coca cultivation, an increase of 7.0 percent in a year. The government is collaborating with the UNODC in alternate development programs but despite this, between 35 and 48 percent is destined for cocaine production.

Coca cultivation expanding

On the steep slopes of the region’s valleys, the lush forest is pockmarked with small plots of coca arranged in terraces.

“The area of coca cultivation has expanded and the native forest has been reduced to alarming levels,” said Miguel Limachi, an entomologist at La Paz’s San Andres University.

Limachi says the expansion of coca cultivation has helped to destroy other plants that provide a natural defense against the coca-leaf pests, particularly the Tussock Moth.

In other parts of the Andes, the pale moth has been used as a biological weapon against coca cultivation.

“A monoculture is more at risk from pests or fungi because there is no longer native vegetation — there are no natural controllers,” Limachi explained. “And then more pesticides are used in higher concentrations.”

Harmful organophosphates in the pesticides mean the bees — “a social insect and extremely organized,” according to Limachi — become disorganized, and less able to feed and care for larvae.

In recent years across the globe, bees have been mysteriously dying off from “colony collapse disorder” blamed party on pesticides, but also on mites, viruses and fungi.

The danger of increased pesticide use in the Bolivian highlands is that they “remain in the soil, on the surface of the plants and obviously contaminate all the organisms present — both the growers themselves, their children and their families, and the wildlife,” Limachi told AFP.

Pesticides are also used to protect other crops in the country such as coffee plantations and some tropical fruits.

‘Growers have no choice’

For Exalto Mamani, there is no other option but to use pesticides.

“Many of the coca growers are aware that we are affecting the environment with these chemicals, but we have no other alternative because the coca supports us and gives us the economy to support our family,” he said.

He says climate change has meant coca leaf pests are on the increase.

Limachi agrees that climate change has played a role in reducing bee populations.

“Very dry years and other years that have too much rain change the availability of flowers from which the bees use to feed the hives,” he said.

Other human factors also play a role, he said.

“Electromagnetic pollution, the emission of cellular waves, microwaves, radios, television…all that can affect their communication and the operation of the hive because they interrupt processes such as food collection, care of the larvae or cleanliness of the colony,” said Limachi.

On the lush steep slopes around Coroico, beekeeper Villca has no doubt about the immediate threat to his bees.

“We hope that the coca producers realize the value of this golden insect,” he said.
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Heavy rains that brought additional pollution downstream last year contributed to the first decline in a decade to the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay, according to a report released Monday.

The bay’s health grade sank from a C-minus in 2016 to a D-plus in the 2018 State of the Bay, a biennial report issued by the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The bay scored a 33 out of a possible 100 after scientists measured 13 indicators in three categories, including pollution, habitat and fisheries. The report cited record rains last year that brought large amounts of pollutants downstream, mostly from Pennsylvania, but also from other regions.

“Simply put, the bay suffered a massive assault in 2018,” said Will Baker, the group’s president. “The bay’s sustained improvement was reversed in 2018, exposing just how fragile the recovery is.”

Beth McGee, a senior scientist at the foundation, which has released the report on the bay’s health since 1998, also highlighted the effect of the rains, which washed enormous amounts of debris from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania south into Maryland waters and into the nation’s largest estuary.

“While some indicators improved or stayed the same, scores for the bay’s two systemic pollutants — nitrogen and phosphorous — decreased substantially, reflecting increased loads caused by the high rainfall in 2018 and above average loads in 2017,” McGee said. “The score for water clarity also dropped — another casualty of the record rain.”

Still, Baker highlighted good news as well. Bay grasses remain intact, and recent studies have shown an improving trend in the long term for underwater dead zones, which are low-oxygen conditions that can suffocate underwater life and shrink habitat.

“The good news is there are signs the bay is developing a resilience that may help it overcome long-term damage caused by record storms and rainfall which dump polluted runoff into our waters,” Baker said.

Water goals needed

Baker said the bay is facing some of the most serious challenges ever seen. The Susquehanna River, which supplies about half of the bay’s fresh water, is “severely polluted,” Baker said, and pollution attached to sediment that once stayed largely behind the Conowingo Dam is no longer trapped behind the dam’s walls.

Stormwater runoff from urban and suburban areas continue to be a source of growing pollution, Baker said, and he criticized President Donald Trump’s policies affecting the environment and denial of climate change.

To improve the bay’s health, Baker said jurisdictions in the bay’s watershed, including Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, must meet clean water goals set for 2025.

“Second, the Trump administration must stop trying to eliminate environmental laws and regulations that have enjoyed decades of bipartisan support, and third climate change must be addressed now,” Baker said.
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Here’s a simple statistic: by 2030, the number of knee replacement surgeries in the U.S. alone is expected to rise over 600 percent. But researchers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center are now offering an alternative that can relieve the pain and slow the osteoarthritis that most often leads to the need for knee replacement. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A leap in technology has allowed scientists to take their DNA labs out into the fields, so farmers can identify diseases quickly and tackle the problem before their crops die, or the virus spreads to neighboring farms. Faith Lapidus reports.
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A leap in technology has allowed scientists to take their DNA labs out into the fields, so farmers can identify diseases quickly and tackle the problem before their crops die, or the virus spreads to neighboring farms. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Here’s a simple statistic: by 2030, the number of knee replacement surgeries in the U.S. alone is expected to rise over 600 percent. But researchers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center are now offering an alternative that can relieve the pain and slow the osteoarthritis that most often leads to the need for knee replacement. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A trash collection device deployed to corral plastic litter floating in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii has broken apart and will be hauled back to dry land for repairs.

Boyan Slat, who launched the Pacific Ocean cleanup project, told NBC News last week that the 600-meter (2,000-foot) long floating boom will be towed 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) to Hawaii.

If it can’t be repaired there, it will be loaded on a barge and returned to its home port of Alameda, California.

The boom broke apart under constant wind and waves in the Pacific.

Slat said he’s disappointed, but not discouraged and pledged that operations would resume as soon as possible.

“This is an entirely new category of machine that is out there in extremely challenging conditions,” the 24-year-old Dutch inventor said. “We always took into account that we might have to take it back and forth a few times. So it’s really not a significant departure from the original plan.”

Previously Slat said the boom was moving slower than the plastic, allowing the trash to float away.

A ship towed the U-shaped barrier in September from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an island of trash twice the size of Texas. It had been in place since the end of October.

The plastic barrier with a tapered 3-meter-deep (10-foot-deep) screen is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in the patch while allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it.

Slat has said he hopes one day to deploy 60 of the devices to skim plastic debris off the surface of the ocean.

 
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A trash collection device deployed to corral plastic litter floating in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii has broken apart and will be hauled back to dry land for repairs.

Boyan Slat, who launched the Pacific Ocean cleanup project, told NBC News last week that the 600-meter (2,000-foot) long floating boom will be towed 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) to Hawaii.

If it can’t be repaired there, it will be loaded on a barge and returned to its home port of Alameda, California.

The boom broke apart under constant wind and waves in the Pacific.

Slat said he’s disappointed, but not discouraged and pledged that operations would resume as soon as possible.

“This is an entirely new category of machine that is out there in extremely challenging conditions,” the 24-year-old Dutch inventor said. “We always took into account that we might have to take it back and forth a few times. So it’s really not a significant departure from the original plan.”

Previously Slat said the boom was moving slower than the plastic, allowing the trash to float away.

A ship towed the U-shaped barrier in September from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an island of trash twice the size of Texas. It had been in place since the end of October.

The plastic barrier with a tapered 3-meter-deep (10-foot-deep) screen is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in the patch while allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it.

Slat has said he hopes one day to deploy 60 of the devices to skim plastic debris off the surface of the ocean.

 
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In 2016, researchers at Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal University began sounding alarms that the nation is about a decade away from running out of groundwater. The situation is still dire, but some entrepreneurs are creating new ways to save every drop. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Health care officials in Sweden say a patient who was admitted to a hospital with a suspected case of Ebola was found not to be suffering from the highly infectious and potentially deadly disease after all. 

The male patient, whose identity has not been revealed, had recently returned to Sweden from a trip to Burundi and was exhibiting symptoms of hemorrhagic fever. 

He was originally admitted to the emergency ward of a hospital in Enkoping, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Stockholm, but was later transferred to the larger Uppsala University Hospital. 

Ebola, other diseases ruled out

Health officials said Friday that the man’s condition had improved and that tests had ruled out Ebola as well as other diseases such as Marburg and dengue fever. They said they would continue to run further tests to figure out what the man was suffering from.

Health officials said people in contact with the patient who had been kept in isolation were now free to go home. 

There is currently no known Ebola outbreak in Burundi, but the country borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been battling an Ebola outbreak for almost six months. More than 350 people have died in that outbreak.

Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever that causes internal bleeding and potentially death. It is rapidly spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected.
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Health care officials in Sweden say a patient who was admitted to a hospital with a suspected case of Ebola was found not to be suffering from the highly infectious and potentially deadly disease after all. 

The male patient, whose identity has not been revealed, had recently returned to Sweden from a trip to Burundi and was exhibiting symptoms of hemorrhagic fever. 

He was originally admitted to the emergency ward of a hospital in Enkoping, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Stockholm, but was later transferred to the larger Uppsala University Hospital. 

Ebola, other diseases ruled out

Health officials said Friday that the man’s condition had improved and that tests had ruled out Ebola as well as other diseases such as Marburg and dengue fever. They said they would continue to run further tests to figure out what the man was suffering from.

Health officials said people in contact with the patient who had been kept in isolation were now free to go home. 

There is currently no known Ebola outbreak in Burundi, but the country borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been battling an Ebola outbreak for almost six months. More than 350 people have died in that outbreak.

Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever that causes internal bleeding and potentially death. It is rapidly spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected.
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