Ebola control operations have been restored in Democratic Republic of Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu province, following pre-election protests late last year, the World Health Organization reports.

Anti-government demonstrations preceding presidential elections on December 26 disrupted key Ebola response activities in some affected areas of the province, notably in Beni and Butembo.

Crowds of people, angry at the government’s decision to bar the region from voting in the election, vandalized an Ebola transit center and other health facilities. The damage prevented health workers from going to communities at risk and providing services needed to control the spread of the deadly disease.

But WHO says full operations have been restored in all locations as of Jan. 1. While the situation is now calm, WHO spokesman Tarek Jasarevic tells VOA that any interruption could lead to increased transmission of the virus.

“There is a risk that all this work that is being put in place, and WHO has more than 380 people on the ground, alongside hundreds of people deployed by the Ministry of Health and other partners, that this effort may be put in danger if we are not able to go and put response activities in the community,” Jasarevic said. 

The number of reported Ebola cases stands at 608, including 369 deaths. WHO says no new cases have been reported among health care workers in 2019, leaving the number affected at 54, including 18 deaths.  

Jasarevic says it is yet to be seen whether the temporary disruption of Ebola activities prior to the elections will result in an upsurge in cases.
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Ebola control operations have been restored in Democratic Republic of Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu province, following pre-election protests late last year, the World Health Organization reports.

Anti-government demonstrations preceding presidential elections on December 26 disrupted key Ebola response activities in some affected areas of the province, notably in Beni and Butembo.

Crowds of people, angry at the government’s decision to bar the region from voting in the election, vandalized an Ebola transit center and other health facilities. The damage prevented health workers from going to communities at risk and providing services needed to control the spread of the deadly disease.

But WHO says full operations have been restored in all locations as of Jan. 1. While the situation is now calm, WHO spokesman Tarek Jasarevic tells VOA that any interruption could lead to increased transmission of the virus.

“There is a risk that all this work that is being put in place, and WHO has more than 380 people on the ground, alongside hundreds of people deployed by the Ministry of Health and other partners, that this effort may be put in danger if we are not able to go and put response activities in the community,” Jasarevic said. 

The number of reported Ebola cases stands at 608, including 369 deaths. WHO says no new cases have been reported among health care workers in 2019, leaving the number affected at 54, including 18 deaths.  

Jasarevic says it is yet to be seen whether the temporary disruption of Ebola activities prior to the elections will result in an upsurge in cases.
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A suspected case of the deadly Ebola virus has been reported by a Swedish hospital, officials said Friday, adding that the patient has been isolated.

Region Uppsala, which oversees several hospitals and medical clinics north of Stockholm, says a test had been carried out on the patient, who was not identified, adding a result would be available late Friday.

In its statement, Region Uppsala said it was so far “only a matter of suspicion,” adding “other diseases are quite possible.”

It did not say where the patient had traveled, but Sweden’s TT news agency said the patient had returned from a trip to Burundi three weeks ago and had not visited any region with the Ebola virus.

The authorities said the hospital in Enkoping where the patient was first admitted had its emergency room shut down and the staff who treated the patient were “cared for.” The patient was eventually transferred to an infection clinic in Uppsala.

“The patient came in Friday morning and reportedly was vomiting blood which may be a symptom of Ebola infection,” hospital spokesman Mikael Kohler told local newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning. He was not immediately available for further comment.

Eastern Congo currently faces an Ebola outbreak. All major outbreaks have been in Africa, though isolated cases have been reported outside the continent. The hemorrhagic fever’s virus is spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected.
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A suspected case of the deadly Ebola virus has been reported by a Swedish hospital, officials said Friday, adding that the patient has been isolated.

Region Uppsala, which oversees several hospitals and medical clinics north of Stockholm, says a test had been carried out on the patient, who was not identified, adding a result would be available late Friday.

In its statement, Region Uppsala said it was so far “only a matter of suspicion,” adding “other diseases are quite possible.”

It did not say where the patient had traveled, but Sweden’s TT news agency said the patient had returned from a trip to Burundi three weeks ago and had not visited any region with the Ebola virus.

The authorities said the hospital in Enkoping where the patient was first admitted had its emergency room shut down and the staff who treated the patient were “cared for.” The patient was eventually transferred to an infection clinic in Uppsala.

“The patient came in Friday morning and reportedly was vomiting blood which may be a symptom of Ebola infection,” hospital spokesman Mikael Kohler told local newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning. He was not immediately available for further comment.

Eastern Congo currently faces an Ebola outbreak. All major outbreaks have been in Africa, though isolated cases have been reported outside the continent. The hemorrhagic fever’s virus is spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected.
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The Chinese Jade Rabbit 2 rover is making tracks on the soft, snowlike surface of the far side of the moon.

The rover drove off its lander’s ramp and onto the lunar surface late Thursday, about 12 hours after the Chang’e-4 spacecraft made the first-ever landing on the moon’s far side.

China’s space agency posted a photo online, showing tracks the rover left as it departed from the spacecraft.

“It’s a small step for the rover, but one giant leap for the Chinese nation,’’ Wu Weiren, the chief designer of the Lunar Exploration Project, said on state broadcaster CCTV, adapting American astronaut Neil Alden Armstrong’s famous message “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” when he stepped onto the lunar surface July 20, 1969.

“This giant leap is a decisive move for our exploration of space and the conquering of the universe,” Wu Weiren said.

First to the far side

The Jade Rabbit 2 rover has six individually powered wheels, so it can continue to operate even if one wheel fails. It can climb a 20-degree hill or an obstacle up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) tall. Its maximum speed is 200 meters per hour.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and more recently China have sent spacecraft to the near side of the moon, but the latest Chinese landing is the first on the far side.

The probe will conduct astronomical studies and surveys of the surface’s mineral composition and radiation tests of the surrounding environment.

Satellite for communication

Shortly after landing, the Chang’e-4 sent a photo of the lunar surface to the Queqiao (“Magpie Bridge”) satellite, which was launched last May in the first phase of the historic mission.

The Queqiao satellite is deployed about 455,000 kilometers from Earth, where it will relay communications between ground controllers and the Chang’e-4.

This is China’s second probe to make a soft-landing on the moon, following 2013’s Jade Rabbit lunar rover mission.

Beijing plans to launch a third lunar rover, the Chang’e-5, later this year, which is expected to collect samples from the moon’s surface and bring them back to Earth.

The unmanned lunar missions are part of China’s ambitions to join the United States and Russia as a major space power. Its plans include establishing a permanent manned space station, a manned lunar landing, and eventually probes to Mars.
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Ending our dependence on carbon in all of its forms — especially plastics and petroleum products — is a fairly constant endeavor of engineers and entrepreneurs. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports on two recent interesting advances in the sciences of recycling plastics and also moving beyond gas powered cars.
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After studying a space rock some 4 billion miles (6.4 billion km) from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft set off on a new hunt for moons in the solar system’s most distant edge, searching for clues on our solar family’s creation, scientists said on Thursday.

The piano-sized probe is traveling deep into the ring of celestial bodies known as the Kuiper Belt looking for small, icy moons that spun off the snowman-shaped Ultima Thule formation, a pair of icy space rocks that fused in orbit billions of years ago.

“If we’ve seen bodies one and two, the question is what about bodies three, four and five?” Mark Showalter, a New Horizons investigator, said during a news conference at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

New Horizons on New Year’s day came within 2,200 miles (3,500 km) of Ultima Thule, which represents a pristine time capsule dating to the birth of the solar system. The fly-by marked the farthest close encounter of an object within our solar system.

Since then, the probe has sent images revealing Ultima Thule to be a contact binary — two bodies that formed separately and then got stuck together. The formation, resembling a red-hued snowman — caused by irradiated ice — is just over 21 miles (34 km) long.

Scientists deduced that the conjoined bodies — one named Ultima and the other Thule — were once part of a cloud of smaller, rotating space rocks that eventually bound together into two larger bodies orbiting at a much slower speed.

Pluto and beyond

“We’re looking for the objects that put the brakes on these objects,” Showalter said. Finding the moons, which would orbit Ultima Thule up to 500 miles (800 km) from its surface, would also reveal details about the space rock’s mass and density.

The spacecraft, now 3 million miles (5 million km) beyond Ultima Thule, will ping back more detailed images and data in the coming weeks, NASA said.

Since its launch in 2006, New Horizons has traveled 4 billion miles (6.4 billion km) to the solar system’s edge to study the dwarf planet Pluto, its five moons and hundreds of icy Kuiper Belt objects.

Scientists had not discovered Ultima Thule when the probe was launched, according to NASA, making the mission unique in that respect. In 2014, astronomers found the rocky formation using the Hubble Space Telescope and the following year selected it for New Horizon’s extended mission.

While the mission marks the farthest inspection of an object in our solar system, NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2, a pair of

deep-space probes launched in 1977, have reached greater distances on a mission to survey extrasolar bodies. Both probes are still operational.
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The government says 8.4 million Americans have signed up for coverage next year under the Obama health law, reflecting steady enrollment even as supporters of the law appeal a court ruling that declares it unconstitutional. 

 

Thursday’s numbers underscore the unexpected staying power of  “Obamacare,” which President Donald Trump failed to repeal after promising a better health insurance plan in its place. 

The numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reflect the 39 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website. The final count will be higher, after major states like California and New York report. 

Also on Thursday, Democratic-led states announced they’re appealing a recent ruling by a conservative federal judge in Texas that declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. 

The law remains in place while the lawsuit continues.
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It has no natural predator. There are no plans to control its plague. Hailing from China by way of France, the Asian hornet (vespa velutina) is now taking over Spain’s Iberian Peninsula and wreaking havoc on honeybees. With modern technology … the Spanish are fighting back. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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A NASA spacecraft 4 billion miles from Earth yielded its first close-up pictures Wednesday of the most distant celestial object ever explored, depicting what looks like a reddish snowman.

 

Ultima Thule, as the small, icy object has been dubbed, was found to consist of two fused-together spheres, one of them three times bigger than the other, extending about 21 miles (33 kilometers) in length.

 

NASA’s New Horizons, the spacecraft that sent back pictures of Pluto 3-plus years ago, swept past the ancient, mysterious object early on New Year’s Day. It is 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto.

 

On Tuesday, based on early, fuzzy images taken the day before, scientists said Ultima Thule resembled a bowling pin. But when better, closer pictures arrived, a new consensus emerged Wednesday.

 

“The bowling pin is gone. It’s a snowman!” lead scientist Alan Stern informed the world from Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory , home to Mission Control. The bowling pin image is “so 2018,” joked Stern, who is with the Southwest Research Institute.

 

The celestial body was nicknamed Ultima Thule — meaning “beyond the known world” — before scientists could say for sure whether it was one object or two. With the arrival of the photos, they are now calling the bigger sphere Ultima and the smaller one Thule.

 

Thule is estimated to be 9 miles (14 kilometers) across, while Ultima is thought to be 12 miles (19 kilometers).

 

Scientist Jeff Moore of NASA’s Ames Research Center said the two spheres formed when icy, pebble-size pieces coalesced in space billions of years ago. Then the spheres slowly spiraled closer to each other until they gently touched — as slowly as parking a car here on Earth at just a mile or two per hour — and stuck together.

 

Despite the slender connection point, the two lobes are “soundly bound” together, according to Moore.

 

Scientists have ascertained that the object takes about 15 hours to make a full rotation. If it were spinning fast — say, one rotation every three or four hours — the two spheres would rip apart.

 

Stern noted that the team has received less than 1 percent of all the data stored aboard New Horizons. It will take nearly two years to get it all.

 

The two-lobed object is what is known as a “contact binary.” It is the first contact binary NASA has ever explored. Having formed 4.5 billion years ago, when the solar system taking shape, it is also the most primitive object seen up close like this.

 

About the size of a city, Ultima Thule has a mottled appearance and is the color of dull brick, probably because of the effects of radiation bombarding the icy surface, with brighter and darker regions.

 

Both spheres are similarly red, while the barely perceptible neck connecting the two lobes is noticeably less red, probably because of particles falling down the steep slopes into that area.

 

So far, no moons or rings have been detected. And scientists said there were no obvious impact craters in the latest photos but a few apparent “divots” and suggestions of hills and ridges. But better images should yield definitive answers in the days and weeks ahead.

 

Clues about the surface composition of Ultima Thule should start rolling in by Thursday. Scientists believe the icy exterior is probably a mix of water, methane and nitrogen, among other things.

 

The snowman picture was taken a half-hour before the spacecraft’s closest approach early Tuesday, from a distance of about 18,000 miles (28,000 kilometers).

 

Ultima Thule is an exquisite time machine — the most primitive object ever seen close up — that should provide clues to the origins of our solar system.

 

It’s neither a comet nor an asteroid, according to Stern, but rather “a primordial planetesimal.” Unlike comets and other objects that have been altered by the sun over time, Ultima Thule is in its pure, original state: It’s been in the deep-freeze Kuiper Belt on the fringes of our solar system from the beginning.

 

“This thing was born somewhere between 99 percent and 99.9 percent of the way back to T-zero (liftoff) in our solar system, really amazing,” Stern said. He added: “We’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s not fish or fowl. It’s something that’s completely different.”

 

Still, he said, when all the data comes in, “there are going to be mysteries of Ultima Thule that we can’t figure out.”
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Dark skies were threatening rain over an Iraqi Kurdistan village, but one woman refused to budge from outside a house where two girls were at risk of female genital mutilation. 

 

“I know you’re home! I just want to talk,” called out Kurdistan Rasul, 35, a pink headscarf forming a sort of halo around her plump features. 

 

For many, she is an angel — an Iraqi Kurdish activist with the Germany-based nonprofit Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Cooperation (WADI), on a crusade to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM).  

 

FGM, in which a girl or woman’s genitals are cut or removed, was once extremely common in the Kurdish region, but WADI’s campaigning has reduced the practice.  

 

Rasul, who herself was cut at a young age, is helping to eradicate FGM in the village of Sharboty Saghira, east of the regional capital, Irbil. 

 

She has visited 25 times, challenging its imam on perceptions FGM is mandated by Islam and warning midwives about infections and emotional trauma. 

 

That morning, she used the mosque’s minaret to vaguely invite villagers to discuss their health. When eight women entered the mosque, she patiently described FGM’s dangers. 

 

At the end, a thin woman approached Rasul and said her neighbor was planning to mutilate her two toddlers.  

That sent Rasul clambering up the muddy pathway to the house, first knocking, then frantically demanding to be allowed in. 

 

But the door remained shut. 

 

“We are changing people’s convictions. That’s why it’s so hard,” Rasul told AFP, reluctantly walking away. 

 

‘Just a child’ 

 

FGM appears to have been practiced for decades in Iraq’s Kurdish region, usually known for more progressive stances on women’s rights.  

 

Victims are usually between 4 and 5 years old but are affected for years by bleeding, extremely reduced sexual sensitivity, tearing during childbirth, and depression.  

 

The procedure can prove fatal, with some girls dying from blood loss or infection. 

 

After years of campaigning, Kurdish authorities banned FGM under a 2011 domestic violence law, slapping perpetrators with up to three years in prison and a roughly $80,000 fine. 

 

The numbers have dropped steadily since.  

 

In 2014, a U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF) survey found 58.5 percent of women in the Kurdish region had been mutilated. 

 

This year, UNICEF found a lower rate: 37.5 percent of girls aged 15-49 in the Kurdish region had undergone FGM.  

 

It compares with less than 1 percent across the rest of Iraq, which has no FGM legislation. 

 

“She cut me, I was hurt and cried,” said Shukriyeh, 61, of the day her mother mutilated her more than 50 years ago. 

 

“I was just a child. How could I be angry at my mother?” 

 

Shukriyeh’s six daughters, the youngest of whom is 26, have all been cut, too. But with so much campaigning against FGM, they have declined to do the same to their girls.  

Years ago, Zeinab, 38. allowed female relatives to cut her eldest daughter, then 3.  

 

“I was so scared that I stayed far away and came to wash her after they cut her,” she recalled, squirming. 

 

After WADI’s sessions, she protected her other two daughters from mutilation. 

 

“At the time I accepted [it], but now I wouldn’t. Yes, I regret it. But what can I do now?” 

 

‘Women against women’

Rasul told AFP it was hard to combat a form of gender-based violence that women themselves practiced. 

 

“Young men and women agree FGM should stop. But after we leave a village, older women talk to them and tell them: ‘Be careful, that NGO wants to spread problems,’ ” she said. 

 

UNICEF’s 2014 survey found 75 percent of women saw their own mothers as the most supportive of cutting. 

 

“I tell these women: This is violence that you’re carrying out with your own hands — women against women,” said Rasul. 

 

That proximity has also made FGM victims less likely to seek justice.  

“The 2011 law isn’t being used because girls won’t file a complaint against their mothers or fathers,” said Parwin Hassan, who heads the Kurdish Regional Government’s anti-FGM unit. 

 

Hassan has wanted to work on the issue since she narrowly escaped it: Her mother pulled her away from their midwife after a last-minute change of heart. 

 

“I’ve been working on women’s issues since 1991, but this is the most painful for me. That’s why I promised to eradicate it completely,” she told AFP. 

 

She said Kurdish authorities would unveil a strategy next year to strengthen the 2011 law and carry out more awareness campaigns. 

 

And for its part, the U.N. expects it can better fight FGM in 2019, partly because of the reduced threat posed by the Islamic State group.  

 

After IS emerged in 2014, U.N. agencies scrambled to deal with displaced families and combat operations, said UNICEF gender-based violence specialist Ivana Chapcakova.  

 

“Now that the acute emergency is over, we can regroup to have that final push towards making FGM a thing of the past everywhere in Iraq,” she told AFP.
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Scientists have found that a strain of cholera causing an epidemic in Yemen — the worst in recorded history — came from eastern Africa and was probably borne into Yemen by migrants.

Using genomic sequencing techniques, researchers at Britain’s Wellcome Sanger Institute and France’s Institut Pasteur also said they should now be better able to estimate the risk of future cholera outbreaks in regions like Yemen, giving health authorities more time to intervene.

“Knowing how cholera moves globally gives us the opportunity to better prepare for future outbreaks,” said Nick Thomson, a professor at Sanger and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who co-led the work.

Nearly four years of war between a Saudi-led coalition and the Iranian-aligned Houthi group have crippled health care and sanitation systems in Yemen, where some 1.2 million suspected cholera cases have been reported since 2017, with 2,515 deaths.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned in October that the outbreak is accelerating again with roughly 10,000 suspected cases now reported per week, double the average rate for the first eight months of 2018.

To explore the origins of the outbreak, the Sanger and Pasteur team sequenced the genomes of cholera bacteria samples collected in Yemen and nearby areas.

They included samples from a Yemeni refugee center on the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border and 74 other cholera samples from South Asia, the Middle East, and eastern and central Africa.

The team, whose findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature, then compared these sequences to a global collection of more than 1,000 cholera samples and found that the strain causing the Yemen epidemic is related to one first seen in 2012 in South Asia that has spread globally.

However, the Yemeni strain did not arrive directly from South Asia, the scientists found, but was circulating and causing outbreaks in eastern Africa in 2013-14, prior to appearing in Yemen in 2016.

“Genomics enabled us to discover that the strain of cholera behind the devastating and ongoing epidemic in Yemen is likely linked to the migration of people from eastern Africa into Yemen,” said Thomson. He added, however, that from the samples available, the team was not able to pinpoint exactly which countries in eastern Africa the strain had come from.
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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft pulled off the most distant exploration of another world Tuesday, skimming past a tiny, icy object 4 billion miles from Earth that looks to be shaped like a bowling pin. 

Flight controllers in Maryland declared success 10 hours after the high-risk, middle-of-the-night encounter at the mysterious body known as Ultima Thule on the frozen fringes of our solar system, an astounding 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto. 

“I don’t know about all of you, but I’m really liking this 2019 thing so far,” lead scientist Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute said to applause. “I’m here to tell you that last night, overnight, the United States spacecraft New Horizons conducted the farthest exploration in the history of humankind, and did so spectacularly.”

3 years past Pluto

The close approach came a half-hour into the new year, and 3 years after New Horizons’ unprecedented swing past Pluto.

For Ultima Thule — which wasn’t even known when New Horizons departed Earth in 2006 — the endeavor was more difficult. The spacecraft zoomed within 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of it, more than three times closer than the Pluto flyby.

Operating on autopilot, New Horizons was out of radio contact with controllers at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory from late Monday afternoon until late Tuesday morning. Scientists wanted the spacecraft staring down Ultima Thule and collecting data, not turning toward Earth to phone home.

Mission operations manager Alice Bowman said she was more nervous this time than she was with Pluto in 2015 because of the challenges and distance, so vast that messages take more than six hours, one way, to cross the 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers). When a solid radio link finally was acquired and team members reported that their spacecraft systems were green, or good, she declared with relief: “We have a healthy spacecraft.” Later, she added to more applause: “We did it again.”

Flyby earns standing ovation

Cheers erupted in the control center and in a nearby auditorium, where hundreds more — still weary from the double countdowns on New Year’s Eve — gathered to await word. Scientists and other team members embraced and shared high-fives, while the spillover auditorium crowd gave a standing ovation.

Stern, Bowman and other key players soon joined their friends in the auditorium, where the celebration continued and a news conference took place. The speakers took delight in showing off the latest picture of Ultima Thule , taken just several hundred-thousand miles (1 million kilometers) before the 12:33 a.m. close approach.

“Ultima Thule is finally revealing its secrets to us,” said project scientist Hal Weaver of Johns Hopkins.

Based on the early, rudimentary images, Ultima Thule is highly elongated — about 20 miles by 10 miles (32 kilometers by 16 kilometers). It’s also spinning end over end, although scientists don’t yet know how fast.

As for its shape, scientists say there are two possibilities.

Ultima Thule is either one object with two connected lobes, sort of like a spinning bowling pin or peanut still in the shell, or two objects orbiting surprisingly close to one another. A single body is more likely, they noted. An answer should be forthcoming Wednesday, once better, closer pictures arrive. 

By week’s end, “Ultima Thule is going to be a completely different world, compared to what we’re seeing now,” Weaver noted.

Color close-ups in February

Still, the best color close-ups won’t be available until February. Those images should reveal whether Ultima Thule has any rings or moons, or craters on its dark, reddish surface. Altogether, it will take nearly two years for all of New Horizons’ data to reach Earth.

The observations should help scientists ascertain how deep-freeze objects like Ultima Thule formed, along with the rest of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago.

As a preserved relic from that original time, Ultima Thule also promises to shed light on the so-called Kuiper Belt, or Twilight Zone, in which hundreds of thousands of objects reside well beyond Neptune.

“This mission’s always been about delayed gratification,” Stern reminded reporters. He noted it took 12 years to sell the project, five years to build it and nine years to reach the first target, Pluto. 

Its mission now totaling $800 million, the baby grand piano-sized New Horizons will keep hurtling toward the edge of the solar system, observing Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs, from afar, and taking cosmic particle measurements. Although NASA’s Voyagers crossed the Kuiper Belt on their way to true interstellar space, their 1970s-era instruments were not nearly as sophisticated as those on New Horizons, Weaver noted, and the twin spacecraft did not pass near any objects known at the time.

Next flyby 2020

The New Horizons team is already pushing for another flyby in the 2020s, while the nuclear power and other spacecraft systems are still good.

Bowman takes comfort and pleasure in knowing that long after New Horizons stops working, it “will keep going on and on.”

“There’s a bit of all of us on that spacecraft,” she said, “and it will continue after we’re long gone here on Earth.”
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Bacon and black coffee for breakfast, or oatmeal and bananas?

If you’re planning to try to lose weight in 2019, you’re sure to find a fierce debate online and among friends and family about how best to do it. It seems like everyone has an opinion, and new fads emerge every year.

Two major studies last year provided more fuel for a particularly polarizing topic — the role carbs play in making us fat. The studies gave scientists some clues, but, like other nutrition studies, they can’t say which diet — if any — is best for everyone.

That’s not going to satisfy people who want black-and-white answers, but nutrition research is extremely difficult and even the most respected studies come with big caveats. People are so different that it’s all but impossible to conduct studies that show what really works over long periods of time.

Before embarking on a weight loss plan for the new year, here’s a look at some of what was learned last year.

Fewer carbs, fewer pounds?

It’s no longer called the Atkins Diet, but the low-carb school of dieting has been enjoying a comeback. The idea is that the refined carbohydrates in foods like white bread are quickly converted into sugar in our bodies, leading to energy swings and hunger.

By cutting carbs, the claim is that weight loss will be easier because your body will instead burn fat for fuel while feeling less hungry. A recent study seems to offer more support for low-carb proponents. But, like many studies, it tried to understand just one sliver of how the body works.

The study, co-led by an author of books promoting low-carb diets, looked at whether varying carb levels might affect how the body uses energy. Among 164 participants, it found those on low-carb diets burned more total calories than those on high-carb diets.

The study did not say people lost more weight on a low-carb diet — and didn’t try to measure that. Meals and snacks were tightly controlled and continually adjusted so everyone’s weights stayed stable.

David Ludwig, a lead author of the paper and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, said it suggests limiting carbs could make it easier for people to keep weight off once they’ve lost it. He said the approach might work best for those with diabetes or pre-diabetes.

Ludwig noted the study wasn’t intended to test long-term health effects or real-world scenarios where people make their own food. The findings also need to be replicated to be validated, he said.

Caroline Apovian of Boston University’s School of Medicine said the findings are interesting fodder for the scientific community, but that they shouldn’t be taken as advice for the average person looking to lose weight.

Do I avoid fat to be skinny?

For years people were advised to curb fats, which are found in foods including meat, nuts, eggs, butter and oil. Cutting fat was seen as a way to control weight, since a gram of fat has twice as many calories than the same amount of carbs or protein.

Many say the advice had the opposite effect by inadvertently giving us license to gobble up fat-free cookies, cakes and other foods that were instead full of the refined carbs and sugars now blamed for our wider waistlines.

Nutrition experts gradually moved away from blanket recommendations to limit fats for weight loss. Fats are necessary for absorbing important nutrients and can help us feel full. That doesn’t mean you have to subsist on steak drizzled in butter to be healthy.

Bruce Y. Lee, a professor of international health at Johns Hopkins, said the lessons learned from the anti-fat fad should be applied to the anti-carb fad: Don’t oversimplify advice.

“There’s a constant look for an easy way out,” Lee said.

Which is better?

Another big study this past year found low-carb diets and low-fat diets were about equally as effective for weight loss. Results varied by individual, but after a year, people in both groups shed an average of 12 to 13 pounds.

The author noted the findings don’t contradict Ludwig’s low-carb study. Instead, they suggest there may be some flexibility in the ways we can lose weight. Participants in both groups were encouraged to focus on minimally processed foods like produce and meat prepared at home. Everyone was advised to limit added sugar and refined flour.

“If you got that foundation right, for many, that would be an enormous change,” said Christopher Gardner of Stanford University and one of the study’s authors.

Limiting processed foods could improve most diets by cutting down overall calories, while still leaving wiggle room for people’s preferences. That’s important, because for a diet to be effective, a person has to be able to stick to it. A breakfast of fruit and oatmeal may be filling for one person, but leave another hungry soon after.

Gardner notes the study had its limitations, too. Participants’ diets weren’t controlled. People were instead instructed on how to achieve eating a low-carb or low-fat in regular meetings with dietitians, which may have provided a support network most dieters don’t have.

What works?

In the short term you can probably lose weight by eating only raw foods, or going vegan, or cutting out gluten, or following another diet plan that catches your eye. But what will work for you over the long term is a different question.

Zhaoping Li, director of clinical nutrition division at the University of California, Los Angeles, says there is no single set of guidelines that help everyone lose weight and keep it off. It’s why diets often fail — they don’t account for the many factors that drive us to eat what we do.

To help people lose weight, Li examines her patients’ eating and physical activity routines to identify improvements people will be able to live with.

“What sticks is what matters,” Li said.
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Extreme weather events are on the rise and climate change is playing a role in both the frequency and intensity of the bad weather the world is seeing. And as we enter 2019, weird weather seems to be the norm in many parts of the world. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Just 33 minutes into the New Year, NASA’s New Horizons probe made space exploration history, flying by the most distant body ever explored.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which built and operates the spacecraft, said Tuesday it had “zipped past” the object known as 2014 MU69, or Ultima Thule.

New Horizons, which is the size of a baby grand piano and part of an $800 million mission launched in 2006, was due to collect data for four hours after the flyby.  

NASA is holding a mid-morning briefing to give updates on the success of the mission.

In 2015, New Horizons flew by Pluto, then the farthest object visited by a spacecraft from Earth. Tuesday’s encounter took place 1.6 billion kilometers past Pluto, some 6.5 billion kilometers from Earth.

“Today is the day we explore worlds farther than ever in history!! EVER,” tweeted the project’s lead scientist, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute.

He called it an auspicious beginning to 2019, which will mark the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s footsteps on the moon in July 1969.

Ultima Thule was discovered in June 2014 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which was trying to find new targets for New Horizons in the Kuiper Belt, the third region of the solar system.
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A vaccination center in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, is swarming with people, a sign that Nigeria’s campaign to vaccinate more people against yellow fever appears to be making headway.

As part of the effort, Nigeria’s government partnered with the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccine alliance GAVI, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to immunize more than 26 million people.

It is the second phase of Nigeria’s preventive campaign after a yellow fever outbreak in September 2017.

Deborah Adiche came to the Abuja vaccination center with her daughter.

 

“We’ve learned it’s killing people, so we don’t have to wait for it to happen to us – that’s why we came to collect the vaccine and I brought her, too, to collect the vaccine.”

Some 8.7 million people were vaccinated in the country during an initial campaign in January and February 2018.

This phase covers six states, including the Federal Capital Territory.

Obiora Ezebilo, UNICEF’s yellow fever coordinator, has been monitoring the process.

“The campaign has been very good. We started the campaign on the 22nd of November. We’re implementing in Borno state, Niger, Kebbi, Sokoto, Plateau and … actually all the states have completed. The records were having is really good, as at now we’re having maybe a coverage of above 95 percent,” Ezebilo said.

But Nigeria’s routine yellow fever immunization rate is low – only 4-in-10 children age 2 years and older are immunized.

 

Experts say a high enough percentage of the population must be immunized to contain the spread of the disease. Nigeria hopes to reach that point in five years.

About 39 million people between 9 months and 44 years old are expected to be vaccinated by the end of 2018.

Program manager for immunization in Abuja, Salome Toh, says the effort is having an impact.

“The federal government of Nigeria, in collaboration with international organizations, especially the GAVI, they have earmarked a lot of money in supporting this campaign. They purchased the vaccines, they provided logistics, and there’s a national plan to cover this age group across the country. It is divided into phases, as I’m talking to you now, the first quarter of next year, other states are also going to do the campaign,” Toh said.

Since the September 2017 outbreak, doctors have seen more than 1,600 suspected cases of yellow fever across 14 states. Up to 70 people have died.

UNICEF’s Ezebilo says the campaign is focusing on high-risk areas first.

“There’s a global shortage of yellow fever vaccines. You can’t get, like, 200 million doses to vaccinate everybody in Nigeria. We have to get them based on global availability. So this year we are …  we’re lucky to have about 20 million doses. So we just did a risk categorization, selected areas we feel that are most at risk and try to focus on them for the preventive campaign,” Ezebilo said.

 

The Yellow fever virus is endemic in tropical areas and is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. As many as 60,000 Africans die annually from the disease. Children are most at risk.

There is no cure for the viral infection, but it can be prevented with the vaccine. Once someone contracts yellow fever, medical treatment consists of easing symptoms of the virus, which include fever, muscle pain and dehydration.

Good sanitation, hygiene and proper drainage are natural ways to reduce risks of the disease.

 

Nigeria is one of 50 global partners battling to eliminate the disease within the next 10 years.

Besides improving sanitation and clearing stagnant water where mosquitoes breed, Nigeria needs to immunize about 80 percent of the at-risk population to prevent further transmission of the disease.

 
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Nigeria’s campaign to vaccinate more people against yellow fever appears to be making headway. The government is partnering with the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and UNICEF to immunize more than 26 million people. It is the second phase of Nigeria’s preventive campaign after a yellow fever outbreak in September 2017. Timothy Obiezu has more from Abuja.
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NASA scientists are getting a very special New Year’s Day gift. The New Horizons spacecraft is moving into unexplored space beyond Neptune to investigate objects so far out in our solar system they can hardly be seen by telescope. As VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports, the trip far out in space may help scientists figure out how the solar system was created.
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The World Health Organization says violent protests in DR Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu Province are hampering efforts to control the spread of the Ebola virus.  Protests erupted Thursday in response to the government’s decision to delay presidential elections in the region until March.

 

The World Health Organization reports anti-government protests in the towns of Beni and Butembo in North Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are having a serious impact on the Ebola response operation.   It says critical field work is being disrupted; including vaccinations, contact tracing, and checking on people who have been potentially exposed to the deadly virus. 

 

WHO spokesman Tarek Jasarevic says an Ebola transit center in Beni was attacked, frightening people waiting for test results and the staff caring for them.  He tells VOA the violence is an unfortunate setback to Ebola control efforts, which have been progressing.

“All gains that we have made so far in fighting Ebola in North Kivu are at risk because of this violence… And, in recent weeks, we were quite optimistic about Beni city because we have seen some decrease in numbers.  However, now again with this surge in violence, we may again lose these gains,” said Jasarevic.

Latest figures from the DRC Ministry of Health put the number of Ebola cases at 593, including 359 deaths — a fatality rate of 60 percent.  Another 203 people reportedly have recovered from Ebola.

The outbreak in North Kivu was declared five months ago on August 1.  More than 1,000 health workers from the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization and other agencies are on the ground trying to stop the disease from spreading.  

Jasarevic says a lot of work lies ahead before the epidemic can be brought under control.   For that to happen, he says, it is important that health workers have access to the population and that their security is assured.
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The five hottest years on record have all taken place this decade, and it looks like 2018 will join their ranks. This year showcased the hazards of climate change, while showing how far the world is from confronting it. VOA’s Steve Baragona looks back on a year of climate catastrophes and controversies.
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The world’s wildlife remains under increasing pressure because of human encroachment, the effects of climate change and — especially — poaching. It is estimated that the global wildlife trafficking market is worth up to $23 billion. Conservationists are fighting back to save some of the most endangered species we have left. Faith Lapidus reports.
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