Satellites have detected methane emissions from belching cows at a California feedlot, marking the first time emissions from livestock – a major component of agricultural methane – could be measured from space.

Environmental data firm GHGSat this month analyzed data from its satellites and pinpointed the methane source from a feedlot in the agricultural Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, California in February.

This is significant, according to GHGSat, because agricultural methane emissions are hard to measure, and accurate measurement is needed to set enforceable reduction targets for the beef-production industry.

GHGSat said the amount of methane it detected from that single feedlot would result in 5,116 tons of methane emissions if sustained for a year. If that methane were captured, it could power over 15,000 homes, it said.

Agriculture contributes 9.6% to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and about 36% of methane emissions, mostly from livestock.

The Biden administration late last year announced its plan to crack down on methane emissions from the U.S. economy.

The EPA unveiled its first rules aimed at reducing methane from existing oil and gas sources that require companies to detect and repair methane leaks. The Agriculture Department rolled out a voluntary incentive program for farmers.

At last year’s climate talks, more than 100 countries pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% and to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Much of this reduction would need to come from the livestock industry, according to the U.N. food agency, which said that livestock accounts for 44% of man-made methane emissions.

Several methods to reduce livestock methane emissions are being tested, including adding seaweed to cattle diets.  

GHGSat provides its data to the United Nations’ International Methane Emissions Observatory program.
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Meteorologists warn the extreme heat gripping India and Pakistan is likely to have many cascading effects on human health, ecosystems, agriculture, water, energy, and the economy. 

For the past few days, hundreds of millions of people have been sweltering under temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius in widespread areas of India and Pakistan. The intense heat is predicted to continue until May 2 and then subside.

The World Meteorological Organization says both India and Pakistan regularly experience excessively high temperatures in the pre-monsoon period, especially in May. While heatwaves do occur in April, it says they are less common.

WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis said national meteorological and hydrological departments in both countries are implementing measures that have been successful in saving lives in the past few years.

“A lot of work has been taken on heat health action plans specifically and in particular to protect the most vulnerable, and the most vulnerable in urban areas where the impact of the heat tends to be magnified,” she said. “So, we do hope that mortality from this ongoing event will be limited.”

Nullis said large swaths of Pakistan are experiencing daytime temperatures between five and eight degrees Celsius above normal for this time of year. She said the extreme heat will have a punishing impact on Pakistan’s mountainous regions of Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“The Pakistan Meteorological Department is warning that the unusual heat has the risk of speeding up the melting of snow and ice, and this might trigger what we call glacial lake outbursts, which lead to flash floods,” she said. “These are, obviously, very deadly hazards.”

Meteorologists say it is premature to attribute the extreme heat in India and Pakistan solely to climate change. However, they agree it is consistent with what is expected in a changing climate.

In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns heat waves and humid heat stress will be more intense and frequent in South Asia this century.
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Chris Mei has been stuck in his Shanghai flat for a month save for PCR testing and occasional volunteer work delivering food to neighbors. That will change in a couple of days when he boards his flight for a long-scheduled trip home to Portland, Oregon.

He uses Zoom to do factory inspections for his 2-year-old import-export firm, Shanghai Fanyi Industry, but he can’t complete all the orders for clients overseas. He’s locked down like most of the 26 million people in the city, along with some of the factories where he normally sources goods, such as artificial plants and solar lights.

“In terms of how’s business, it’s definitely affected us,” Mei said. “Clients abroad always have deadlines, especially for some of our products.” He continued, “For example, for a shipment that recently went out, we had a portion of the order canceled due to the fact that the factory, they were on lockdown as well, so we basically could only produce what they could, and then the remaining part of the order basically passed the client’s deadline in South America.”

Leaving a city in lockdown has become an expensive, multistep process. Mei, a U.S. citizen, applied for permission to leave Shanghai by getting a pass from his neighborhood committee. He then found a driver with special permission to take him to the airport during lockdown – for about six times the usual price of that ride.

Shanghai’s residents have been ordered to stay home since early April in response to a spike in COVID-19 infections. Last week, authorities began easing restrictions in parts of the city to restore economic activity.

Mei’s case is typical, analysts who follow China say. Large numbers of foreign businesspeople in China are planning on leaving the country, for now or for good. The lockdowns have hammered an economy already hobbled by the 4-year-old Sino-U.S. trade dispute, capital outflows and last year’s crackdown on tech giants.

On March 18, That’s Shanghai, a local magazine, reported the results of an online survey saying 85% of foreigners in the city would “rethink their future in China” because of the lockdowns. The survey found that 48% of respondents plan to leave China over the next year and that 37% would wait in case anti-pandemic measures improve.

Risk seems to be increasing

Shipments through seaports in Shanghai and the Chinese tech hub Shenzhen, which locked down in March, have slowed because of a lack of workers and a shortage of truckers who are allowed to move imports and exports around the country.

Larger businesses can afford to wait in case lockdowns ease and China resumes its robust economic growth, said Doug Barry, communications vice president with the U.S.-China Business Council, a 265-member advocacy group in Washington.

Smaller companies are having more trouble because they depend on China’s advanced contract manufacturing ecosystem and cannot easily relocate, Barry said. He said some businesses have closed temporarily because so many workers can’t report to their jobs.

Others have spent money to help feed workers and even let them stay overnight at workplaces so they can report to their jobs the next day.

Overseas-based company leaders are staying away from their China projects because of quarantine rules, he said.

“Business in some cases has come to a complete stop,” Barry said. “The risk seems to be increasing, and the unknowns are also increasing and you’re looking at bottom lines and the future of things, and you’re wondering what to do.”

While foreign businesspeople are thinking of leaving, the significance of China to outside companies can be seen in the numbers. Foreign businesses invested $173.5 billion in China last year, up from $163 billion in 2020 and $140 billion a year earlier, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s latest report.

Just more than 1 million foreign companies were registered in China at the end of 2020.

Companies normally relocate in China for contract manufacturing – which is seen as professional yet inexpensive – or to sell cars, coffee, phones and fashion apparel to the massive consumer market.

Incentives to stay

Mei will be back in Shanghai after a couple of months at home. By then, he expects there will be a “more solid” response to COVID-19 with clarity about people’s mobility.

Some people he knows have been called back to work in May, he said.

William Frazier, a 58-year-old U.S.-born owner of a business advisory firm in Shanghai, has lived in the city continuously since 2002.  He has no plans to leave the city even though he’s been locked down since March 16. Frazier has a spacious flat in a high-end compound, making life tolerable as he works though emails, phone and video conferences. The economic chaos has caused more clients to call him for information.

“No real significant impact, I would say, not for me,” Frazier said. “I don’t see hiccups. I see opportunities.”

Local officials in China want foreign investors to stay in the country, the U.S.-China Business Council has found. They are willing to meet and hear out American businesspeople, Barry said, though no government body has offered them any economic stimulus.

Sticking around will keep companies competitive after China returns to normal, he said.

If lockdowns in Shanghai end in May, more businesspeople are likely to stay in the city, said Yan Liang, professor and chair of economics at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Local and central government policymakers have the economic aftershocks of COVID-19 “on their radar,” she said.

“It’s just so important to be able to have a foothold in a large market like this,” Liang said. “And I think some of the sentiments (are) also that even though there are some maybe temporary or maybe more permanent slowdowns, the Chinese economy is still a really bright spot when you compare with other countries in the world.”

That makes the lure of the largest market in the world worth waiting for, for businesses that can afford to hold out until cities open again.
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Beijing residents will need clear COVID tests to enter public spaces, officials said Saturday, announcing fresh virus controls at the start of a Labor Day holiday muted by creeping infections in the capital.

The five-day break is typically one of China’s busiest travel periods, but the country’s worst COVID resurgence since early in the pandemic is expected to keep people home.

Faced with the highly transmissible omicron variant, Chinese officials have doubled down on their zero-COVID policy, quashing virus clusters through mass testing and lockdowns.

Despite mounting economic costs and public frustration, the capital city announced it would further restrict access to public spaces after the holiday period.

Starting May 5, a negative COVID test taken within the past week will be needed to enter “all kinds of public areas and to take public transport,” according to a notice on the city’s official WeChat page.

For activities such as sporting events and group travel, participants will also need to show a negative COVID test taken within 48 hours, along with proof of “full vaccination,” according to the new rules.

China reported more than 10,700 domestic COVID cases on Saturday, with most in economic engine Shanghai.

The eastern metropolis has been sealed off for around a month after becoming the epicenter of the latest outbreak.

Cases are trending downwards, yet frustration and anger is boiling in the city of 25 million where many have been ordered to stay at home for several weeks.

Shanghai officials said on Saturday that its new cases were all found among quarantined or restricted groups — signaling that community infections could be slowing.

They added that hundreds of companies on a “whitelist” have resumed work, with around 1,000 firms allowed to restart operations too, state media said.

In Beijing, cases nudged up to 54, according to the National Health Commission.

As the long holiday started, consumers in the capital were asked to show proof of negative COVID tests — from within 48 hours — to enter public areas such as malls, shops and scenic spots.

The city will make COVID testing free for residents starting Tuesday, authorities said. 
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A blindfold calms the large black and white augur buzzard as two men glue a prosthetic leg into an insert on her body to replace the one that she lost.

The female is one of many injured birds of prey that turn up at Simon Thomsett’s Kenyan rehabilitation center, most of which, like her, have been crippled by electrocution.

The problem has progressively grown as Kenya has upgraded its electricity network, replacing wooden poles with steel-reinforced concrete, which can be conductive, and hanging inadequately insulated power lines between them, conservationists say.

That and the lack of deterrent markers along the cables are pushing Kenya’s already dwindling bird of prey populations closer to disappearance.

“Thirty years ago, the birds were coming in being hit by cars, diseased… or hitting things like clothes lines or …windows,” said Thomsett before/after helping to fit the prosthetic.

“Now we … the vast majority is electrocution.”

Many are killed outright by the shock, both via direct collision with power lines or from perching.

Kenya’s population of augur buzzards, historically one of its most common birds of prey has plunged 91% over 40 years due to electrocution, habitat loss, and poisoning, according to a February study by Thomsett and others published in Biological Conservation.

Over the same period, hooded vulture are down 88% and long-crested eagles by 94%, the study said.

The government-run Kenya Power and Lighting Company did not respond to requests for comment.

In some parts of South Africa, bird flight diverters have successfully been introduced to reduce instances of such deaths.

“These devices can reduce collisions by over 90% for some species,” said Lourens Leeuwner, who manages the wildlife and energy program at South Africa’s Endangered Wildlife Trust.
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A San Francisco area-based nonprofit is working to send easily operated, simply maintained and low-cost incubators to Ukraine. 

After learning that 260,000 women in Ukraine are pregnant, with many now giving birth in bomb shelters or without access to modern medical care, Embrace Global is working to send 3,000 of its incubators to war ravaged areas of the country.

Co-founder and CEO Jane Chen launched the initiative at the recent TED 2022 conference in Vancouver.  The company was already sending 200 incubators with UNICEF.

While traditional incubators require continuous electricity, these devices, which look like small sleeping bags, can be charged like a cellphone with electricity or a heater that works off hot water. The charge lasts up to eight hours.

“The core technology is a pouch of a waxlike substance called a phase change material,” Chen said. “And so this, once melted, can maintain the exact same temperature of 98 degrees, human body temperature, for up to eight hours at a stretch, and it can be reheated thousands of times.”

Far less expensive

Each device costs $300 to $400, substantially cheaper than the $20,000 cost of a basic traditional incubator, which also requires continuous electricity and trained personnel. The low-cost incubators require virtually no training and are designed to be very simple to use.

Chen developed the device while attending Stanford University and after then spending four years in India, where the devices have been distributed to 12 states.  She said the war in Ukraine was creating a new use for the incubators.

“This is a really ideal solution, actually, for a humanitarian crisis like this, because of the fact that the incubator is portable, and it works without stable electricity,” she said. “And on top of that, you don’t need a trained caregiver. The training for this is extremely simple. It was made to be very intuitive to you. So it can be used in those types of situations.”

This is the first time Chen and her organization have sent their incubators to Ukraine.

Besides India, the incubators are also being distributed through parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan and Nepal.

Easy, accurate 

Dr. Geeta Arora, a New York City internist, said she loved the fact that the incubators can be used so easily in the developing world.

“My family comes from a very poor part of India,” Arora said. “And there’s nothing available. And most babies … you have to wrap them or strap them to another body to try to keep them warm. But with this, you know exactly what temperature the baby’s going to be.”

For Chen and Embrace Global, the challenge around the world is getting people on the ground to make sure the incubators are getting to the right places and people.  This was recently the case in Zambia.

A a nurse at a government facility “reached out to us and was just really passionate,” Chen said. “She was seeing the number of babies that were dying because of a lack of incubators.  And so we sent incubators to her. She, as the champion, really brought it to the attention of all of the hospital staff. And with that, we were able to expand it to other hospitals in the area.”

In a little over a decade, Chen estimated, Embrace Global’s incubator has already saved the lives of 350,000 babies around the world. Her organization’s goal is to save a million and then have the product available to everybody who needs it.
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A Colorado prison inmate who worked at a poultry farm culling infected birds has become the first person in the U.S. to test positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment confirmed the case Thursday.

H5N1 has been spreading rapidly among birds in the U.S. since February but does not appear to pose a significant threat to people because humans need to be in close contact with infected birds.

The virus has been seen among commercial birds in 29 states and among wild birds in 34 states.

More than 35 million chickens and turkeys have been destroyed in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus.

The infected man, who is younger than 40, reported fatigue for several days and made a full recovery.

“The inmate was part of a prison work crew composed of inmates nearing release, which had been working at the farm before a case of bird flu was confirmed there on April 19,” said Lisa Wiley, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections.

In December 2021, a British man with 20 pet ducks was infected with the virus.
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After years of preparation and testing, a new NASA spacecraft is almost ready for its mission to an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists hope the journey will uncover clues into the origins of Earth. For VOA, Villafañe visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to see the spacecraft and speak with mission investigators.
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China has suspended cross-border freight train services with North Korea following consultations after COVID-19 infections in its border city of Dandong, the foreign ministry said Friday.

The suspension came within four months after North Korea eased border lockdowns enforced early in 2020 against the coronavirus, measures global aid groups have blamed for its worsening economic woes and risks to food supplies for millions.

“Due to the COVID situation in Dandong, after friendly consultation between both sides, China has decided to suspend freight services from Dandong to Sinuiju,” foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a daily briefing in Beijing.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said authorities in Dandong had acted on a request from North Korea, citing unidentified sources.

Authorities in Seoul, the capital of neighboring South Korea, said they were keeping watch on the situation.

The Chinese city of Dandong has been fighting a COVID-19 outbreak since late April, reporting 220 infections from April 24-27.

By Wednesday, authorities had locked down 77 residential compounds, while people elsewhere were asked to keep to designated areas.

North Korea has not officially reported any COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began but adopted border curbs among its anti-virus measures.
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South Korea said Friday it will lift its outdoor mask mandate next week in response to a steady drop in COVID-19 cases after an omicron-fueled surge.

The announcement comes after Seoul dropped almost all other social-distancing measures earlier this month, ending two years of strict requirements that put a massive strain on the country’s small businesses.

From Monday, residents will no longer be required to wear face masks outdoors unless attending an event with more than 50 participants, health authorities said.

“As social-distancing measures are lifted and the mask mandate is being adjusted, people are increasingly returning to their normal lives,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), told reporters.

“This is all thanks to the patience and cooperation of the people over a long period of time,” Jeong added.

South Korea’s incoming administration, headed by conservative president-elect Yoon Suk-y, on Friday criticized the decision to end the mask mandate as “premature,” questioning if it had been based solely on “virus prevention measures.”

Ahn Cheol-soo, chief of Yoon’s transition team, had previously said the new government planned to make a decision on the mandate in May.

South Korea reported 50,568 new coronavirus cases Friday, well down from the peak of more than 620,000 a day in mid-March.

The KDCA’s Jeong said there had been a “steady decrease” in COVID-19 cases for the past six weeks.

“The number of new critically ill patients is also decreasing,” she said, adding hospitals had enough beds to treat new inpatients.

More than 86% of South Korea’s 51 million people have been fully vaccinated, with the majority also receiving a booster shot.

About 22,700 people in the country have died from the coronavirus — a 0.13% fatality rate, one of the world’s lowest. 
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Mission accomplished for the latest SpaceX and NASA trip to the International Space Station. Plus, the first-ever all-private charter to the ISS ends and … see what it looks like to catch a four-story rocket out of the sky. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Menthol cigarettes and other menthol tobacco products may soon be things of the past, according to an announcement by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday saying authorities are moving forward on a plan to ban them. 

It could still be years before the products are removed from stores. 

“The proposed rules would help prevent children from becoming the next generation of smokers and help adult smokers quit,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. 

Advocates for banning menthol tobacco products have long said they disproportionately impact African Americans, among whom they’re popular. It is estimated that 85% of African American smokers use menthol products. 

“Black folks die disproportionately of heart disease, lung cancer and stroke,” said Phillip Gardiner of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council. “Menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars are the main vectors of those diseases in the Black and brown communities and have been for a long time.” 

Experts at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center say menthol cigarettes are more dangerous than regular cigarettes because their minty flavoring masks the harshness of tobacco smoke, allowing for deeper inhalation and possibly more intense smoking habits. They also say more than half of smokers between the ages of 12 and 17 use menthol tobacco products. 

Some states such as California and Massachusetts have already banned menthol tobacco products. 

Members of the public will be allowed to give their input on the proposed ban until July 5, after which the FDA will finalize a plan. 

Tobacco companies are likely to launch legal efforts to prevent banning menthol tobacco products. 

Cigarette stocks were mixed on the news despite menthol tobacco products reportedly accounting for one-third of the market in the United States. 

It is estimated that 12% of Americans smoke cigarettes. 

Some information in this report comes from Reuters and The Associated Press.

 

 

 

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((SOURCE: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-fda-to-publish-proposal-to-ban-menthol-cigarettes-wsj/ar-AAWHf5s 

https://apnews.com/article/science-business-health-smoking-tobacco-industry-regulation-04832ac01c3596cbedc4257f460707e8)) 

 

 

 
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Dr. Anthony Fauci has given an upbeat assessment of the current state of the coronavirus in the United States, saying the country is “out of the pandemic phase” with regard to new infections, hospitalizations and deaths, and that it appears to be making a transition to COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease — occurring regularly in certain areas. 

Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said on the PBS NewsHour on Tuesday that the coronavirus remains a pandemic for much of the world. The threat is not over for the United States, he said, adding that he was speaking about the worst phase of the pandemic. 

“Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now,” he said. 

In comments Wednesday to The Washington Post, however, Fauci seemed to clarify his earlier remarks, saying that unlike the “full-blown, explosive pandemic phase” during the brutal winter omicron surge, he was describing what appears to be a period of transition toward COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease. 

“The world is still in a pandemic. There’s no doubt about that. Don’t anybody get any misinterpretation of that. We are still experiencing a pandemic,” Fauci told the Post. 

His comments came as health authorities wrestle with how to keep COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations manageable and learn to live with what’s still a mutating and unpredictable virus.  

The Biden administration has stressed that the nation has more tools — vaccinations, booster shots and medications — to better handle infections than earlier in the pandemic. 

U.S. cases are far lower than they were in recent months. But health officials are keeping a close eye as highly contagious variants continue to spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cases have risen about 25% in the past week. 

As of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the U.S. has recorded more than 81 million cases and more than 992,000 deaths.
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Tokyo’s Shibuya is famed for its Scramble Crossing, where crowds of people crisscross the intersection in a scene symbolizing urban Japan’s congestion and anonymity. It may have added another boasting right.

Tokyu Railways’ trains running through Shibuya and other stations were switched to power generated only by solar and other renewable sources starting April 1.

That means the carbon dioxide emissions of Tokyu’s sprawling network of seven train lines and one tram service now stand at zero, with green energy being used at all its stations, including for vending machines for drinks, security camera screens and lighting.

Tokyu, which employs 3,855 people and connects Tokyo with nearby Yokohama, is the first railroad operator in Japan to have achieved that goal. It says the carbon dioxide reduction is equivalent to the annual average emissions of 56,000 Japanese households.

Nicholas Little, director of railway education at Michigan State University’s Center for Railway Research and Education, commends Tokyu for promoting renewable energy but stressed the importance of boosting the bottom-line amount of that renewable energy.

“I would stress the bigger impacts come from increasing electricity generation from renewable sources,” he said. “The long-term battle is to increase production of renewable electricity and provide the transmission infrastructure to get it to the places of consumption.”

The technology used by Tokyu’s trains is among the most ecologically friendly options for railways. The other two options are batteries and hydrogen power.

And so is it just a publicity stunt, or is Tokyu moving in the right direction?

Ryo Takagi, a professor at Kogakuin University and specialist in electric railway systems, believes the answer isn’t simple because how train technology evolves is complex and depends on many uncertain societal factors.

In a nutshell, Tokyu’s efforts are definitely not hurting and are probably better than doing nothing. They show the company is taking up the challenge of promoting clean energy, he said.

“But I am not going out of my way to praise it as great,” Takagi said.

Bigger gains would come from switching from diesel trains in rural areas to hydrogen powered lines and from switching gas-guzzling cars to electric, he said.

Tokyu paid an undisclosed amount to Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility behind the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, for certification vouching for its use of renewables, even as Japan continues to use coal and other fossil fuels.

“We don’t see this as reaching our goal but just a start,” said Assistant Manager Yoshimasa Kitano at Tokyu’s headquarters, a few minutes’ walk from the Scramble Crossing.

Such steps are crucial for Japan, the world’s sixth-biggest carbon emitter, to attain its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050.

About 20% of Japan’s electricity comes from renewable sources, according to the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, a Tokyo-based independent non-profit research organization.

That lags way behind New Zealand, for instance, where 84% of power used comes from renewable energy sources. New Zealand hopes to make that 100% by 2035.

The renewable sources driving Tokyu trains include hydropower, geothermal power, wind power and solar power, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that provides the electricity and tracks its energy sourcing.

Tokyu has more than 100 kilometers (64 miles) of railway tracks serving 2.2 million people a day, including commuting “salarymen” and “salarywomen” and schoolchildren in uniforms.

Since the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, when a tsunami set off by a massive earthquake sent three reactors into meltdowns, Japan has shut down most of its nuclear plants and ramped up use of coal-fired power plants.

The country aims to have 36%-38% of its energy come from renewable sources by 2030, while slashing overall energy use.
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The Democratic Republic of Congo has kicked off Ebola vaccinations to stem an outbreak in the northwest city of Mbandaka, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. 

Two people are known to have died so far in the city of over one million inhabitants where people live in close proximity to road, water and air links to the capital Kinshasa. 

The first death occurred on April 21 and the second on Tuesday, marking the central African country’s 14th Ebola outbreak.  

Around 200 doses of the rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine have been shipped to Mbandaka from the eastern city of Goma, with more to be delivered in coming days, the WHO said in a statement. 

So far 233 contacts have been identified and are being monitored, it added. 

Three vaccination teams are on the ground and will focus on reaching all people at high risk. 

“With effective vaccines at hand and the experience of the Democratic Republic of the Congo health workers in Ebola response, we can quickly change the course of this outbreak for the better,” WHO Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti said in the statement. 

Congo’s equatorial forests are a natural reservoir for the Ebola virus, which was discovered near the Ebola River in northern Congo in 1976. 

The country has seen 13 previous Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2018-2020 in the east that killed nearly 2,300 people, the second highest toll recorded in the history of the hemorrhagic fever. 

The most recent ended in December in the east and caused six deaths. Mbandaka, the capital of Equateur province, has also contended with outbreaks in 2018 and in 2020.

Genetic testing has shown that the current outbreak was a new “spillover event,” meaning it was transmitted from infected animals rather than linked to previous events. 
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Rising seas from climate change are forcing difficult choices for coastal communities around the world. The southern U.S. state of Louisiana plans to spend billions restoring land it has already lost to erosion. But the plan has winners and losers. Video: Steve Baragona, Arturo Martinez
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The United Nations is calling for better management to reduce the risks from rapidly increasing natural disasters largely triggered by climate change.  The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has issued its 2022 Global Assessment Report, which prescribes solutions to lessen the threatened risks.  

The report warns the world is set to face more frequent and extreme disasters and nations are ill-prepared to tackle the dangers.  

It says the number of natural disasters experienced over the last two decades is five times higher than in the previous three decades.  

Based on current trends, says Director of the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Ricardo Mena, the world will face some 560 disasters per year.

“Disasters have forced over a quarter-of-a-billion people into internal displacement,” said Mena. “So, that is much more than those that have been displaced by conflict and war each year on average between 2010 and 2020.” 

Over the last decade, the cost of disasters has amounted to around $170 billion a year.  The U.N. report notes the Asia-Pacific region bears the greatest share of economic loss, followed by the African region.

Mena says it is the poorest countries that are most impacted by disasters, forcing the most vulnerable into a spiral of destruction.

But he says that destructive spiral can be stopped if governments adopt better risk reduction policies and management strategies.

“Governments will need to invest more in disaster resilience, strengthening national budgets to protect people, and critical infrastructure,” Mena said. “But they also will have to strengthen efforts to avoid the creation of new risks as a result of risk-line decisions.”   

Mena says decisions people make on how they live, build, and invest can create new risks.  For example, he says, someone who builds a house in an earthquake-prone area without respecting the building codes is likely to have his house destroyed. A municipality that builds a school in a flood-prone area may see the building washed away. 

Making better decisions, Mena says, can lead to fewer disasters. 
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One in four children in Latin America and the Caribbean does not have vaccine protection against three potentially deadly diseases, a U.N. report said Monday, warning of plummeting inoculation rates. 

While 90% of children in the region in 2015 had received the vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (DTP3), by 2020 coverage had dropped to three-quarters, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional office of the World Health Organization.  

This means that some 2.5 million children were not fully protected — and 1.5 million of them have not had even one dose in the three-shot regimen. 

Globally, according to WHO, 17.1 million infants did not receive an initial dose of the DTP3 vaccine in 2020, and another 5.6 million were only partially jabbed. 

Outbreaks of preventable diseases “have already occurred” in Latin America and the Caribbean, the agencies said. 

In 2013, only five people in the region contracted diphtheria — a bacterial disease that can cause breathing difficulties, heart failure and potentially death. 

Five years later, the number was nearly 900. 

There has also been a rise in cases of measles — another disease that can be prevented with inoculation — from nearly 500 cases in 2013 to more than 23,000 in 2019, said the statement. 

“The decline in vaccination rates in the region is alarming,” said UNICEF regional director Jean Gough. 

The reasons were multifold.  

“The context in the region has changed in the last five years. Governments have focused their attention on other emerging public health issues such as Zika, chikungunya and more recently COVID-19,” UNICEF neonatal expert Ralph Midy told AFP.  

“The existence of migrant populations that are difficult to locate and do not always have access to regular health services, in addition to people living in isolated or hard-to-reach areas, also hinders the vaccination process,” Midy said. 

The downward trend started even before the COVID-19 epidemic, which worsened the situation by interrupting primary health care services and causing some people to avoid clinics and hospitals for fear of the virus. 

“As countries recover from the pandemic, immediate actions are needed to prevent (vaccine) coverage rates from further dropping, because the re-emergence of disease outbreaks poses a serious risk to all of society,” said Gough. 

 
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In advance of World Malaria Day, the World Health Organization recommends the expanded use of the first malaria vaccine, calling it a potential game changer in the fight against malaria.

Malaria is a preventable, treatable disease.  Yet, every year, malaria sickens more than 200 million people and kills more than 600,000.  Most of these deaths, nearly half a million, are among young children in Africa.  That means every 60 seconds a child dies of malaria.

Despite this bleak news, the outlook for malaria control is promising, thanks to the development of the world’s first malaria vaccine.  The World Health Organization calls the achievement a historic breakthrough for science.

A pilot program was started in 2019 in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi.  Since then, the World Health Organization reports more than a million children in the three countries have received the malaria vaccine.

Mary Hamel is Head of WHOs Malaria Vaccine Implementation Program.  She said the two-year pilot program has shown the vaccine is safe, feasible to deliver and reduces deadly severe malaria.

“We saw a 30% drop in children being brought to the hospitals with deadly, severe malaria.  And we also saw almost a 10% reduction in all caused child mortality.  If the vaccine is widely deployed, it is estimated that it could save an additional 40 to 80,000 child lives each year,” she said.

WHO reports Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance will provide more than $155 million to support expanded introduction of the malaria vaccine for Gavi-eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The vaccine against malaria was under development before the COVID-19 vaccine was produced.  Hamel said WHO has learned a lot of lessons from that effort, which could be used in the development of future malaria vaccines.

“We know there have been new platforms that came forward since the COVID vaccine, including the mRNA platform and now the developers of one of the mRNA vaccines is looking forward to developing a malaria vaccine using that same platform,” she said.

Last July, BioNTech, manufacturer of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, announced it wants to build on that success by developing a malaria vaccine using mRNA technology.  The pharmaceutical company says it aims to start clinical trials by the end of this year.
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Climate change and habitat loss from big agriculture are combining to swat down global insect populations, with each problem making the other worse, a new study finds.

While insects may bug people at times, they also are key in pollinating plants to feed people, making soil more fertile and they include beautiful butterflies and fireflies. Scientists have noticed a dramatic drop both in total bug numbers and diversity of insect species, calling it a slow-motion death by 1,000 cuts. Those cuts include pesticides and light pollution.

Big single-crop agriculture that leaves less habitat and leafy food for bugs plus higher temperatures from climate change are huge problems for insects, but a new study in the journal Nature Wednesday based on more than 750,000 samples of 18,000 different species of insects says it’s not just those two threats acting on their own. It’s how habitat loss and climate change interact that really smashes bug populations.

In about half the cases where numbers of insects had plummeted, researchers found climate change and habitat loss from agriculture magnifying each other. In more than a quarter of the cases of biodiversity loss, meaning fewer species, the same dynamic was at work.

“We know insects are under threat. We’re now getting a much bigger handle on what they are threatened by and how much,” said study author Charlotte Outhwaite, an ecologist at the University College of London.

“In this case, the habitat loss and climate change can often be worse than if they were acting on their own, as one can make the impact of the other worse and vice versa,” Outhwaite said. “We’re missing part of the picture if we are only looking at these things individually.”

For example, monoculture agriculture often reduces tree shading, making it hotter in a given spot. On top of that comes climate change, she said. Then insects that need heat relief or need to move north for cooler climates can run into problems with lack of proper habitat from large farms.

It’s especially a problem in countries like Indonesia and Brazil, where forests are being cleared and temperatures are heating up higher than other parts of the globe, Outhwaite said.

That’s hard on insects like the pesky midge.

“Cocoa is pollinated primarily by midges and people don’t like midges. You know they’re the annoying ones that bite you, they pester you at picnics,” Outhwaite said. “But if you like chocolate you should be appreciative because without them we would have a lot less cocoa.”

The same can be said about bees, which are having a hard time with warming from climate change and single-crop farming, Outhwaite said.

Insect pollinators are responsible for about one-third of the human diet, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And 2 out of 5 species of invertebrate pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are on the path toward extinction, a 2016 United Nations science report said.

What makes this study important is that it’s the first to link climate change and industrialized agriculture together in explaining harm to insects, said University of Connecticut entomologist David Wagner, who wasn’t part of the study. Because the study used so many different samples and species and looked around the world, that gives its findings more credibility, Wagner said.
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The World Health Organization said on Saturday that at least one child death had been reported following an increase of acute hepatitis of unknown origin in children, and that at least 169 cases had been reported in children in 12 countries.

The WHO issued the figures as health authorities around the world investigate a mysterious increase in severe cases of hepatitis — inflammation of the liver — in young children.

The WHO said that as of April 21 acute cases of hepatitis of unknown origin had been reported in the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Israel, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, France, Romania and Belgium. It said 114 of the 169 cases were in the United Kingdom alone.

The cases reported were in children aged from 1 month to 16 years, and 17 had required liver transplantation, it said. It gave no details of the death that it said had been reported and did not say where it occurred.

The WHO said a common cold virus known as an adenovirus had been detected in at least 74 cases. COVID-19 infection was identified in 20 of those tested and 19 cases were detected with a COVID-19 and adenovirus co-infection, it said.

The WHO said it was closely monitoring the situation and working with British health authorities, other member states and partners.

U.S. health officials have sent out a nationwide alert warning doctors to be on the lookout for symptoms of pediatric hepatitis, possibly linked with a cold virus, as part of a wider probe into unexplained cases of severe liver inflammation in young children.
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Maggie Mulligan said her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonized over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barreling toward their home in northeast New Mexico. 

“We don’t know what’s next,” she said. “We don’t know if we can go back to the horses.” 

Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly packed up and evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous Western wildfires fueled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds. 

Over a dozen sizable fires were burning in Arizona and New Mexico, destroying dozens of homes and as of Saturday burning more than 174 square miles (451 square kilometers). 

Winds that howled Friday remained a concern Saturday in northern New Mexico where two fires merged and quadrupled in size to a combined 66 square miles (171 square kilometers) in the mountains and grassland northwest of Las Vegas. 

The merged fires burned some structures, but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. “They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we weren’t able to defend.” 

Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. “All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings — that’s what they’re dealing in.” 

An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said. 

Elsewhere in the region, the fire danger in the Denver area Friday was the highest it had been in over a decade, according to the National Weather Service, because of unseasonable temperatures in the 80s combined with strong winds and very dry conditions. 

In Arizona, a Flagstaff-area fire burned 30 homes and numerous other buildings when the flames blew through rural neighborhoods Tuesday. 

A shift in wind had crews working Saturday to keep the fire from moving up mountain slopes or toward homes in rural neighborhoods near areas that burned Tuesday, fire information officer Dick Fleishman said. “It has got us a little concerned.” 

In northern New Mexico, winds Friday gusted up to 75 mph (120 kph), shrouding the Rio Grande Valley with dust and pushing flames through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the north. 

A wall of smoke stretched from the wilderness just east of Santa Fe about 50 miles (80 km) to the northeast where ranchers and other rural inhabitants were abruptly told to leave by law enforcement. 

Mulligan, 68, of Ledoux, a dog breeder, said her dog Liam “was a nervous wreck” when a sheriff came to their house Friday afternoon and told them they had to leave. 

They packed nine dogs and five puppies into an SUV and an old blue Cadillac. They considered dropping the horses off at a local fairgrounds, but they decided it was in the same path of the burning fire as their home and more likely to burn. 

“There’s water in their pasture, and there’s hay. So we’ll see what happens,” Mulligan said. 

Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the nearby Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as winds kicked up. She said most people were taking the threat seriously. 

“As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, it’s in God’s hands,” she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where evacuees were gathering. 

The town of Cimarron and the headquarters of the Philmont Scout Ranch, owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, were preparing to flee if necessary. The scout ranch attracts thousands of summer visitors, but officials said no scouts were on the property. 

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed emergency declarations for four counties over the fires. 

Near the Flagstaff-area fire, Kelly Morgan was among neighbors at the edge of the evacuation zone who did not leave. She and her husband have lived through wildfires before, she said, and they are prepared if winds shift and flames race toward the home they moved into three years ago. 

“Unfortunately, it’s not something new to us … but I hate seeing it when people are affected the way they are right now,” she said. “It’s sad. It’s a very sad time. But as a community, we’ve really come together.” 
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