NASA’s new eye in the sky snapped a pic of a star and its ancient galactic buddies.  Plus, a spacewalk amid another week of heightened global tensions, and rolling out the next lunar rover.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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African health groups have warned that the COVID pandemic has led to a rise in drug and alcohol abuse on the continent, but a gap in data is making it hard to monitor. In South Africa, a Soweto-based nonprofit is scrambling to help youth to stay clean and sober.

Substance abuse — particularly alcohol consumption — has been on the rise in Africa for years, according to the World Health Organization.

The coronavirus pandemic that resulted in job losses and school closures has now amplified the problem.

The Ikageng children’s charity in Soweto says as many as 10 young people contact them daily suffering from addiction. Lydia Motloung, the acting program manager says that “during the lockdowns, they used to go and drink and some they were left in the houses alone, the parents are at work. And they start having the house parties and introduced to the alcohol, end up into crystal meth, which is very common around here, especially with schoolchildren.”

While Ikageng monitors the rise of addiction in the young people they’re helping, Motloung says national statistics on drug and alcohol abuse are sorely lacking.

“We normally get the statistics for COVID, you get the statistics for HIV, but we will never had any statistics for drugs and substance. I think if we can have that plan, the government can have that plan. … And then start funding the organization that are working with drugs and substance so that they fight it as they’re fighting for HIV and AIDS as they’re fighting for COVID,” she noted.

It’s not just South Africa that is lacking data on substance abuse, but the continent as a whole.

Florence Baingana is the African regional advisor on substance abuse for the World Health Organization.

“We may not count the exact numbers in each and every country. We know we have a problem. We also know that the services are inadequate, that one we know for a fact. Very often the alcohol treatment centers in the government facilities are underfunded. But I think if we were to begin by investing resources into building up the services, then we would be able to collect the data,” Baingana expressed.

She says investing in prevention would also be beneficial and less costly than treating addiction later on.

Ikageng’s caregivers like Nomali Monareng look for warning signs among the children they support.

She knows them first-hand, having struggled with addiction herself.

“Sometimes we need to start with parents. Most of children don’t, you don’t know how to talk about their feelings, don’t know how to express. Children need to be, to be taking care in all of their life, in all areas, like talking, having the conversation, even if it’s deep, even if it’s uncomfortable, you need to give the child a chance to talk,” she pointed out.

For those looking to get clean, the organization refers them to support groups that help people transition in and out of rehab.

They’re trying to offer skills training as well, so recoverees can find jobs and a purpose.

Vusi Nzimande is a project manager for the support program called Still We Rise.

“Where you find people idling, they don’t do nothing with their lives. That’s one of those things that causes us because of the mind is playing around. You started thinking too much. You don’t have a job; you don’t have anything to do. And then suddenly you see yourself going back to your old ways,” Nzimande said.

For the young people he’s helped, getting clean has been the first step. But experts say they’ll need opportunities and jobs to give them hope and keep them out of trouble in the long run.
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Until recently, fans of NFTs have lacked ways to show off their digital collections. Matt Dibble looks at a company bringing NFTs into the physical world.       
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A week-long measles vaccination campaign is underway in Afghanistan where the World Health Organization (WHO) says the extremely contagious viral disease has killed 142 children and infected 18,000 since the start of the year.

“This measles immunization campaign is part of the national response measure to stop the spread of the outbreak, save lives of the young children and reduce the burden on health systems,” a WHO statement quoted its representative in Afghanistan, Luo Dapeng, as saying on Monday.

The WHO-funded campaign, kicked off Saturday, is supporting the de facto Taliban health authorities in the management of the vaccination.

Thousands of health workers have been tasked to inoculate more than 1.2 million children under five against the disease across 49 Afghan districts in 24 provinces.

Afghanistan has experienced measles resurgence since January 2021. Authorities have since reported 48,366 infections and 250 deaths from the viral disease.

The low routine measles immunization coverage of 66% and longer interval since the measles follow-up campaign in 2018 have resulted in the accumulation of the high number of children under five years old with no measles immunization, said WHO.

Dapeng appealed to parents to bring their children in for vaccination against the life-threatening but preventable disease, urging everyone in the war-ravaged country to ensure the safety of Afghan health workers.

Last month, eight polio vaccinators, including four women, were shot dead during a door-to-door vaccination campaign against the crippling disease in two northern Afghan provinces.

“The rise in measles cases in Afghanistan is especially concerning because of the extremely high levels of malnutrition,” Dapeng said.

The health emergency comes as officials at the United Nations say decades of conflict, a devastating drought, a collapsing economy and the impact of international sanctions on Taliban rulers are causing “irreparable damage” to Afghan children.

The U.N. estimates that around 23 million people, more than half of Afghanistan’s population, need humanitarian assistance. It says one in three people faces acute hunger and two million children are malnourished.
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Thousands of refugees in Indonesia are finding themselves shut out of public services including travel and shopping because of a bureaucratic glitch that prevents them from proving they have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Indonesia is a transit country for 13,175 refugees, more than half of whom are from Afghanistan. Unlike some countries where refugees are kept In camps, refugees in Indonesia can roam freely and use public facilities. Most live around the Jakarta greater metropolitan area.

In 2020, the country launched “Peduli Lindungi,” a digital COVID-19 contact-tracing app giving vaccinated residents access to public facilities and mass transit. The program, however, requires people to upload their 16-digit government-issued civil registry number before they are vaccinated. Only citizens, permanent residents and foreigners with work visas have the number; refugees – more than 56% of whom have been vaccinated — do not.

The U.N. Refugee Agency, UNHCR, with the support of Indonesian state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma, developed a system to generate a different registration number to allow refugees to register in the app. However, the Jakarta Health Agency, which oversees the public plan, does not have the authority to generate the new numbers. The issue is now under discussion among the Health and Foreign ministries and the UNHCR.

Therefore, the refugees who received their vaccinations at local health clinics under the public vaccination plan did not receive an electronic vaccine certificate that would otherwise be uploaded to the Peduli Lindungi app. They also have no proof of vaccination other than a handwritten slip.

Somali refugee Ahmed Sheikh described the problem he faced when stopped by security guards asking for proof of vaccination at public transportation facilities or shopping malls.

“When we show them a handwritten slip issued by health workers at the public health clinic, they don’t believe it. …. It’s hard to explain to them when they don’t speak English too,” he told VOA.

Dr. Ngabila Salama, the head of the Jakarta Health Agency acknowledged the administrative hurdle, telling VOA the agency is limited by legal uncertainty; it does not have the legal authority to generate a useable civil registration number.

“We need to be accountable for every vaccine that we give out. It’s a shame if we cannot register all the vaccine recipients onto the Peduli Lindungi app. Imagine if we give out over 5,000 vaccines to refugees that are not registered on the Peduli Lindungi app. How can we be accountable for every vaccine, when we must undergo an audit by the Financial Audit Board? They may think we wasted a lot of the vaccines.” she said.

Some refugees are considering postponing getting their first vaccinations or second doses until this administrative problem is solved.

Although Sheikh is already vaccinated, he doubts he will let his wife be vaccinated soon, considering the circumstances.

“I don’t think I’m going to bring my wife to a Puskesmas [local health clinic] to get vaccinated because even if they give her the vaccine, they won’t enable the Peduli Lindungi app for her and can’t give her the electronic vaccine certificate she needs. I don’t want her to get the vaccine if we can’t get an [electronic] vaccine certificate. That’s what all refugees want.”

The UNHCR and nongovernmental organizations are trying to draw attention to the issue.

Zico Pestalozzi, campaign and advocacy coordinator at Suaka, an NGO that handles refugee issues, said “the Refugee Task Force under the Ministry of Political, Security and Legal Affairs should better coordinate [with relevant stakeholders] and ensure inclusive access to the Peduli Lindungi App.

“The UNHCR and NGOs are nongovernmental bodies, so it is up to the government to take charge of this issue and not simply divert responsibility back to the UNHCR,” he said.

Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia warns that “If we don’t protect this vulnerable population fast enough. We will be keeping a possible ‘pocket of infection.’ It will become a big problem because then it could produce a new variant or at least a new cluster among the refugee community.”

Pestalozzi agreed with Budiman, saying that if this problem lingers, it could turn into a public health risk and set back all the positive initiatives from the Indonesian government to improve refugees’ lives, including providing free vaccines, establishing learning centers and access to vocational learning. 
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An American private spaceflight company mocks the head of Russia’s space program following a war or words on Twitter. Plus, teams find an early explorer’s ship at the bottom of the sea, and NASA’s photos from the moon command cash at an auction. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Researchers have discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, in 10,000 feet of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice during what proved to be one of the most heroic expeditions in history.

A team of marine archaeologists, engineers and other scientists used an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula.

The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s search expedition Endurance22 announced the discovery on Wednesday.

Images and video of the wreck show the three-masted wooden ship in pristine condition, with gold-leaf letters reading “Endurance” still affixed to the stern and the ship’s lacquered wooden helm still standing upright, as if the captain may return to steer it at any time.

“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen,” said Mensun Bound, the director of the exploration. Bound noted the wreck is still upright, clear of the seabed “and in a brilliant state of preservation.”

The discovery is “a titantic find” in “one of the world’s most challenging environments,” said maritime historian Steven Schwankert, who was not involved in the expedition.

The combination of deep, dark waters — no sunlight penetrates to 10,000 feet — frigid temperatures and sea ice have frustrated past efforts to find Endurance, but also explain why the wreck is in such good condition.

The bottom of the Weddell Sea is “a very inhospitable environment for just about everything — especially the kind of bacteria, mites and wood-eating worms that would otherwise enjoy munching on a wooden shipwreck,” Schwankert said.

The expedition Endurance22 embarked from Cape Town, South Africa, in early February in a ship capable of breaking through 1-meter-thick ice. 

The team, which included more than 100 researchers and crew members, deployed underwater drones that combed the seafloor for two weeks in the area where the ship was recorded to have sunk in 1915. 

“We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” said expedition leader John Shears. 

The British explorer Shackleton never achieved his ambition to become the first person to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. In fact, he never set foot on the continent. 

“Despite being designed to resist collision with ice floes and to break through pack ice, Endurance could not withstand being crushed by heavy sea ice,” said Ann Coats, a maritime historian at the University of Portsmouth. 

Shackleton himself noted the difficulty of the endeavor in his diary. 

“The end came at last about 5 p.m.,” he wrote. “She was doomed, no ship built by human hands could have withstood the strain.” 

Before the ship disappeared 3,000 meters below icy waters, Shackleton’s crew loaded food and other provisions into three lifeboats to escape and set up camp on ice floes, where they used sled dogs to carry their provisions, according to Shackleton’s diary. 

Shackleton and his captain, Frank Worsley, then sailed across 1,287 kilometers of treacherous icy waters in a 7-meter ship to the island of South Georgia, a remote whaling community, to get help. That successful trip is considered a heroic feat of fortitude, and Shackleton’s decisive response to imminent tragedy is still held up today as a model of how to lead in difficult circumstances. 

“Shackleton was a very good planner and a good improviser — I have a feeling that the polar explorers of today would not survive the same kinds of things he endured,” said Anna Wahlin, a polar researcher at the University of Gothenburg, who just returned from a two-month mission studying ice shelves and warming ocean currents in Antartica. 

In Antartica, “everything is gray or white,” and after only a few weeks, explorers “start to miss smelling Earth, walking in the forest, hearing birds chirp, seeing things that are green,” she said. 

The expedition to find Endurance comes a century after Shackleton’s death in 1922. British historian and broadcaster Dan Snow, who accompanied the researchers, tweeted that the wreck’s discovery on Saturday happened “100 years to the day since Shackleton was buried.” 

The ship is protected as a historic monument under the 6-decade-old Antarctic Treaty that is intended to protect the region’s environment. 

Researchers filmed the wreck, but nothing was recovered or disturbed. Instead, expedition organizers say they want to use laser scans to create a 3-D model of the ship that can be displayed in both traveling exhibits and a permanent museum exhibit. 

“Shackleton, we like to think, would have been proud of us,” the expedition’s Bound wrote in a blog post. 
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The World Health Organization expressed concern Wednesday that many countries are drastically reducing COVID-19 testing, inhibiting the ability of public health professionals to monitor where the coronavirus is, how it’s spreading and how it’s evolving.

During a briefing at agency headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while cases and deaths were declining globally and many countries had lifted restrictions, the pandemic was far from over, “and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.”

Tedros said the WHO on Wednesday published new guidelines on self-testing for COVID-19 and recommended that self-tests be offered in addition to professionally administered testing services. He said evidence showed that users can reliably and accurately self-test, and that self-testing may reduce inequalities in testing access.

The WHO chief said he hoped the new guidance would also help increase access to testing, which is too expensive for many low-income countries, where those tools could play an important role in expanding testing.

Tedros also said the agency and its partners in the ACT Accelerator grouping — part of the WHO’s COVAX initiative, which has focused on equitable access to vaccines globally — were seeking to raise funds “to ensure that all countries that need self-tests will be able to receive them as quickly as possible.”

Regarding the situation in Ukraine, Tedros said the WHO had so far delivered 81 tons of supplies to the country and was establishing a pipeline of supplies for health facilities throughout Ukraine.

He said Tuesday that the agency had delivered five tons of medical supplies to Kyiv to support surgical care for 150 trauma patients, and other supplies to manage a range of health conditions for 45,000 people for a month.

Tedros said the WHO “continues to call on the Russian Federation to commit to a peaceful resolution to this crisis, and to allow safe, unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance for those in need.”
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A man who received the first heart transplant from a pig two months ago has died, the University of Maryland Medical Center said Wednesday. 

Doctors did not say the specific reason David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday, only saying his condition had been worsening over the past several days. 

“We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort,” Bennett’s son, David Bennett Jr., said in a statement released by the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We hope this story can be the beginning of hope and not the end.” 

Prior to the January 7 transplant, Bennett had been in poor health and was ineligible for a human heart. 

Organ transplants from animals — xenotransplantation — have largely failed because the human body rejects them almost immediately, but in this case, the pig had been genetically modified with human genes in the hope of delaying rejection.  

At first, things seemed to be going well for Bennett, and last month, the hospital released a video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed. 

“We are devastated by the loss of Mr. Bennett. He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery at the Baltimore hospital, said in a statement. 

Bennett lived longer than one notable case in 1984 when a baboon heart was transplanted to a baby. The baby lived 21 days. 

“We have gained invaluable insights learning that the genetically modified pig heart can function well within the human body while the immune system is adequately suppressed,” said Dr. Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, professor of surgery and scientific director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We remain optimistic and plan on continuing our work in future clinical trials.”

More than 106,000 people are on the organ donation waiting list in the United States. Last year, more than 41,000 transplants were performed, and of those, 3,800 were heart transplants. 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 

 
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Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day (March 24), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is calling for governments to renew the fight against the respiratory illness, which kills over one million people each year. In South Africa, a hotspot for TB, a mobile screening team is trying to make up for disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg.
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An expert group convened by the World Health Organization said Tuesday it “strongly supports urgent and broad access” to booster doses, in a reversal of the U.N. agency’s previous insistence that boosters weren’t necessary and contributed to vaccine inequity.

In a statement, WHO said its expert group concluded that immunization with authorized COVID-19 vaccines provide high levels of protection against severe disease and death amid the global circulation of the hugely contagious omicron variant.

It said vaccination, including the use of boosters, was especially important for people at risk of severe disease.

Last year, WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for a moratorium on booster doses while dozens of countries embarked on administering the doses, saying rich countries should immediately donate those vaccines to poor countries instead. WHO scientists said at the time they would continue to evaluate incoming data.

Numerous scientific studies have since proven that booster doses of authorized vaccines help restore waning immunity and protect against serious COVID-19. Booster programs in rich countries including Britain, Canada and the U.S. have been credited with preventing the surge in omicron infections from spilling over into hospitals and cemeteries.

WHO said it is continuing to monitor the global spread of omicron, including a “stealth” version known as BA.2, which has been documented to have re-infected some people after an initial case of omicron. There’s mixed research on whether it causes more severe disease, but vaccines appear just as effective against it.

WHO noted that the current authorized COVID-19 vaccines are all based on the strain that was first detected in Wuhan, China more than three years ago.

“Since then, there has been continuous and substantial virus evolution and it is likely that this evolution will continue, resulting in the emergence of new variants,” the agency said. It added that coronavirus vaccines would likely need to be updated.
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COVID-19 can cause the brain to shrink, reduce grey matter in the regions that control emotion and memory, and damage areas that control the sense of smell, an Oxford University study has found.

The scientists said that the effects were even seen in people who had not been hospitalized with COVID, and whether the impact could be partially reversed or if they would persist in the long term needed further investigation.

“There is strong evidence for brain-related abnormalities in COVID-19,” the researchers said in their study, which was released on Monday.

Even in mild cases, participants in the research showed “a worsening of executive function” responsible for focus and organizing, and on an average brain sizes shrank between 0.2% and 2%.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Nature journal, investigated brain changes in 785 participants aged 51–81 whose brains were scanned twice, including 401 people who caught COVID between their two scans. The second scan was done on average 141 days after the first scan.

The study was conducted when the Alpha variant was dominant in Britain and is unlikely to include anyone infected with the Delta variant.

Studies have found some people who had COVID suffered from “brain fog” or mental cloudiness that included impairment to attention, concentration, speed of information processing and memory. Read full story

The researchers did not say if vaccination against COVID had any impact on the condition but the UK Health Security Agency said last month that a review of 15 studies found that vaccinated people were about half as likely to develop symptoms of long COVID compared with the unvaccinated.
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Chocolate makers are expected to raise prices this year due to higher costs of cocoa from exporters like Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Hershey, the largest producer of chocolate products in the United States, said last month it will raise prices on its products across the board due to the rising cost of ingredients.   

Meanwhile, chocolate makers like Dana Mroueh said they are seeing cocoa prices rise in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer.  

“We’ve noticed the price of cocoa is going up these few years, especially organic cocoa. So, from the beginning to today, those five years, we can say the price has risen 20 percent,” Mroueh said.  

Demand for chocolate in America increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and cocoa producers in Ivory Coast are struggling to keep up with that demand.   

Experts say one reason is the impact of climate change.  

Harvard University says that by 2030, parts of West Africa will be too hot and dry to adequately produce cocoa. The West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast alone produce 70 percent of global supply.  

Cocoa farmer Raphael Konan Kouassi took VOA to his plantation, a shady orchard where fat green and yellow cocoa pods hung from tree trunks. He said trees are yielding less due to rising temperatures and poor rains.  

“Almost all of the young plants die in the high season. If you have not been able to get water to them, you have no cocoa,” he said.  

Kouassi receives government assistance in the form of cocoa trees, which are more resilient to the fluctuations of climate change, but he said government distributions happen at the wrong time of year for the saplings to survive.  

Christian Bunn of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, a global scientific organization, said information about how the climate is changing can inform farmers on how to better nurture their crops.  

“What we’re seeing is that the onset of both dry and wet season can change. It’s less reliable. During the season, there may be breaks in terms of rain during the dry season, or there’s a dry spell during the wet season, and the overall distribution or amounts of rainfall they’re receiving may change,” Bunn said.  

The data shows it may be better for farmers to stop producing cocoa and diversify into other crops, he said.   

However, Olga Yenou, the CEO of an Ivorian company that supplies The Hershey Company, said higher prices for cocoa could be welcomed by farmers.  

“My opinion is that these farmers should have better prices, should earn more, because they work hard. Most are poor,” Yenou said.  

Her wish appears to be coming true. As climate change continues to bite, prices continue to surge.  

 
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Hammered by climate change and relentless deforestation, the Amazon rainforest is losing its capacity to recover and could irretrievably transition into savannah, with dire consequences for the region and the world, according to a study published Monday.   

Researchers warned that the findings mean the Amazon could be approaching a so-called tipping point faster than previously understood.    

Analyzing 25 years of satellite data, researchers measured for the first time the Amazon’s resilience against shocks such as droughts and fires, a key indicator of overall health. 

Resilience has declined across more than three-quarters of the Amazon basin, home to half the world’s rainforest, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

In areas hit hardest by destruction or drought, the forest’s ability to bounce back was reduced by approximately half, co-author Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, told AFP. 

“Our resilience measure changed by more than a factor of two in the places nearer to human activity and in places that are driest,” he said in an interview.   

Climate models have suggested that global heating – which has on average warmed Earth’s surface 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels – could by itself push the Amazon past a point of no return into a far drier savannah-like state. 

If carbon pollution continues unabated, that scenario could be locked in by mid-century, according to some models. 

“But, of course, it’s not just climate change – people are busy chopping or burning the forest down, which is a second pressure point,” Lenton said. 

“Those two things interact, so there are concerns the transition could happen even earlier.” 

Besides the Amazon, ice sheets on Greenland and the West Antarctic, Siberian permafrost loaded with CO2 and methane, monsoon rains in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, and the Atlantic Ocean current are all are vulnerable to tipping points that could radically alter the world as we know it. 

Global fallout 

Deforestation in Brazil has surged since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, hitting a 15-year high last year. 

Scientists reported recently that Brazil’s rainforest – 60% of the Amazon basin’s total – has shifted from a “sink” to a “source” of CO2, releasing 20% more of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed. 

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide have been a crucial ally as the world struggles to curb CO2 emissions. Vegetation and soil globally have consistently absorbed about 30% of carbon pollution since 1960, even as emissions increased by half.  

“Savannification” of the Amazon would be hugely disruptive, in South America and across the globe.  

More than 90 billion tons of CO2 stored in its rainforest – twice worldwide annual emissions from all sources – could be released into the atmosphere, pushing global temperatures up even faster. 

Regionally, “it’s not just the forests that take a hit,” said Lenton. “If you lose the recycling of rainfall from the Amazon, you get knock-on effects in central Brazil, the country’s agricultural heartland.” 

Ominously, the new findings marshal data pointing in the same direction. 

“Many researchers have theorized that a tipping point could be reached,” said co-author Niklas Boers, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.  

“Our study provides vital empirical evidence that we are approaching that threshold.” 

‘Saving grace’ 

To assess change in the resilience of the rainforest, Lenton, Boers and lead author Chris Boulton from Exeter University analyzed two satellite data sets, one measuring biomass and the other the “greenness” of the canopy.   

“If too much resilience is lost, dieback may become inevitable – but that won’t become obvious until the major event that tips the system is over,” said Boers. 

There may be a “saving grace” that could pull the Amazon back from the brink. 

“The rainforest naturally has a lot of resilience – this is a biome that weathered the ice ages, after all,” said Lenton. 

“If you could bring the temperature back down again even after passing the tipping point, you might be able to rescue the situation.” 

“But that still puts you in the realm of massive carbon dioxide removal, or geoengineering, which has its own risks.” 

Just under 20% of the Amazon rainforest – straddling nine nations and covering more than 5 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) – has been destroyed or degraded since 1970, mostly for the production of lumber, soy, palm oil, biofuels and beef. 
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Afghanistan faces a serious risk of backtracking to its notoriously high maternal mortality rates because of sudden drops in foreign funding, a shortage of health care workers, mobility restrictions and worsening poverty, health professionals have told VOA.  

More than 1,600 Afghan mothers were dying for every 100,000 live births in 2001. With strong technical and financial support from donors, the country reduced the rate to about 640 deaths by 2018.  

Donors were spending about $1 billion annually on Afghanistan’s health sector, but all development funding ceased immediately when the Taliban returned to power in August.  

The abrupt funding shortage crippled the country’s donor-dependent public health system amid a global pandemic and a nearly universal poverty rate in the country.  

By September 2021, more than 80% of the country’s health care facilities were reported as dysfunctional because of a lack of funding and medical supplies and a shortage of personnel.  

“After the change of the government in August, there was a significant drop [cumulative around 25%] in the availability and utilization of maternal health services,” Joy Rivaca Caminade, a communication specialist with the World Health Organization in Afghanistan, told VOA.  

The United Nations’ children’s agency, UNICEF, gave a similar bleak assessment. 

“Following the events of mid-August 2021, Afghanistan’s health sector was close to collapse, with coverage of many lifesaving interventions for women and children falling between 20 and 30% within days,” said Joe English, a UNICEF spokesperson.  

Such setbacks have given rise to one of Afghanistan’s long-standing health crises — high maternal mortality. 

Mortality rates during childbirth might even have gone back to what they were in 2001, said Nadia Akseer, a scientist at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.  

While there is no data showing how much infant and maternal mortality rates have worsened over the past six months, public health experts say the situation has deteriorated and the future remains uncertain.  

Too little aid  

After aid organizations warned that Afghanistan was facing widespread starvation and famine during the cold season, Western donors agreed to provide only lifesaving humanitarian assistance, to be delivered through U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations.  

In December, the World Bank announced it was transferring $100 million from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund — a multidonor fund set up to coordinate international aid — to UNICEF and WHO to fund emergency health activities in the country until June 2022.  

U.N. agencies have welcomed the funding resumption and say the aid flow must continue or there will be serious public health consequences.  

There are also concerns about the insufficiency of the funding as well as the mechanisms established for disbursement.  

In addition to the nearly $1 billion in foreign assistance, the former Afghan government used to allocate about $200 million for the health sector from domestic resources annually.  

The current humanitarian funding is only a fraction of what the country used to spend on health programs. And while the aid is insufficient, some are criticizing the U.N.-led aid disbursement regime. 

“We know that U.N. agencies have high overhead costs, and they have their own fees,” Akseer told VOA, adding that donors must find a more cost-effective aid delivery system and consider removing economic sanctions on Afghanistan.  

The World Bank and other Western donors have said no funding should be given to or disbursed through the Afghan Health Ministry, which manages public health facilities and personnel all over the country.  

The United States, the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan, has imposed strong economic and political sanctions on the Taliban government, blocking access to about $9 billion in foreign assets, held mostly by the U.S. To help mitigate the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has issued special licenses for the delivery of essential aid to needy Afghans on the condition that the aid will not directly benefit the Taliban.  

U.N. and partner health care NGOs use foreign funds to ensure health facilities remain operational and to tackle a host of public health crises facing Afghanistan, including the pandemic, a recent increase in measles cases, growing malnutrition among children, and infectious diseases — not just infant and maternal health.  

Brain drain  

According to a Doctors Without Borders statement on February 23, “The Afghan heath system has been under-funded, under-staffed and dysfunctional for years. Most health facilities in Afghanistan remain under great pressure due to shortages of staff and equipment—some are barely functioning or are closed altogether.”  

Even in 2016, Afghanistan had the lowest number of doctors per every 1,000 people (0.3) in Asia, according to the World Bank.  

Tens of thousands of educated Afghans, among them health care professionals affiliated with international organizations, have been evacuated out of Afghanistan over the past six months.  

This has created a “brain drain of health professionals,” Akseer said.  

“Let’s say a midwife who worked in a typical village in Afghanistan and who was trained by an international organization, that affiliation is her ticket out of the country.” 

WHO confirmed the shortage of health professionals but added there was no data to measure how this was impacting the delivery of essential health services across the country.  

Afghanistan’s health problems have been compounded by economic and institutional crises.  

“The increase in poverty to over 97%, the large-scale loss of livelihoods, and widespread displacement do not bode well for maternal and child health,” said English, the UNICEF spokesperson.  

The Taliban’s restrictions on women’s mobility has also limited Afghan mothers’ access to health care services, aid agencies say.  

“It’s very possible that just in the past six months we’ve seen higher rates of maternal mortality and maternal illness than maybe the country has seen in the past 15 years,” Akseer said.  
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Trafficking in pangolins continues to rise in Malawi as the country registers a drop in ordinary wildlife crime, such as trafficking in elephant tusks and rhino horns. Wildlife authorities say pangolin-related arrests in Malawi more than tripled between 2019 and 2020. Police in Malawi say a month rarely passes with no pangolin-related arrest. Authorities fear this may lead to extinction of the endangered mammals.

The latest is the arrest last Thursday of five people in Mangochi district, in the south of Malawi after they were found selling a live pangolin.

“The four suspects are Malawian while their accomplice is a well-known businessman from Pakistan,” said Ameena Tepani Daudi, who speaks for the police in the district. “The five were arrested at the Pakistan national’s house following a tip from members of the community. We found all of them in a bedroom while negotiating about selling price. And the pangolin was found hidden in a sack bag.”

Daudi said via a messaging app that suspects are expected in court soon.

“All suspects have been charged with illegal possession of specimens of listed species which contravenes section 110(b) of National Parks and Wildlife Act. And they will appear before court, possibly next week,” she added.

Police say the incident is among many pangolin-trafficking arrests in recent years.

Last year’s report by Lilongwe Wildlife Trust says Malawi is a range state for the Temminck’s ground pangolin, the only pangolin species found in southern Africa, now threatened with extinction.

Brighton Kumchedwa, the director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, says the increase in pangolin trafficking is not surprising, considering recent research estimating that global pangolin populations have declined by 80% in the last 20 years.

“For Malawi, we can speculate that a shift from ivory trafficking to pangolin is because, one, the size of a pangolin is so small, easy to conceal but also it is fetching a reasonable amount of money on a black market. But also the existence in the country of foreign nationals that eat pangolin pangolins as delicacy, but also use of scales in medicine, that’s why an increase in pangolin trafficking,” he said.

Kumchedwa says last  week’s arrest of a Pakistani national in connection with pangolin trafficking confirms that the presence of some foreign nationals, particularly from Asia is fueling trafficking in pangolin.

Kumchdewa says strategies are in place to prevent possible extinction of the endangered mammals in Malawi and these include stiffer penalties to perpetrators.

According to the revised anti-wildlife-trafficking law in Malawi, perpetrators caught in possession of live pangolins or any of their derivatives face a prison sentence of up to 30 years, with no option for a fine.

“But also we have our own investigation unit, which is helping quite a lot, because it is largely intelligence-led law enforcement. But also, more than that, is how the courts have indeed applied the law. They are giving custodial sentences. We are seeing people taken to jail for seven years, five years found in possession of a pangolin,” he said.

Kumchedwa asked Malawians to be more patriotic and help the government by reporting to authorities about people involved in illegal pangolin trade, as well as in other protected animals.
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A new variant of the coronavirus found in white-tailed deer in Canada was later discovered in a person who lived nearby and had contact with the deer population, according to a recent study. The researchers say it’s possible the deer transmitted the virus to the human.

Emerging evidence that COVID-19 is gaining a foothold in wildlife could have negative long-term consequences for humans, according to Nükhet Varlik, associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark.

“Even if we managed to vaccinate the entire human population, the disease can still come back — from the animals back to us — which is, in fact, what happened with some of the other historical pandemics,” Varlik says. “So, in the long term, I don’t think COVID can be eradicated, to be honest.”

Six out of every 10 infectious diseases in people are zoonotic, meaning they pass between species, from animals to humans.

Examples of zoonotic viruses include the flu, West Nile virus, the plague, rabies and Lyme disease.

The coronavirus outbreak has been linked to a market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were slaughtered on site. And although the virus is classified as zoonotic, no animal reservoir of the disease has been found.

Any new COVID-19 variant that animals might pass back to humans has the potential to mutate into something totally new.

“It’s definitely going to evolve differently in an animal than it will in a human,” says Cody Warren, a virologist and immunologist who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Now we have what we’re considering a human virus trying to evolve to grow in an animal, and so, it’s going to undergo its own unique evolutionary trajectory in that animal.”

Multiple COVID-19 variants such as delta and omicron have been found in humans, and scientists cannot rule out the possibility that some variants came from animals.

“Most of the attention and resources are focusing on, ‘How do we test humans?’ and ‘How do we coordinate hospital beds?’” says Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor and chair of emerging infectious diseases at Pennsylvania State University. “But, in this process, we haven’t really been looking at animals. …That’s why we have a lot of missing links to trace back the origins of these viruses. So, it may be that we haven’t been looking into some animal species in some part of the world where this evolution largely may have happened. We have lots of gaps in connecting the dots.”

Kuchipudi, a veterinary virologist, co-authored a separate study that found evidence of COVID-19 in white-tailed deer in Staten Island, New York. Researchers tested the animals between December 12, 2021, and January 31, 2022, and found COVID-19 antibodies in 19 of the 131 animals sampled.

When a virus goes from humans back into animals, the process is referred to as spillback.

“And what I think is most concerning about that is that it gives new opportunities for the virus to evolve in new, unique and innovative ways,” says Warren. “And that virus could potentially evolve in a way and then jump back into humans and spread again throughout the human population as a new disease.”

Kuchipudi emphasizes the need to begin monitoring high-risk animals where the force of infection is high and based on their frequent exposure to humans in order to stop, or at least minimize, transmissions from animals to humans.

“Then we can track down what is happening in terms of the virus evolution. But will we also be able to determine what are the routes through which this exposure has happened? Is it through wastewater or leftover food?” says Kuchipudi. “Although we found deer have the virus, it is not entirely clear how the free-living deer, that don’t really come close to humans typically, are picking up the infection.”

Right now, there is no coordinated, concerted effort nationally or internationally to address the problem of COVID-19 in animals, according to Kuchipudi. But he is hopeful that is changing. The American Rescue Plan provides $300 million for the monitoring and surveillance of animals believed susceptible to COVID-19.

“I see a lot of momentum happening,” Kuchipudi says. “A lot of relevant people recognize this is a problem. And I think most federal and state agencies are very seriously discussing looking into this.”
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The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, is again threatening to end service to the International Space Station, saying Russia will stop supplying rocket engines to the United States and may curtail cooperation on the station in retaliation for Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. NASA says operations on the orbiting observatory are normal.  

In an interview with Russian state television Thursday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, considering the situation, “We can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”

Rogozin said Russia has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. The Washington Post said the engines are also used by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to launch national security missions for the Pentagon. 

Russia said it would cut off the supply of the RD-181 engines used in Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which is used to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. 

Projects with Germans scrapped

Rogozin tweeted Thursday that Russian cosmonauts would not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roscosmos will conduct them independently. He went on to say the “Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions; the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense.” 

Earlier in the week, in another interview with state television, Rogozin noted Russia is responsible for space station navigation, as well as fuel deliveries to the orbiting lab. He said Roscosmos “will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station.”

Russia had announced earlier that it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions.

Cooperation in space has traditionally avoided politics, and when asked about the situation Tuesday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “Despite the challenges here on Earth, and they are substantial …. NASA continues the working relationship with all our international partners to ensure their safety and the ongoing safe operations of the ISS.”

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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The U.N. children’s agency says it is procuring nearly seven million doses of polio vaccine to inoculate children in Malawi. The action follows a confirmed polio case last month in Malawi’s capital, the first reported in Africa in five years and the first in Malawi in decades.  

Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the African continent as a whole was declared polio-free.  

But health experts said the polio strain which paralyzed a three-year-old child last month is similar to one in Pakistan, and noted that the child was not fully vaccinated against polio. 

UNICEF said the planned mass immunization will target the unvaccinated as well as children previously vaccinated, so all can have full protection from the polio virus.  

Rudolf Schwenk, UNICEF’s representative in Malawi, said preparations are under way for the first round of vaccinations, expected to start March 21. 

“We are installing new vaccine refrigerators, repairing vaccine refrigerators already in use or available at district level, and distributing vaccine carriers and cold boxes,” he said. 

George Jobe, executive director for the Malawi Heath Equity Network, said the emphasis should be on convincing mothers to have trust in vaccines, which has eroded because of misconceptions associated with COVID-19 vaccines.   

“There is need for more awareness raising by government of Malawi, different partners including UNICEF itself, and when doing that awareness raising, it should be made clear that vaccines for children have been there, earlier that the COVID-19 vaccine, and these are routine in Malawi,” Jobe said. 

Schwenk said the training of health workers and community leaders is already under way. 

Malawi provides a polio vaccine that targets polio virus type 1 and type 3, following the eradication of polio virus type 2 many years back. 

UNICEF said the oral polio vaccine to be administered is for wild poliovirus type 1.

The U.N. agency said the 6.9 million doses will cover the first two rounds of the mass immunization campaign in March and April. It says more vaccine is expected to cover all four rounds of the polio immunization campaign, expected to end in June.   

In the meantime, experts from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are working to detect any other potential cases in Malawi and neighboring countries. 

 
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Even before Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, sparking a fire in a nearby building early Friday, Ukraine’s main nuclear regulatory agency had sought “immediate assistance” from the international nuclear agency.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Wednesday he had received a letter from the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) asking for “immediate assistance to ensure the safety of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and other nuclear facilities in the country.”

Grossi said the IAEA had begun consultations on the request.

The letter submitted to IAEA by the Ukraine agency said the staff at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had been kept at the site since Russian military forces took control of it a week ago. The agency said the staff members were facing “psychological pressure and moral exhaustion,” Grossi said.

He cautioned that the staff must be allowed to rest and rotate schedules “so that their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.”

Early Friday, Russian forces shelled Europe’s largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, sparking a fire in a building outside the plant, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Friday. The plant produces about 25% of Ukraine’s power.

Initially, the mayor of the nearby town of Enerhodar said the plant was on fire. But a short time later, the plant director told Ukraine 24 television that the fire had started outside the building perimeter and that security seemed to be restored to the facility, according to Reuters.

IAEA Director General Grossi said the event highlights once again why he has repeatedly stressed that any military or other action that could threaten the safety or security of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants must be avoided.

“I remain gravely concerned about the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, especially about the country’s nuclear power plants, which must be able to continue operating without any safety or security threats,” he said. “Any accident caused as a result of the military conflict could have extremely serious consequences for people and the environment, in Ukraine and beyond.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “nuclear terror” after the Zaporizhzhia plant shelling, Agence France-Presse reported.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has been undergoing decommissioning since an accident in 1986 caused a meltdown of one of its nuclear reactors. Significant amounts of nuclear material remain in various facilities at the site in the form of spent fuel and other radioactive waste.

Ukraine also has 15 other operational nuclear reactors at four sites in the country, providing roughly half of its electricity, which SNRIU reported Thursday continue to operate normally.

The IAEA, in a statement, said it is monitoring developments in Ukraine, with a special focus on the safety and security of its nuclear power reactors. The IAEA remains in constant contact with its counterpart and will continue to provide regular updates on the situation in Ukraine.

War-related dangers

Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute in Washington, told VOA the most significant danger at the Chernobyl plant comes from possible damage to the confinement structure due to hostilities.

He said the reactors elsewhere in Ukraine, which do not have confinement structures, are vulnerable to being hit by missiles.

“This is the first time we’ve had a war between two countries that have large civilian nuclear power complexes. And that, I think, is even a greater risk than Chernobyl that something’s going to happen to disrupt the shielding and safety of one of those reactors,” Weitz said.

Chary Rangacharyulu, a physics and engineering professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said the Russians may try to use the nuclear plants for political leverage, but he doubts they are “so foolish to destroy those facilities and let out radioactivities into the atmosphere.”

“However, if they make mistakes and blow up a facility or two, the harm will not be limited to Ukraine. It will go beyond. Russia and Belarus are the neighboring countries that will be very much affected. Let us hope and pray that the Russian government is not that insane to cause harm to its own people,” he said in a written response to questions from VOA.

Wade Allison, a professor of physics and a fellow at Keble College at Oxford University in England, said he saw no threat posed by the Chernobyl situation because “there have been no active nuclear reactors at Chernobyl since 2000. Spent fuel is not a problem.”

VOA’s Tatiana Vorozhko contributed to this report. 

 
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As Russia continues to wage war on neighboring Ukraine, a former commander of the International Space Station is in disbelief over Russian threats to destroy the decades-long partnership aboard the ISS.  Plus, Elon Musk sends a communications lifeline to Ukrainians, and a joint mission to Mars is now in doubt. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us a special edition of The Week in Space. 
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The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) marked its 50-year anniversary Thursday at its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Activists have criticized the organization as being slow to address global threats to the environment, such as pollution and climate change. But at the U.N.’s Environment Assembly this week over 100 nations pledged to negotiate a binding treaty to reduce plastic pollution.

UNEP’s chief, Inger Andersen, said Thursday the agency has contributed to saving the planet from harm and destruction.

“We saved millions of lives and protected nature,” she said. “We showed environmental multilateralism does deliver. That is a lesson that should inspire us today. Friends, there are other major achievements, the launch of the scientific body, the IPCC, the phase-out of lead and petrol and just yesterday, the resolution starting the pathway to a global plastic pollution deal to end plastic pollution for good.”

The resolution calls for two years of negotiations toward a comprehensive, international treaty on how to handle the growing problem of plastic waste.

The UNEP was formed in Stockholm in 1972 and has been a key player in safeguarding the world’s plant species, wildlife, and climate.

The organization says its mandate is to bring the world together in tackling environmental threats.

Addressing leaders, delegates and environmental activists at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, praised its work.

“Progressively, over the last 50 years, UNEP has led the world to understand the centrality of the environment in human existence to appreciate the increased threats to the environment and also the existential threat that exists to our planet. They have also helped us galvanize collective global action to protect our environment,” he said.

Wanjira Mathai, the vice-president and regional director at the World Resources Institute, said enforcing agreed-upon environment policies and laws has been a challenge.

“I think enforcement is usually our biggest challenge because we make commitments but we don’t always follow through with enforcement. That’s the biggest opportunity for us, is to see them through,” he said.

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi says implementing environmental laws and the agreement requires greater funding.

“Botswana continues to walk in the path provided by multilateral environmental agreements that she is a party to. However, with limited resources fulfilling these commitments continues to remain a challenge but we stand committed as Botswana, do not doubt it,” he said.

Andersen said her organization needs the support of all countries to achieve and deliver a stable climate and rich nature that benefits all.
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