DALLAS — It has been 15 years since the last fatal crash of a U.S. airliner, but you would never know that by reading about a torrent of flight problems in the last three months.

There was a time when things like cracked windshields and minor engine problems didn’t turn up very often in the news.

That changed in January, when a panel plugging the space reserved for an unused emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines jetliner 16,000 feet above Oregon. Pilots landed the Boeing 737 Max safely, but in the United States, media coverage of the flight quickly overshadowed a deadly runway crash in Tokyo three days earlier.

And concern about air safety — especially with Boeing planes — has not let up.

Is flying getting more dangerous?

By the simplest measurement, the answer is no. The last deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner occurred in February 2009, an unprecedented streak of safety. There were 9.6 million flights last year.

The lack of fatal crashes does not fully capture the state of safety, however. In the past 15 months, a spate of close calls caught the attention of regulators and travelers.

Another measure is the number of times pilots broadcast an emergency call to air traffic controllers. Flightradar24, a popular tracking site, just compiled the numbers. The site’s data show such calls rising since mid-January but remaining below levels seen during much of 2023.

Emergency calls also are an imperfect gauge: the plane might not have been in immediate danger, and sometimes planes in trouble never alert controllers.

Safer than driving

The National Safety Council estimates that Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a motor-vehicle crash, while deaths on airplanes are too rare to calculate the odds. Figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation tell a similar story.

“This is the safest form of transportation ever created, whereas every day on the nation’s roads about a 737 full of people dies,” Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aerospace analyst and consultant, said. The safety council estimates that more than 44,000 people died in U.S. vehicle crashes in 2023.

But a shrinking safety margin

A panel of experts reported in November that a shortage of air traffic controllers, outdated plane-tracking technology and other problems presented a growing threat to safety in the sky.

“The current erosion in the margin of safety in the (national airspace system) caused by the confluence of these challenges is rendering the current level of safety unsustainable,” the group said in a 52-page report.

What is going on at Boeing?

Many but not all of the recent incidents have involved Boeing planes.

Boeing is a $78 billion company, a leading U.S. exporter and a century-old, iconic name in aircraft manufacturing. It is one-half of the duopoly, along with Europe’s Airbus, that dominates the production of large passenger jets.

The company’s reputation, however, was greatly damaged by the crashes of two 737 Max jets — one in Indonesia in 2018, the other in Ethiopia the following year — that killed 346 people. Boeing has lost nearly $24 billion in the last five years. It has struggled with manufacturing flaws that at times delayed deliveries of 737s and long-haul 787 Dreamliners.

Boeing finally was beginning to regain its stride until the Alaska Airlines Max blowout. Investigators have focused on bolts that help secure the door-plug panel, but which were missing after a repair job at the Boeing factory.

The FBI is notifying passengers about a criminal investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration is stepping up oversight of the company.

“What is going on with the production at Boeing? There have been issues in the past. They don’t seem to be getting resolved,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said last month.

CEO David Calhoun says no matter what conclusions investigators reach about the Alaska Airlines blowout, “Boeing is accountable for what happened” on the Alaska plane. “We caused the problem and we understand that.”

Where do design and manufacturing fit in?

Problems attributed to an airplane manufacturer can differ greatly.

Some are design errors. On the original Boeing Max, the failure of a single sensor caused a flight-control system to point the nose of the plane down with great force — that happened before the deadly 2018 and 2019 Max crashes. It is a maxim in aviation that the failure of a single part should never be enough to bring down a plane.

In other cases, such as the door-plug panel that flew off the Alaska Airlines jet, it appears a mistake was made on the factory floor.

“Anything that results in death is worse, but design is a lot harder to deal with because you have to locate the problem and fix it,” said Aboulafia, the aerospace analyst. “In the manufacturing process, the fix is incredibly easy – don’t do” whatever caused the flaw in the first place.

Manufacturing quality appears to be an issue in other incidents too.

Earlier this month, the FAA proposed ordering airlines to inspect wiring bundles around the spoilers on Max jets. The order was prompted by a report that chafing of electrical wires due to faulty installation caused an airliner to roll 30 degrees in less than a second on a 2021 flight.

Even little things matter. After a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 flying from Australia to New Zealand this month went into a nosedive — it recovered — Boeing reminded airlines to inspect switches to motors that move pilot seats. Published reports said a flight attendant accidentally hitting the switch likely caused the plunge.

Not everything is Boeing’s fault

Investigations into some incidents point to likely lapses in maintenance, and many close calls are due to errors by pilots or air traffic controllers.

This week, investigators disclosed that an American Airlines jet that overshot a runway in Texas had undergone a brake-replacement job four days earlier, and some hydraulic lines to the brakes were not properly reattached.

Earlier this month, a tire fell off a United Airlines Boeing 777 leaving San Francisco, and an American Airlines 777 made an emergency landing in Los Angeles with a flat tire.

A piece of the aluminum skin was discovered missing when a United Boeing 737 landed in Oregon last week. Unlike the brand-new Alaska jet that suffered the panel blowout, the United plane was 26 years old. Maintenance is up to the airline.

When a FedEx cargo plane landing last year in Austin, Texas, flew close over the top of a departing Southwest Airlines jet, it turned out that an air traffic controller had cleared both planes to use the same runway.

Separating serious from routine

Aviation-industry officials say the most concerning events involve issues with flight controls, engines and structural integrity.

Other things such as cracked windshields and planes clipping each other at the airport rarely pose a safety threat. Warnings lights might indicate a serious problem or a false alarm.

“We take every event seriously,” former NTSB member John Goglia said, citing such vigilance as a contributor to the current crash-free streak. “The challenge we have in aviation is trying to keep it there.”
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PORTLAND, Maine — Avian influenza is killing tens of thousands of seals and sea lions in different corners of the world, disrupting ecosystems and flummoxing scientists who don’t see a clear way to slow the devastating virus.

The worldwide bird flu outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths of millions of domesticated birds and spread to wildlife all over the globe. This virus isn’t thought to be a major threat to humans, but its spread in farming operations and wild ecosystems has caused widespread economic turmoil and environmental disruptions.

Seals and sea lions, in places as far apart as Maine and Chile, appear to be especially vulnerable to the disease, scientists said. The virus has been detected in seals on the east and west coasts of the U.S., leading to deaths of more than 300 seals in New England and a handful more in Puget Sound in Washington. The situation is even more dire in South America, where more than 20,000 sea lions have died in Chile and Peru and thousands of elephant seals have died in Argentina.

The virus can be controlled in domesticated animals, but it can spread unchecked in wildlife and marine mammals such as South America’s seals that lacked prior exposure to it have suffered devastating consequences, said Marcela Uhart, director of the Latin America program at the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis.

“Once the virus is in wildlife, it spreads like wildfire, as long as there are susceptible animals and species,” Uhart said. “Movement of animals spreads the virus to new areas.”

Scientists are still researching how the seals have contracted bird flu, but it is most likely from contact with infected seabirds, Uhart said. High mortality has affected South American marine mammals consistently since the virus arrived late in 2022, and birds in Peru and Chile have died by the hundreds of thousands from the virus since then, she noted.

The virus is still spreading and was detected in mainland Antarctica for the first time in February.

The deaths of seals and sea lions disrupts ecosystems where the marine mammals serve as key predators near the top of the food chain. Seals help keep the ocean in balance by preventing overpopulation of the fish species they feed on.

Many species affected, such as South American sea lions and Southern elephant seals, have relatively stable populations, but scientists worry about the possibility of the virus jumping to more jeopardized animals. Scientists have said bird flu might have played a role in the deaths of hundreds of endangered Caspian seals in Russia last year.

“The loss of wildlife at the current scale presents an unprecedented risk of wildlife population collapse, creating an ecological crisis,” the World Organization for Animal Health, an intergovernmental organization, said in a statement.

In New England, scientists with the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University found an outbreak of bird flu that killed more than 330 harbor and gray seals along the North Atlantic coast in 2022 turned out to be worse than initially thought. It’s possible the seals contracted the virus from gulls by coming into contact with sick gulls’ excrement or by preying on an infected bird, the scientists reported.

The U.S. government determined the seal die-off was an “unusual mortality event” attributable to bird flu. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared the event is over, but concerns remain about a possible repeat.

“Marine mammals are still pretty unique in the scale of the outbreaks that are occurring,” said Wendy Puryear, an author of the Tufts study. “One of the connections is there is a lot of virus that circulates in coastal birds. A lot of opportunities for those wild birds to host the virus and pass it on to marine mammals.”

Some scientists and environmental advocates say there could be a link between the outbreaks and climate change and warming oceans. Warmer sea temperatures off northern Chile decrease the population of forage fish, and that makes sea lions weaker and more susceptible to disease, said Liesbeth van der Meer, director of the environmental group Oceana in Chile.

Scientists and environmentalists are hopeful vaccinating poultry will help lessen the spread of the disease, van der Meer said, adding that it’s also important for people to avoid potentially infected animals in the wild.

“Authorities have carried out campaigns about the disease, strongly recommending to stay away from seabirds or marine mammals with symptoms or found dead in the coastal areas,” van der Meer said.

Even seals in aquariums are not considered completely safe from bird flu. The New England Aquarium, where outdoor harbor seal exhibits delight thousands of visitors every year, has taken strict sanitation precautions to prevent transmission of the virus to its animals, said Melissa Joblon, the Boston aquarium’s director of animal health.

Staff aren’t allowed to bring backyard poultry products to the aquarium, and an awning protects the seal exhibit from birds that could carry the virus, she said.

“We do know that it’s a risk for the animals that reside here,” said Joblon, adding that none of the aquarium’s seals have been infected.

The deaths of marine mammals are even more concerning because of mutations of the avian virus, according to a paper in the journal Nature Communications last fall. The mutations “warrant further examination and highlight an urgent need for active local surveillance to manage outbreaks and limit spillover into other species, including humans,” the study stated. 

Another study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases in February, found the bird flu virus has adapted to spread between birds and mammals. Researchers found nearly identical samples of the virus in dead sea lions, a dead seal and a dead seabird. They said the finding is significant because it confirms a multispecies outbreak that can affect marine mammals and birds. 

More seal deaths could disrupt critical ecosystems around the world, said Lynda Doughty, executive director of Marine Mammals of Maine, a marine mammal rescue organization that responded to seals with bird flu during the New England outbreak. 

“You need this happy ecosystem. If we’re taking out some important species, what is the trickle-down effect of that? That’s the million-dollar question,” Doughty said. 
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geneva — The World Health Organization warns that hunger, poverty, malnutrition, and disease have reached alarming levels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, especially in the east, where a resurgence of fighting between armed groups and government forces has uprooted millions of people from their homes. 

“DRC is the second-largest displacement crisis globally after Sudan, with more people forced to flee the violence since the start of the year,” said Dr. Boureima Hama Sambo, WHO representative to the DRC. 

Speaking from the capital, Kinshasa, Sambo told journalists in Geneva Friday that a combination of violence, climate shocks, and epidemics has worsened the humanitarian and overall health situation for millions of people who are struggling to find enough food to eat, a safe place to stay, and help to ward off disease outbreaks.   

“Hospitals are overwhelmed with injured people,” he said. “Close to 10 million people are on the move. Poverty and hunger affect a quarter of the population or 25.4 million people. The spread of cholera and other infectious diseases pose significant threats to the populations health.”   

United Nations relief agencies say more than two of every five children in the DRC — around 6 million children — suffer from chronic malnutrition, a condition that causes stunting, impairs cognitive development, and in cases of severe acute malnutrition, a risk of death. 

Sambo said that, “Combined to malnutrition, diseases are increasing the risk of mortality, especially in children, and putting even more pressure on the health system.  

“Women and girls are paying the high price of armed conflict and displacement,” he said, noting that “30,000 cases of gender-based violence were reported in the DRC in 2023. These numbers are among the highest in the world.” 

Flooding heightens risk 

Besides conflict-related challenges, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, says severe flooding has wreaked havoc in 18 of the DRCs 26 provinces, leaving more than 2 million people, nearly 60%  of them children, in need of assistance.   

The WHO says floods are worsening the risk of diarrheal and water-borne diseases. That, as well as the outbreak of other diseases, including cholera, measles, polio, yellow fever, anthrax, and plague, has brought an already fragile health system to its knees.   

“DRC is facing its worst cholera outbreak since 2017 with 50,000 suspected cases and 470 deaths recorded in 2023,” said Sambo, adding that the risk is particularly high in sites for internally displaced people where “living conditions are dire.” 

He said the country is also battling its largest measles epidemic since 2019, with close to 28,000 cases with 750 deaths so far this year   

“The combination of measles and malnutrition has a severe health impact on children under five years of age and the lack of access to vaccines and vaccination services further exacerbate the situation,” he said. 

Threat of mpox grows

In addition to those problems, the WHO warns mpox — previously known as monkeypox — has been on the rise across the country over the last year, with nearly 4,000 suspected cases and 271 deaths reported.  

That represents a higher case fatality than was seen during a year-long, WHO-declared international public health emergency for the disease that began in May 2022. More than two thirds of the current cases, it says, are reported in children.   

Mpox, a zoonotic disease first detected in a 9-month-old in 1970 in the DRC, when the country was known as Zaire.  Dr. Rosamund Lewis, WHO technical lead for mpox, says children continue to be most at risk of getting infected with and dying from the disease.  

“The number of cases has been gradually increasing over time. What we saw in 2023 was more than the doubling of the number of cases compared to 2022 … There is a clear concern about the continuing spread of the disease, not only by zoonotic transmission but through person-to-person sexual contact,” she said. 

“What is also new about transmission in the DRC is that sexual transmission reported for Clade 1, a variant of mpox had not been reported prior to 2023. Now what we are seeing is newly reported sexual transmission in a different part of the country, which is not endemic for mpox.”   

Lewis said the disease is spreading in areas “where there is a lot of commercial back and forth, including cross-borders and a vibrant commercial sex trade.” 

The WHO reports mpox has expanded to previously unaffected provinces, such that almost all provinces. including Kinshasa, now are reporting cases. It warns that “represents a threat to neighboring countries and beyond.”   

WHO representative Sambo observed that humanitarian needs in the country are soaring, with close to 20 million people requiring health assistance this year. Despite all the compounding challenges, he said the WHO has been scaling up its health response since last year. 

For example, he said the WHO vaccinated almost 5 million people against cholera in November, most in the eastern provinces, and vaccinated millions of people against a deadly measles outbreak last year.  Next week, he said the WHO plans to start a polio vaccination campaign in all 26 provinces. 

However, he said that continuing such lifesaving programs will be difficult to do if the health response remains severely underfunded, noting that less than 14 percent of the WHOs $624 million appeal for this year has been received.   

He urges the world not “to turn a blind eye to a situation that could have severe knock-on effects for security and health in the region.” 
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Nairobi, Kenya — With a week until Easter, chocolate lovers should brace themselves for higher prices when they purchase their favorite seasonal treats.

A nonprofit environmental group says cocoa costs three times more than it did a year ago because of climate change and the El Nino weather effect. Prices reached $8,000 per ton this week, compared with $2,500 last year at this time.

Amber Sawyer, a climate and energy analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, or ECIU, a U.K.-based nonprofit group, said the volatile weather patterns in the top cocoa-producing countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast have affected international commodity prices.

“Chocolate producers are trying to buy up cocoa, but there’s a reduced supply of it,” she said. “So obviously, because of the reduced supply, the demand has gone up, and the prices have therefore gone up for confectionery companies who make chocolate. These costs are now being fed through to consumers.”

Ghana and Ivory Coast, which produce nearly 60% of global cocoa, experienced heavy rains in December. Flooding caused crop damage and led to cocoa plants rotting with black pod disease.

Extreme heat has hurt, too.

“That’s affecting not only the crop, because it’s difficult to grow cocoa in these conditions, but also the farmers themselves,” Sawyer said.

“Farmers have gone from having too much rain to not enough rain, which means that they’re behind on production and unable to sell on the international markets,” she said.

Ghana has reduced its cocoa production estimate this year from 850,000 to 650,000 tons due to adverse weather conditions and smuggling.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data show cocoa is grown in countries that are most vulnerable and less prepared to deal with climate change.

A U.K.-based World Weather Attribution website analysis released Thursday showed that West Africa experienced an intense heatwave in February, with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

Izidine Pinto, a researcher with the Royal Netherlands Metrological Institute connected with the website, said the heatwaves and heavy rainfall affect people’s lives and jobs.

“Climate change is making rainfall heavier and heatwaves like these more intense,” he said. “These changes to extreme weather are making life more dangerous for people in West Africa. … This is damaging livelihoods … damaging crops and making food prices more expensive.”

Weather experts note that heatwaves used to occur once every 100 years before widespread fossil fuel burning, but in today’s climate, heatwaves happen once every 10 years.

African countries bear the brunt of climate change despite contributing the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The ECIU urges wealthier nations to offer financial and technical aid to assist farmers in managing the impact of severe weather and climate change.
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washington — There definitely were no Muppets during the Permian Period, but there was a Kermit — or at least a forerunner of modern amphibians that has been named after the celebrity frog.

Scientists on Thursday described the fossilized skull of a creature called Kermitops gratus that lived in what is now Texas about 270 million years ago. It belongs to a lineage believed to have given rise to the three living branches of amphibians — frogs, salamanders and limbless caecilians.

While only the skull, measuring around 3 cm long, was discovered, the researchers think Kermitops had a stoutly built salamander-like body roughly 15-18 cm long, though salamanders would not evolve for another roughly 100 million years.

Amphibians are one of the four groups of living terrestrial vertebrates, along with reptiles, birds and mammals. The unique features of the Kermitops skull — a blend of archaic and more advanced features — are providing insight into amphibian evolution.

“Kermitops helps us understand the early history of amphibians by revealing there isn’t a clear trend of step by step becoming more like the modern amphibian,” said Calvin So, a George Washington University paleontology doctoral student and lead author of the study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

The fossil was collected in 1984 near Lake Kemp in Texas and kept in the expansive collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington but was not thoroughly studied until recently.

Kermitops had a rounded snout, not unlike frogs and salamanders. Preserved in its eye sockets were palpebral bones, or eyelid bones, a feature absent in today’s amphibians. Its skull is constructed of roof-like bones, in contrast to the thin and strut-like bones of modern amphibians.

“The length of the skull in front of the eyes is longer than the length of the skull behind the eyes, which differs from the other fossil amphibians living at the same time. We think this might have allowed Kermitops to snap its jaws closed faster, enabling capture of fast insect prey,” So said.

The fossil record of early amphibians and their forerunners is spotty, making it difficult to figure out the origins of modern amphibians.

“Kermitops, with its unique anatomy, really exemplifies the importance of continuing to add new fossil data to understanding this evolutionary problem,” said National Museum of Natural History paleontologist and study co-author Arjan Mann.

Kermit the Frog was created by the late American puppeteer Jim Henson in 1955, and a Kermit puppet made in the 1970s is in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as an important cultural object.

Kermitops means “Kermit face,” a nod to the Muppet’s humorous look.

“We thought that the eyelid bones gave the fossil a bug-eyed look, and combined with a lopsided smile produced by slight crushing during the preservation of the fossil, we really thought it looked like Kermit the Frog,” So said.

Kermitops belonged to a group called temnospondyls that arose a few tens of millions of years after the first land vertebrates evolved from fish ancestors. The biggest temnospondyls superficially resembled crocodiles, including two that each were around 6 meters in length, Prionosuchus and Mastodonsaurus.

Temnospondyls are considered the progenitor lineage of modern amphibians, Mann said.

Kermitops existed about 20 million years before the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history and about 40 million years before the first dinosaurs. It lived alongside other members of the amphibian lineage as well as the impressive sail-backed Dimetrodon, a predator related to the mammalian lineage.

The environment in which Kermitops lived appears to have alternated between warm and humid seasons and hot and arid seasons.

“This environment would be similar to modern-day monsoons that take place in the Southwest U.S. and Southeast Asia,” So said.
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LONDON — As the United Nations observes World Water Day on Friday, there is a growing risk of conflict over water resources as climate change takes hold, the international body said.

Meanwhile, nongovernmental aid agency Oxfam accused global corporations of “grabbing” water from poorer countries to boost profits.

Declaring this year’s theme Water for Peace, the U.N. warned that “when water is scarce or polluted, or when people have unequal or no access, tensions can rise between communities and countries.”

“More than 3 billion people worldwide depend on water that crosses national borders. Yet only 24 countries have cooperation agreements for all their shared water,” the U.N. said. “As climate change impacts increase and populations grow, there is an urgent need within and between countries to unite around protecting and conserving our most precious resource.”

In South Africa’s largest city, Johannesburg, the taps have been running dry for several weeks, affecting millions of people.

On the outskirts of the city in Soweto, thousands of people have been lining up to collect water in bottles and buckets from tankers that bring in water from outside the city.

“It has been a serious challenge, a very challenging time for my age that I have to be here carrying these 20-liter buckets,” Thabisile Mchunu, an older Soweto resident, told The Associated Press on Monday. “And the sad thing is that we don’t know when our taps are going to be wet again.”

Crumbling infrastructure is partly to blame for the water shortages in Johannesburg. But scientists say worsening climate change is causing reservoirs to dry up in South Africa and many other parts of the world.

The United Nations estimates that 2.2 billion people live without safely managed drinking water.

Scientists from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say roughly half of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, with poorer nations in the Global South the worst affected.

 

Water “grabbing”

In a report published Thursday, Oxfam accused major global corporations of “grabbing” vital water resources.

“The private sector is grabbing and polluting this resource at the expense of local populations in order to make profits, further increasing inequalities. Droughts exacerbated by climate change affect agriculture and therefore the economies of the countries that depend on it, contributing to increased poverty, food insecurity and health problems for the inhabitants, particularly in the Global South,” the report said.

Oxfam accuses richer countries and multinational corporations of shifting water shortages to poorer regions by importing water-intensive products such as fruit, vegetables, meat, flowers and bottled water from overseas.

The report says agriculture accounts for 70% of water withdrawals, including through irrigation systems, to support the meat industry and biofuels.

“It is part of a neocolonial logic aimed at satisfying the consumption needs of the countries of the North at the expense of the countries of the South,” Oxfam said.

Its analysis suggests the private sector is failing to reduce its impact on water resources.

Of the “350 corporations that have been analyzed through the database — which account for half of the world’s agricultural revenue — only one in four of them are declaring they are reducing water use and pollution,” Quentin Ghesquiere, an agriculture and food safety adviser at Oxfam France, told VOA.

Government regulation

Oxfam also noted that large corporations are permitted to withdraw water, even when local populations face restrictions. It highlighted the activities of the French-owned multinational food products company Danone.

“Danone, in May 2023, continued to extract water from aquifers [in France] despite the restrictions that applied to local populations, in full legality. In the same year, the company made profits of almost 900 million euros and paid out 1.2 billion euros in dividends to its shareholders,” the Oxfam report said.

In a statement to VOA, Danone said that managing water sustainably is a priority, adding that “we have accelerated our innovations and investments to reduce, on a voluntary basis, water withdrawals from our bottling site.”

“Since 2017, we have invested 30 million euros to modernize our production lines, which allowed us to reduce our withdrawals by 17% over the period 2017-2023, maintaining volumes sold,” the Danone statement said.

The Oxfam report recommends stronger regulation and calls for “ambitious funding for adaptation in developing countries and universal access to water.”
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A high-tech solution for tackling space clutter, photography tips for the upcoming solar eclipse, and we remember a spaceflight pioneer. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Manzini, Eswatini — Traditional medicine, or “muti,” is an important part of Eswatini’s culture. However, an increasing demand for muti has placed some of the southern African kingdom’s animal species at risk of extinction. That’s something conservationists and molecular biologists want to change.

Molecular biologist Zamekile Bhembe, who works for the USAID-funded EWild Laboratory at the University of Eswatini, is fighting poachers and trying to get them convicted for their crimes.

She said poaching for traditional medicinal purposes is a leading cause of biodiversity decline, and she wants stronger regulations to protect wildlife.

“Every time you see biodiversity declines, there will be some sort of poaching involved,” she said. “As a country, we cannot deny that we are using these resources as our traditional medicine. It’s just that we need a way of regulating.”

For generations, the people of Eswatini have held traditional beliefs and values close to their hearts. This is reflected in the fact that more than 80% of the population still consults traditional healers, or “witchdoctors,” for advice and healing.

These healers use a wide range of plant and animal species to create traditional medicine, drawing on knowledge passed down through generations. However, excessive hunting has endangered the local populations of pangolins, crocodiles, vultures and owls, leading to calls for more sustainable practices.

Makhanya Makhanya, president of the Witchdoctors Association, is a widely renowned traditional healing practitioner in his own right. He said the role of traditional healers needs to be protected.

Such healers, he said, have served Eswatini for generations, providing healing and support to those in need. But he said current laws do not reflect the reality of their work. He wants to see regulations that recognize the traditional healers’ role in society and allow them to continue their work.

Patrick Maduna, a South African citizen, said he travels from neighboring South Africa to Eswatini to seek traditional medicinal solutions. His preference for traditional healing shows the complex relationship between modern and traditional medicine in Eswatini.

“I came all the way from South Africa to Swaziland for traditional attention,” he said. “I have been using the same traditional doctor since 2006, I have been coming to the same place. For me to come and get traditional attention, for me, it’s like therapy. I have never, ever gone to the hospital.”

Maduna said if there were laws in Eswatini to limit the poaching of animals for traditional medicine, he believes the so-called witchdoctors would comply with the rules.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s government will take final steps to suspend the licenses of striking junior doctors next week as they refuse to end their weekslong walkouts that have burdened the country’s medical services, officials said Thursday.

More than 90% of the country’s 13,000 medical interns and residents have been on strike for about a month to protest the government’s plan to sharply increase medical school admissions. Their strikes have caused hundreds of canceled surgeries and other treatments at hospitals.

Officials say it is urgent to have more doctors because South Korea has a rapidly aging population, and its doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest in the developed world. But doctors say schools can’t handle an abrupt, steep increase in students, and that it would ultimately undermine the country’s medical services.

The government has been taking a series of administrative steps required to suspend their licenses after they missed a government-set, February 29 deadline to return to work.

The steps include sending officials to formally confirm the absences of strikers, informing them of possible license suspensions and giving them chances to respond.

Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told a briefing Thursday that the government is expected to complete those steps for some of the striking doctors next week and will send them notices about its final decision to suspend their licenses.

Park earlier said that under South Korea’s medical law, the striking doctors could face at a minimum three-month suspensions and even indictments by prosecutors for refusing the government’s back-to-work order.

He urged the striking doctors to return to work immediately, suggesting those who end their strikes could receive softer punishments.

“They should return as soon as possible not only for patients but also for their future careers. This kind of exhaustive walkout from hospitals must not continue any longer,” Park said. “As we’ve said many times, we won’t treat those who return swiftly as equally as those who return late.”

It’s unclear whether and how many striking doctors would return to their hospitals at the last minute. According to Park, none of the strikers who were informed of their possible license suspension has responded.

Senior doctors at major university hospitals recently decided to submit resignations next week in support of the junior doctors. Still, most of them will likely continue to report to work. If they walk off the job, that would hurt South Korea’s medical services severely.

Two senior doctors, who lead an emergency doctors’ committee for the walkouts, were recently given government notices that their licenses would be suspended for three months for allegedly inciting the junior doctors’ walkouts.

The striking junior doctors account for less than 10% of South Korea’s 140,000 doctors. But in some major hospitals, they represent about 30%-40% of the doctors, assisting senior doctors during surgeries and dealing with inpatients while training.

The government aims to increase the country’s medical school enrollment cap by 2,000 starting next year, from the current cap of 3,058 that has been unchanged since 2006.

Wednesday, the government announced detailed plans on how to allocate those additional 2,000 admission seats to universities, a sign that it won’t back down its plan.

Officials say more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential but low-paying specialties. But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments due to increased competition.

Surveys show that a majority of South Koreans support the government’s push to create more doctors, with critics suspecting that doctors, one of the highest-paid professions in South Korea, worry about lower incomes due to the supply of more doctors.
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Pacific leaders are on high alert after U.S. scientists warned that the world is nearing a historic mass coral bleaching brought on by high water temperatures fueled by climate change. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports. (Produced by Jessica Stone)
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SYDNEY — An annual university report said although Australia’s environmental scorecard deteriorated in 2023, the nation fared better than many other countries.

While 2023 was the hottest year on record globally, for Australia it was the eighth hottest year because of wet and relatively mild conditions.

The research is carried out each year by the Australia National University,  or ANU, and is contained in the Australian Environment 2023 Report.

Researchers use scientific information to give Australia a score out of 10. In 2023, it was 7.5, down from 8.7 the previous year.

The decline was mostly due to reduced rainfall compared to 2022.  They stress that the report card is not a reflection of the Canberra government’s policies, but a general assessment of the health of the environment.

Information about the weather data is used alongside satellite data on threatened species, biodiversity and water flows to calculate the annual score.

Australia’s biodiversity took a significant hit last year, according to the study. It states that a record 130 species were added to the Threatened Species List, compared with the average of 29 species added annually.

The university survey details how Australia’s population grew “rapidly” last year by 3.5%, its fastest growth in decades.

The study revealed that Australians are the world’s 10th worst greenhouse gas emitters per person, just after Saudi Arabia.

Professor Albert Van Dijk from the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment told VOA the country’s greenhouse gas emissions increased for the first time in five years – mainly because domestic air travel picked up after COVID.

“While our emissions per person are very slowly going down – a lot more slowly than in most, you know, industrialized countries, but they are going down slowly – but our population is growing so fast,” he said. “It is growing faster than our emissions are going down.  So, you know, we are not achieving the emissions reductions as a country that we need to achieve.”

Overall, the annual ANU report states that Australia is the world’s 15th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, contributing 1% of global emissions.

Van Dijk believes as a wealthy nation, Australia should be doing more to combat the impact of climate change.

“If you look at the uptake of electric vehicles, if you look at the use of renewables, we are still a laggard internationally,” he said. “We have got the 10th highest emissions per person globally; three times the global average, two times the average Chinese person.”

He said countries like the United Kingdom are doing more to reduce the emission per person.

“Australia needs to really step up its game. I think we should be very worried about the state of the environment globally, and especially about climate change.”

Australia’s government has for the first time legislated a target to cut carbon emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by 2030 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

 
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Washington — An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U.S. diplomats and other government employees who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed “Havana syndrome, ” researchers reported Monday.

The National Institutes of Health’s nearly five-year study offers no explanation for symptoms including headaches, balance problems and difficulties with thinking and sleep that were first reported in Cuba in 2016 and later by hundreds of American personnel in multiple countries.

But it did contradict some earlier findings that raised the specter of brain injuries in people experiencing what the State Department now calls “anomalous health incidents.”

“These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time,” said Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH’s chief of rehabilitation medicine, who helped lead the research. “They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat.”

Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter — signs of injury or degeneration — when Havana syndrome patients were compared to healthy government workers with similar jobs, including some in the same embassy. Nor were there significant differences in cognitive and other tests, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

While that couldn’t rule out some transient injury when symptoms began, researchers said it’s good news that they couldn’t spot long-term markers on brain scans that are typical after trauma or stroke.

That “should be some reassurance for patients,” said study co-author Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center who treats Havana syndrome. “It allows us to focus on the here and now, to getting people back to where they should be.”

A subset, about 28%, of Havana syndrome cases were diagnosed with a balance problem called persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, or PPPD. Linked to inner-ear problems as well as severe stress, it results when certain brain networks show no injury but don’t communicate properly. French called it a “maladaptive response,” much like how people who’ve slouched to alleviate back pain can have posture trouble even after the pain is gone.

The Havana syndrome participants reported more fatigue, posttraumatic stress symptoms and depression.

The findings are the latest in an effort to unravel a mystery that began when personnel at the U.S. embassy in Cuba began seeking medical care for hearing loss and ear-ringing after reporting sudden weird noises.

Early on, there was concern that Russia or another country may have used some form of directed energy to attack Americans. But last year, U.S. intelligence agencies said there was no sign a foreign adversary was involved and that most cases appeared to have different causes, from undiagnosed illnesses to environmental factors.

Some patients have accused the government of dismissing their ailments. And in an editorial in JAMA on Monday, one scientist called for more research to prepare for the next such health mystery, cautioning that NIH’s study design plus the limits of existing medical technology could have missed some clues.

“One might suspect that nothing or nothing serious happened with these cases. This would be ill-advised,” wrote Dr. David Relman of Stanford University. In 2022, he was part of a government-appointed panel that couldn’t rule out that a pulsed form of energy could explain a subset of cases.

The NIH study, which began in 2018 and included more than 80 Havana syndrome patients, wasn’t designed to examine the likelihood of some weapon or other trigger for Havana syndrome symptoms. Chan said the findings don’t contradict the intelligence agencies’ conclusions.

If some “external phenomenon” was behind the symptoms, “it did not result in persistent or detectable pathophysiologic change,” he said.

The State Department said it was reviewing NIH’s findings but that its priority was ensuring affected employees and family members “are treated with respect and compassion and receive timely access to medical care and all benefits to which they are entitled.”
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Mice accidentally introduced to a remote island near Antarctica 200 years ago are breeding out of control because of climate change, and they are eating seabirds and causing major harm in a special nature reserve with “unique biodiversity.”

Now conservationists are planning a mass extermination using helicopters and hundreds of tons of rodent poison, which needs to be dropped over every part of Marion Island’s 297 square kilometers (115 square miles) to ensure success.

If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.

The Mouse-Free Marion project — pest control on a grand scale — is seen as critical for the ecology of the uninhabited South African territory and the wider Southern Ocean. It would be the largest eradication of its kind if it succeeds.

The island is home to globally significant populations of nearly 30 bird species and a rare undisturbed habitat for wandering albatrosses — with their 10-foot wingspan — and many others.

An undisturbed habitat, at least, until stowaway house mice arrived on seal hunter ships in the early 1800s, introducing the island’s first mammal predators.

The past few decades have been the most significant for the damage the mice have caused, said Dr. Anton Wolfaardt, the Mouse-Free Marion project manager. He said their numbers have increased hugely, mainly due to rising temperatures from climate change, which has turned a cold, windswept island into a warmer, drier, more hospitable home.

“They are probably one of the most successful animals in the world. They’ve got to all sorts of places,” Wolfaardt said. But now on Marion Island, “their breeding season has been extended, and this has resulted in a massive increase in the densities of mice.”

Mice don’t need encouragement. They can reproduce from about 60 days old and females can have four or five litters a year, each with seven or eight babies.

Rough estimates indicate there are more than 1 million mice on Marion Island. They are feeding on invertebrates and, more and more, on seabirds — both chicks in their nests and adults.

A single mouse will feed on a bird several times its size.

Conservationists snapped a photo of one perched on the bloodied head of a wandering albatross chick.

The phenomenon of mice eating seabirds has been recorded on only a handful of the world’s islands.

The scale and frequency of mice preying on seabirds on Marion has risen alarmingly, Wolfaardt said, after the first reports of it in 2003. He said the birds have not developed the defense mechanisms to protect themselves against these unfamiliar predators and often sit there while mice nibble away at them. Sometimes, multiple mice swarm over a bird.

Conservationists estimate that if nothing is done, 19 seabird species will disappear from the island in 50 to 100 years, he said.

“This incredibly important island as a haven for seabirds has a very tenuous future because of the impacts of mice,” Wolfaardt said.

The eradication project is a single shot at success, with not even a whisker of room for error. Burgeoning mice and rat populations have been problematic for other islands. South Georgia, in the southern Atlantic, was declared rodent-free in 2018 after an eradication, but that was a multiyear project; the one on Marion could be the biggest single intervention.

Wolfaardt said four to six helicopters will likely be used to drop up to 550 tons of rodenticide bait across the island. Pilots will be given exact flight lines and Wolfaardt’s team will be able to track the drop using GPS mapping.

The bait has been designed to not affect the soil or the island’s water sources. It shouldn’t harm the seabirds, who feed out at sea, and won’t have negative impacts for the environment, Wolfaardt said. Some animals will be affected at an individual level, but those species will recover.

“There’s no perfect solution in these kinds of things,” he said. “There is nothing that just zaps mice and nothing else.”

The eradication project is a partnership between BirdLife South Africa and the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, which designated Marion Island as a special nature reserve with the highest level of environmental protection. It has a weather and research station but is otherwise uninhabited and dedicated to conservation.

The department said the eradication of mice was “essential if the unique biodiversity of the island is to be preserved.”

Wolfaardt said the amount of planning needed means a likely go-ahead date in 2027. The project also needs to raise about $25 million — some of which has been funded by the South African government — and get final regulatory approvals from authorities.

Scientists have tried to control the mice of Marion in the past.

They were already a pest for researchers in the 1940s, so five domestic cats were introduced. By the 1970s, there were around 2,000 feral cats on the island, killing half a million seabirds per year. The cats were eliminated by introducing a feline flu virus and hunting down any survivors.

Islands are critical to conservation efforts, but fragile. The Island Conservation organization says they are “extinction epicenters” and 75% of all species that have gone extinct lived on islands. About 95% of those were bird species.

“This really is an ecological restoration project,” Wolfaardt said. “It’s one of those rare conservation opportunities where you solve once and for all a conservation threat.”
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Assemblyman Anthony Rendon likes to spend his spare time away from the Capitol in Sacramento with his 4-year-old daughter at home near Los Angeles. Last weekend, he took her ice skating and afterward to an indoor playground, then let her get a donut after she agreed to ride her scooter on the way there. 

 

“Those are the types of things that make me happy,” he said this week in an interview outside the state Assembly chambers, where he’s served as a lawmaker for a dozen years. 

 

Now Rendon, a Democrat who was one of the longest-serving Assembly speakers in California history, is spending his last year in office trying to make happiness more central to policymaking. He created a first-in-the-nation group to study the issue, called the Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes, which held its first public hearing this week. 

It would be “silly” for lawmakers to not study how they can make people happier, Rendon said. 

 

“Because if we have everybody clothed, everybody housed, everybody has a job and they’re miserable, then we’ve failed at what we’re trying to do,” he said, adding that lawmakers should think about happiness as a priority in policymaking. 

 

In California, three-quarters of adults say they are “very happy” or “pretty happy,” while 26% say they are “not too happy,” according to a September 2023 survey from the Public Policy Institute of California. Adults aged 18 to 34, people who are renters, those without a post-high school degree, and Californians with an annual household income of $40,000 or lower tend to be less happy than others. 

 

California is breaking new ground in the United States. At least 12 state legislatures in the nation have committees focused on mental health and substance abuse issues, but no other state legislature has a committee devoted to happiness, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

 

But the idea to consider happiness in public policy isn’t unprecedented: The landlocked country of Bhutan in South Asia prioritizes happiness as a goal of public policy, measuring it through something written into its constitution called the Gross National Happiness Index. The country surveys residents on their level of happiness, and officials work to increase happiness by providing residents with free health care and education, protecting cultural traditions, and preserving forests, said Phuntsho Norbu, consul general of the Kingdom of Bhutan to the United States. 

 

The government cannot make every person happy, but it should “create the right conditions that will allow people to pursue happiness,” Norbu said. 

 

Lawmakers on California’s new committee heard this week from experts about the things that make people happy, what public officials can do to help and what role state and local government can play. The committee isn’t set on any solutions yet but plans to release a report with its findings after lawmakers adjourn for the year at the end of August, said Katie Talbot, Rendon’s spokesperson. 

 

Assembly member Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat representing part of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, hopes the committee’s work can address poor mental health among youth in California, which her 11-year-old daughter has told her is a big issue in her class at school. 

 

“It’s a true crisis that we have on our hands right now,” Schiavo said. “This is really getting to the heart of what that crisis is about.” 

 

Research demonstrates that leisure activities, social relationships and life circumstances contribute to a person’s happiness, said Meliksah Demir, a professor of happiness at California State University, Sacramento. Public officials can work toward improving happiness by investing in mental health resources, making green spaces more accessible and teaching about the value of happiness early on in schools, Demir said. 

Happiness has wide-ranging benefits that include making people more likely to vote, more creative and healthier, he said. 

 

The Public Policy Institute of California’s September survey found that 33% of adults overall say they are very satisfied with their job, 31% say they are very satisfied with their leisure activities and 44% are very satisfied with their housing. 

 

Californians’ level of happiness decreased during the pandemic, but experts are still researching the decline, said Mark Baldassare, the group’s survey director. 

 

California, which is often ahead of other states on issues such as climate policy and civil rights, is behind many parts of the world in prioritizing happiness in policymaking, Rendon said. He was inspired to create the happiness committee in part by a report on happiness released annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. 

 

Last year’s report said that how people view the effectiveness of government — including how well it raises money, delivers services and avoids civil war — can influence their happiness. The United States was 15th in a world happiness ranking based on a three-year average from 2020 to 2022, according to the report. Scandinavian countries, including Finland and Iceland, ranked the highest. 

 

Rendon’s decision to create the happiness committee aligns with his approach to making state policy that focuses on “bigger picture” social issues, longtime labor lobbyist Kristina Bas Hamilton said. People have different perspectives on government involvement in their lives, but the creation of the committee evokes the ultimate purpose of government, she said.

 

“Government’s role is to provide for its people,” Bas Hamilton said. “The goal is to have happy citizens. That’s the goal of all public policy.” 
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