YCLOAK

WASHINGTON — The Louisiana Department of Health said Monday that a U.S. patient hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu had died, the country’s first death from an outbreak of the virus that has sickened dozens of people and millions of poultry and cattle. 

Nearly 70 people in the U.S. have contracted bird flu since April, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most of them livestock workers exposed to sick chickens or dairy cattle. 

The patient in Louisiana, the first person in the country to be hospitalized with the virus, contracted bird flu after exposure to a combination of backyard chickens and wild birds, said Louisiana health officials. The patient was hospitalized on Dec. 18, state health officials said. 

The patient was over 65 and had underlying medical conditions, the officials said. 

“While the current public health risk for the general public remains low, people who work with birds, poultry or cows, or have recreational exposure to them, are at higher risk,” the department said in a statement.  

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
…

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — The new year will bring a pair of lunar eclipses, but don’t expect any sun-disappearing acts like the one that mesmerized North America last spring.

While the world will have to wait until 2026 for the next total solar eclipse, the cosmos promises plenty of other wow moments in 2025. It’s kicking off the year with a six-planet parade in January that will be visible for weeks. Little Mercury will join the crowd for a seven-planet lineup in February.

Five planets already are scattered across the sky — all but Mars and Mercury — though binoculars or telescopes are needed to spot some of them just after sunset.

“People should go out and see them sometime during the next many weeks. I certainly will,” said the Planetary Society’s chief scientist Bruce Betts.

Here’s a sneak peek of what’s ahead:

Eclipses

The moon will vanish for more than an hour over North and South America on March 14, followed two weeks later by a partial solar eclipse visible from Maine, eastern Canada, Greenland, Europe, Siberia and northwestern Africa.

The cosmic double-header will repeat in September with an even longer total lunar eclipse over Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, and a partial solar eclipse two weeks later near the bottom of the world.

Supermoons

Three supermoons are on tap this year in October, November and December.

The full moon will look particularly big and bright those three months as it orbits closer to Earth than usual.

November’s supermoon will come closest, passing within 356,980 kilometers. Last year featured four supermoons, wrapping up in November.

Planet parade

Six of our seven neighboring planets will line up in the sky to form a long arc around mid-January. All but Neptune and Uranus should be visible with the naked eye just after sunset, weather permitting.

The parade will continue for weeks, with some of the planets occasionally snuggling up. Mercury will make a cameo appearance by the end of February. The planets will gradually exit, one by one, through spring.

Northern and southern lights

The sun burped big time last year, painting the sky with gorgeous auroras in unexpected places.

Space weather forecasters anticipate more geomagnetic storms that could yield even more northern and southern lights.

That’s because the sun has reached its solar maximum during its current 11-year cycle that could continue through this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Shawn Dahl urges everyone to stay on top of space weather news, so as not to miss any pop-up, razzle-dazzle shows.

Meteor showers

The Perseids and Geminids are perennial crowd-pleasers, peaking in August and December, respectively. But don’t count out the smaller, less dramatic meteor showers like the Lyrids in April, the Orionids in October and the Leonids in November.

The darker the locale and dimmer the moon, the better it will be for viewing. Meteor showers are generally named for the constellation in which they appear to originate. They occur whenever Earth plows through streams of debris left behind by comets and sometimes asteroids. 
…

TOKYO — Tomiko Itooka, a Japanese woman who was the world’s oldest person according to Guinness World Records, has died, an Ashiya city official said Saturday. She was 116.

Yoshitsugu Nagata, an official in charge of elderly policies, said Itooka died on Dec. 29 at a care home in Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, central Japan.

Itooka, who loved bananas and a yogurt-flavored Japanese drink called Calpis, was born on May 23, 1908. She became the oldest person last year following the death of 117-year-old Maria Branyas, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

When she was told she was at the top of the World Supercentenarian Rankings List, she simply replied, “Thank you.”

When Itooka celebrated her birthday last year, she received flowers, a cake and a card from the mayor.

Born in Osaka, Itooka was a volleyball player in high school, and long had a reputation for a sprightly spirit, Nagata said. She climbed the 3,067-meter (10,062-foot) Mount Ontake twice.

She married at 20, and had two daughters and two sons, according to Guinness.

Itooka managed the office of her husband’s textile factory during World War II. She lived alone in Nara after her husband died in 1979.

She is survived by one son, one daughter and five grandchildren. A funeral service was held with family and friends, according to Nagata.

According to the Gerontology Research Group, the world’s oldest person is now 116-year-old Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas, who was born 16 days after Itooka.
…

WASHINGTON — The highly decorated Special Forces soldier who died by suicide in a Cybertruck explosion on New Year’s Day confided to a former girlfriend who had served as an Army nurse that he faced significant pain and exhaustion that she says were key symptoms of traumatic brain injury.

Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was a five-time recipient of the Bronze Star, including one with a V device for valor under fire. He had an exemplary military record that spanned the globe and a baby born last year. But he struggled with the mental and physical toll of his service, which required him to kill and caused him to witness the deaths of fellow soldiers.

Livelsberger mostly bore that burden in private but recently sought treatment for depression from the Army, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public.

He also found a confidant in the former nurse, who he began dating in 2018.

Alicia Arritt, 39, and Livelsberger met through a dating app while both were in Colorado Springs. Arritt had served at Landstul Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military medical facility in Europe, where many of the worst combat injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan were initially treated before being flown to the United States.

There she saw and treated traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which troops suffered from incoming fire and roadside bombs. Serious but hard to diagnose, such injuries can have lingering effects that might take years to surface.

“I saw a lot of bad injuries. But the personality changes can happen later,” Arritt said.

In texts and images he shared with Arritt, Livelsberger raised the curtain a bit on what he was facing.

“Just some concussions,” he said in a text about a deployment to Helmand Province in Afghanistan. He sent her a photo of a graphic tattoo he got on his arm of two skulls pierced by bullets to mark lives he took in Afghanistan. He talked about exhaustion and pain, not being able to sleep and reliving the violence of his deployment.

“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt during the early days of their dating, according to text messages she provided to The Associated Press. “It’s refreshing to have such a nice person come along.”

On Friday, Las Vegas law enforcement officers released excerpts of messages Livelsberger left behind showing the way Livelsberger killed himself was intentional, meant both as a “wakeup call” but also to “cleanse the demons” he was facing from losing fellow soldiers and taking lives.

Livelsberger’s death in front of the Trump Hotel using a truck produced by Elon Musk’s Tesla company has raised questions as to whether this was an act of political violence.

Officials said Friday that Livelsberger apparently harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, and Arritt said she and Livelsberger were Tesla fans.

“I had a Tesla, too, that I rescued from a junkyard in 2019, and we used to work on it together, bond over it,” Arritt said.

The pair stopped talking regularly after they broke up in 2021, and she had not heard from him in more than two years when he texted out of the blue on Dec. 28, and again on Dec. 31. The upbeat messages included a video of him driving the Cybertruck and another one of its dancing headlights; the vehicle can sync up its lighting and music.

But she also said Livelsberger felt things “very deeply, and I could see him using symbolism” of both the truck and the hotel.

“He wasn’t impulsive,” Arritt said. “I don’t see him doing this impulsively, so my suspicion would be that he was probably thinking it out.”

Arritt served on active duty from 2003 to 2007 and then was in the Army Reserve until 2011. With Livelsberger, she saw symptoms of TBI as early as 2018.

“He would go through periods of withdrawal, and he struggled with depression and memory loss,” Arritt said. “I don’t know what drove him to do this, but I think the military didn’t get him help when he needed it.”

But Livelsberger was also sweet and kind, she recalled: “He had a really deep well of inner strength and character, and he just had a lot of integrity.”

Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Friday that it has turned over all Livelsberger’s medical records to local law enforcement and encouraged troops facing mental health challenges to seek care through one of the military’s support networks.

“If you need help, if you feel that you need to seek any type of mental health treatment, or just to talk to someone — to seek the services that are available, either on base or off,” Singh said.

When Livelsberger struggled during the time they were dating, Arritt prodded him to get help. But he would not, saying it could cost him his ability to deploy if he was found medically unfit.

“There was a lot of stigma in his unit; they were, you know, big, strong, Special Forces guys there. There was no weakness allowed, and mental health is weakness is what they saw,” she said.

Livelsberger seeking treatment for depression was first reported by CNN.
…

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration announced Friday that it will allocate $306 million to bolster the nation’s bird flu response before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The new funding will support national, state and local preparedness and monitoring programs, as well as research into potential medical countermeasures against the H5N1 virus.

“While the risk to humans remains low, we are always preparing for any possible scenario that could arise,” Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

“Preparedness is the key to keeping Americans healthy and our country safe.”

The United States has reported 66 human cases of bird flu since the start of 2024, though experts believe the true number could be higher, with cases potentially going undetected among cattle and poultry workers.

While the virus has not been found to spread from person to person, the amount of bird flu circulating among animals and humans has alarmed scientists, because it might combine with seasonal influenza and mutate into a more transmissible form — potentially triggering a deadly pandemic.

The funding announcement comes amid concern over how the incoming Trump administration will handle the threat.

The president-elect told Time magazine recently he would abolish the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy established under Biden — though it is not clear if he has the authority to do so, since it was created by Congress.

His pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a vocal vaccine skeptic who has pledged to shake up the nation’s health agencies and promotes raw milk, thought to be a vector for bird flu.

Biden’s administration has also faced criticism for what some consider a subpar bird flu response.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, published a report last month citing an array of problems including “lagging data, incomplete surveillance, sluggish coordination, considerable mistrust, and insufficient planning and stockpiling of vaccines and therapies.”

Given these shortcomings, infectious disease epidemiologist Meg Schaeffer of the SAS Institute told AFP: “In my opinion, avian influenza is going to become either a pandemic or a virus…  that will become a very widespread and significant health issue for us in the next one to two years.”

She urged raw milk consumers in particular to “take a pause on that consumption.”

Adding to concerns, a virus sample from a critically ill patient in Louisiana has shown signs of mutating to better adapt to human airways, although there is no evidence it has spread beyond that individual, health authorities said last week.

Researchers are also closely monitoring the growing number of bird flu infections in cats, which could expose humans through close contact. 
…

The holidays came with a side of flu for many Americans, with 40 states reporting high or very high levels of illness last week, according to the latest government health data. 

“A lot of flu out there,” said Carrie Reed of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Of course, there are a number of bugs that cause fever, cough, sore throat and other flulike symptoms. One is COVID-19. Another is RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, which is a common cause of coldlike symptoms but can be dangerous for infants and the elderly. 

Reed said that the most recent CDC hospitalization data and other indicators show that the flu virus is trending higher than the other germs. Several seasonal flu strains are driving cases, with no dominant one, she added. 

Pediatric hospitals have been busy since November with RSV, but “influenza has now joined the party,” said Dr. Jason Newland, an infectious-diseases specialist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. 

“Now we’re really starting to roll,” he added. “Our hospitals are busy.” 

Where flu illnesses are the highest 

One indicator of flu activity is the percentage of doctor’s office visits driven by flulike symptoms. That level last week was about equal to the peak of last winter’s respiratory virus season — which occurred at the same time of year. Reed noted that most people avoid medical appointments over the holidays if they can help it, so the data in late December might be skewed by people who came down with sudden illnesses. 

Last week’s flu activity was particularly intense in the South, Southwest and West. The states reporting lesser amounts of suffering were mostly in the northern Great Plains and in New England. 

So far this season, the CDC estimates, there have been at least 5.3 million flu illnesses, 63,000 hospitalizations and 2,700 deaths, including at least 11 children. 

It’s not clear if this winter respiratory virus season will be any worse than others. So far it seems relatively typical, at least for kids, Newland said. 

How to protect yourself 

U.S. health officials recommend that everyone 6 months and older get an annual flu vaccination, and they say it’s not too late to get a shot. 

You should also avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth because germs can spread that way, health officials say. You should also wash your hands with soap and water, clean frequently touched surfaces and avoid close contact with people who are sick.

The CDC also has been keeping its eye on a rise of illnesses from norovirus, a nasty stomach bug, with 91 outbreaks reported early in December. 

Investigators also have been closely watching another kind of influenza virus, the Type A H5N1 version of bird flu. The CDC says 66 human U.S. cases of that were reported last year, but none of them in the last week. 

The cases are “fairly sporadic,” and the overall risk to the public remains low, Reed said. Almost all have been traced to direct contact with infected animals, with no proof of spread between people. 
…

WASHINGTON/LONDON — Alcoholic drinks should carry a warning about cancer risks on their label, the U.S. surgeon general said Friday in a move that could signal a shift toward more aggressive tobacco-style regulation for the sector. 

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said alcohol consumption increases the risk of at least seven types of cancer, including breast, colon and liver cancer, but most U.S. consumers remain unaware of this. 

Murthy also called for the guidelines on alcohol consumption limits to be reassessed so that people can weigh the cancer risk when deciding whether or how much to drink. U.S. dietary guidelines currently recommend two or fewer drinks per day for men and one drink or less per day for women. 

“Alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, after tobacco and obesity,” Murthy’s office said in a statement accompanying the new report, adding the type of alcohol consumed does not matter. 

His advisory sent shares in alcohol companies including Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Anheuser-Busch and Heineken down, in some cases over 3%. 

Alcohol producers and industry associations did not immediately share comments. 

It is unclear when or if the surgeon general’s suggestions will be adopted. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is entering its final two weeks. Murthy could be succeeded by Janette Nesheiwat, a director of a New York chain of urgent care clinics and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for the role. 

Trump, whose brother died from alcoholism and who does not drink himself, has long warned about the risks of drinking. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been open about his past struggles with heroin and alcohol, and says that he attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. 

The decision to update the label will ultimately be made by Congress. 

Small print 

Murthy’s advisory harks back to early U.S. surgeon general action on tobacco, starting with a 1964 report that concluded smoking could cause cancer. The report kicked off decades of increasingly strict regulations, starting with U.S. laws on warning labels one year later and still ongoing today. 

Alcoholic drinks in the U.S. already carry warnings on their packaging, including that drinking alcohol while pregnant can cause birth defects and that it can impair judgment when operating machinery. These appear in small print on the back of the packaging. This label has not changed since its inception in 1988. 

Murthy’s recommendations call for an update to these existing labels, rather than new cigarette-style warnings that are today displayed prominently on the front of every packet. 

Analysts, however, pointed out that cigarette warning labels did little to curb smoking and ingrained habits are hard to change. 

“Warning labels won’t be an immediate deathblow to alcohol makers, but it will compound the long-term threats to the industry,” said Blake Droesch, analyst with eMarketer. 

In the U.S., among the largest markets for many western producers, companies face growing competition from alternatives like cannabis and the threat of lower volumes as some consumers, especially younger ones, drink less than previous generations. 

Beer makers especially have, however, enjoyed benefits from a shift toward healthier lifestyles, with low- or no-alcohol products enjoying rapid growth. Heineken’s 0.0 version, for example, grew double digits in 16 markets last year. 

The advisory said alcohol is responsible for 100,000 U.S. cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year, more than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash deaths. 

The new report recommends health care providers should encourage alcohol screening and treatment referrals as needed, and efforts to increase general awareness should be expanded.
…

Juba, South Sudan   — More than 1.1 million doses of an oral cholera vaccine have arrived in South Sudan, as the government launched a program to inoculate more than 80 percent of the population. But the mass vaccination exercise faces numerous challenges, including a lack of access to the areas dealing with the worst cholera outbreaks.

Medics in South Sudan will attempt to vaccinate at least 9 million people against cholera, an exercise that targets mostly children and mothers.

More than 1.1 million doses of oral cholera vaccine arrived in the capital, Juba, and will be dispatched next week to hot spots areas like the town of Bentiu.

The country’s Ministry of Health reported last week that 199 people have died of cholera, with 13,000 more diagnosed so far with the bacteria.

Dr. Gabriel Boum Tap is an immunization officer at UNICEF in South Sudan.

“Of course, we had also received some vaccines before; only that they were not enough, because, you know, it’s not like the cholera vaccine is manufactured and is put in one place already,” he said.

At least one cholera case has been recorded in 29 of the 79 counties in South Sudan, with Bentiu, Renk and Juba most affected.

The first case was reported on September 23 in Renk, northeast of the capital.

But as the country prepares to roll out a mass vaccination exercise, the process faces some serious headwinds.

Thinjin Khoat is one of the victims of the cholera outbreak. He says he has seen people die of the disease, with many more trooping to local health centers seeking urgent medical attention.

“I was at one of the health facilities, and there was a suspected case of cholera. The patient was a 5-year-old. The patient was vomiting, and in the process, the health workers couldn’t get the vein. The patient is not able to get the oral fluid. … In that process, the patient died of dehydration,” he said.

Cholera is an acute diarrhea infection caused by consuming contaminated food or water. If not treated, it can be fatal within hours.

Khoat says accessibility to health care remains a major hindrance to the fight against the disease.

“Some of the community members, they don’t have access, because, you know, in Bentiu here, there is flooding. There are some areas that health workers cannot access because of the flood and also security issues,” he said.

According to Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, poor living conditions in South Sudan have created the perfect breeding ground for cholera.

Stephanie Ngai is MSF’s project coordinator for cholera response in Bentiu, located in Rubkona County, an area with a large refugee population.

“Here in Rubkona, the explosion on the outbreak very quickly overwhelmed the local systems that are responsible for coordinating the response and scaling up the interventions,” she said. ‘Other partners don’t have adequate funding to properly scale up the level needed, which is massive. And the overall response coordination has not been strong enough to manage the response and ensure that the needs are adequately met.”

The government says the vaccination exercise is expected to roll out next Monday with support from international partners such as MSF and the World Health Organization.

Buok Danhier, the immunization program manager for the Unity State Ministry of Health, says the various entities will split up duties in Rubkona.

“Rubkona has many payams [local districts]. Most of the payams are affected by flooding, and these are the ones that will be taken by WHO — the hard-to-reach areas. WHO and other partners are pledging to cover all those areas that are hard to reach and also very far from town. Bentiu IDP, Rukona and Bentiu town — these areas will be covered by MSF, and the recruitment process is ongoing,” said Danhier.

The vaccination exercise will target children 1 year and above.

WHO says up to 143,000 people worldwide die from cholera each year out of an estimated 4 million annual cases.
…

LONDON — A worker digging up clay in a southern England limestone quarry noticed unusual bumps that led to the discovery of a “dinosaur highway” and nearly 200 tracks that date back 166 million years, researchers said Thursday. 

The extraordinary find made after a team of more than 100 people excavated the Dewars Farm Quarry, in Oxfordshire, in June expands upon previous paleontology work in the area and offers greater insights into the Middle Jurassic period, researchers at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham said. 

“These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs, revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited,” said Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontology professor at the University of Birmingham. 

Four of the sets of tracks that make up the so-called highway show paths taken by gigantic, long-necked, herbivores called sauropods, thought to be Cetiosaurus, a dinosaur that grew to nearly 18 meters in length. A fifth set belonged to the Megalosaurus, a ferocious 9-meter predator that left a distinctive triple-claw print and was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named two centuries ago. 

An area where the tracks cross raises questions about possible interactions between the carnivores and herbivores. 

“Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found,” said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 

Nearly 30 years ago, 40 sets of footprints discovered in a limestone quarry in the area were considered one of the world’s most scientifically important dinosaur track sites. But that area is mostly inaccessible now and there’s limited photographic evidence because it predated the use of digital cameras and drones to record the findings. 

The group that worked at the site this summer took more than 20,000 digital images and used drones to create 3-D models of the prints. The trove of documentation will aid future studies and could shed light on the size of the dinosaurs, how they walked and the speed at which they moved. 

“The preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur’s feet squelched in and out,” said Duncan Murdock, an earth scientist at the Oxford museum. “Along with other fossils like burrows, shells and plants we can bring to life the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through.” 

The findings will be shown at a new exhibit at the museum and also broadcast on the BBC’s Digging for Britain program next week.
…