Italy put 23 cities on red alert as it reckoned with another day of scorching temperatures Wednesday, with no sign of relief from the wave of extreme heat, wildfires and flooding that has wreaked havoc from the United States to China.

The heat wave has hit southern Europe during the peak summer tourist season, breaking records – including in Rome – and bringing warnings about an increased risk of deaths.

Wildfires burned for a third day west of the Greek capital, Athens, and firefighters raced to keep flames away from coastal refineries.

Fanned by erratic winds, the fires have gutted dozens of homes, forced hundreds of people to flee and blanketed the area in thick smoke. Temperatures could climb to 109 Fahrenheit on Thursday, forecasters said.

Extreme weather was also disrupting life for millions of Americans. A dangerous heat wave was holding an area stretching from Southern California to the Deep South in its grip, bringing the city of Phoenix its 20th straight day with temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Calvin lashed Hawaii, raising the potential for flash flooding and dangerous surf on the Big Island.

In Texas, at least nine inmates in prisons without air conditioning have suffered fatal heart attacks during the extreme heat this summer, the Texas Tribune newspaper reported.

Another 14 have died of unknown causes during periods of extreme heat.

A Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson said preliminary findings of the deaths indicate that heat was not a factor in the fatalities. Nearly 70 of the 100 prisons in Texas are not fully air-conditioned.

Temperatures soar in China, Italy

In China, which was hosting U.S. climate envoy John Kerry for talks, tourists defied the heat to visit a giant thermometer showing surface temperatures of 80 Celsius (176 Fahrenheit).

In Beijing, which set a record as temperatures remained above 95 Fahrenheit for the 28th consecutive day, Kerry expressed hope that cooperation to combat global warming could redefine troubled ties between the two superpowers, both among the top polluters.

Temperatures remained high across much of Italy on Wednesday, where the health ministry said it would activate an information hotline and teams of mobile health workers visited the elderly in Rome.

“These people are afraid they won’t make it, they are afraid they can’t go out,” said Claudio Consoli, a doctor and director of a health unit.

Carmaker Stellantis said it was monitoring the situation at its Pomigliano plant near Naples on Wednesday, after temporarily halting work on one production line the day before when temperatures peaked.

Workers at battery-maker Magneti Marelli threatened an eight-hour strike at their central Italian plant in Sulmona. A joint statement by the unions said that “asphyxiating heat is putting at risk the lives of workers.”

While the heat wave appears to be subsiding in Spain, residents in Greece were left surveying the wreckage of their homes after the wildfires.

Scientists have long warned that climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions mainly from burning fossil fuels, will make heat waves more frequent, severe and deadly and have called on governments to drastically reduce emissions.

In Germany, the heat wave sparked a discussion on whether workplaces should introduce siestas for workers.

Heat and floods in Asia

In South Korea, heavy rain has pummeled central and southern regions since last week. Fourteen deaths occurred in an underpass in the city of Cheongju, where more than a dozen vehicles were submerged on Saturday when a river levee collapsed. In the southeastern province of North Gyeongsang, 22 people died, many from landslides and swirling torrents.

In northern India, flash floods, landslides and accidents related to heavy rainfall have killed more than 100 people since the onset of the monsoon season on June 1, where rainfall is 41% above average.

The Yamuna River reached the compound walls of the Taj Mahal in Agra for the first time in 45 years, submerging several other historical monuments, and flooded parts of the Indian capital.

The Brahmaputra River, which runs through India’s Assam state, burst its banks this month, engulfing almost half of the Kaziranga National Park – home to the rare one-horned rhino – in waist-deep water.

A wall collapse from monsoon rains killed at least 11 construction workers in neighboring Pakistan.

Iraq’s southern Basra governorate, with a population of around 4 million, said government work would be suspended on Thursday as temperatures hit 122 Fahrenheit. In Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, farmers said crops were failing because of heat and drought.

The unprecedented temperatures have added new urgency for nations around the globe to tackle climate change. With the world’s two biggest economies at odds over issues ranging from trade to Taiwan, Kerry told Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on Wednesday that climate change must be handled separately from broader diplomatic issues.

“It is a universal threat to everybody on the planet and requires the largest nations in the world, the largest economies in the world, the largest emitters in the world, to come together in order to do work not just for ourselves, but for all mankind,” Kerry told Han.
…

The U.S. has suspended funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese research laboratory at the center of the debate over the origins of the coronavirus that has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide. 

The lab has not received any U.S. funding since 2020, but for months the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been reviewing its operations, concluding that the institute “is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible.” 

The funding cutoff was prompted by the lab’s “failure to provide documentation on [its] research requested by [the National Institutes of Health] related to concerns that [the lab] violated NIH’s biosafety protocols.” 

The virus was first identified in Wuhan. One theory holds that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan lab in late 2019, triggering the pandemic. Some scientists believe the virus was passed from animals to people, possibly from a wholesale seafood market.  

The U.S. intelligence community has yet to reach a conclusion about the origins of the virus. 

Researchers at the institute have repeatedly denied that their work was related to the coronavirus outbreak, but China has blocked international scientists from a wide examination of the facility and its operations.
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People who have a particular genetic variant are twice as likely to never feel sick when they contract COVID-19, researchers said Wednesday, offering the first potential explanation for the lucky group dubbed the “super dodgers.”

Those who have two copies of the variant are eight times more likely to never get any symptoms from COVID-19, according to the study in the journal Nature.

Previous research has suggested that at least 20% of the millions of infections during the pandemic were asymptomatic. To find out what could be behind these cases, researchers took advantage of a database of volunteer bone marrow donors in the United States.

The database included each person’s type of human leukocyte antigen (HLA), which are molecules on the surface of most cells in the body. The immune system uses HLA to see which cells belong in the body, and they are thought to play a key role in the response to viral infections.

Subjects self-reported symptoms

The researchers had nearly 30,000 people on the bone marrow registry self-report their COVID tests and symptoms on a mobile phone app.

More than 1,400 unvaccinated people tested positive for COVID between February 2020 and late April 2021, the study said. Out of that group, 136 saw no symptoms two weeks before and after testing positive. 

One in five of that group carried at least one copy of an HLA variant called HLA-B*15:01.

Those fortunate enough to have two copies of the gene, one from their mother and one from their father, were more than eight times more likely to be asymptomatic from COVID-91 than other people, the study said.

To find out why this was the case, the team carried out separate research looking at T cells, which protect the body from infections, in people who carried the variant. The researchers specifically looked at how T cells remembered viruses they had previously encountered.

This meant they were “armed and ready for attack when they encounter the same pathogen again,” said Jill Hollenbach of the University of California, San Francisco, who was the study’s lead researcher.

When people with the HLA variant were exposed to the coronavirus, their T cells were particularly primed for battle because they remembered similar cold viruses they had previously fended off.

Children often spared the worst

This theory — that recent exposure to colds and other coronaviruses could lead to fewer COVID symptoms — has previously been proposed to explain why children have often been spared the worst of COVID.

“Anyone that has ever been a parent knows that kids are snotty-nosed for five or six years, so I think that’s a really reasonable thing to speculate might be happening,” Hollenbach said.

She said the HLA variant was likely just one piece of the genetic puzzle behind asymptomatic COVID.

The researchers hope that studying the immune response to COVID could lead to new treatments or vaccines in the future. Hollenbach said one interesting idea was a vaccine that prevents COVID symptoms, as opposed to infection, which could potentially last longer than the currently available vaccines.

The researchers warned that most of the study’s participants were white, which could limit the findings for other groups, and that it covered an earlier period of the pandemic and did not include re-infections.
…

Childhood immunization has rebounded following a significant decline during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but at an uneven rate with too many children in low-income countries still missing out on the life-saving products, according to a joint World Health Organization-UNICEF report.

The agencies say that four million more children were immunized against killer diseases in 2022 compared to the previous year.

“Last year, we rang alarm bells at the historic backsliding that we saw across countries, regions, and vaccines,” said Kate O’Brien, director, immunization, vaccines, and biologicals, WHO.

“From 2022’s data, from a global perspective, we are recovering,” she said. “But that recovery is uneven, with too many countries not yet seeing improvement.”

The report says that just eight large countries—India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, and Tanzania—account for 3.8 million of the four million additional children reached in 2022.

Of the 73 countries that recorded substantial declines of more than five percent during the pandemic, the report says “24 are on route to recovery and, most concerningly, 34 have stagnated or continued declining.”

O’Brien said a main measure of immunization program performance is how many zero-dose children exist.

“These are children who do not receive a first dose of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. It means these are children who do not receive any vaccine through the routine immunization program.”

The good news, she said, is that global coverage of the first dose of DTP vaccine now stands at 89 percent—very close to the pre-pandemic coverage of 90 percent.

However, she noted that the data is a lot more nuanced when looked at by region and income.

“All regions, except for the Africa region, have made progress in recovery for DTP. The region’s coverage is now six percent lower than 2019 levels and this is the largest gap for any region,” she said.

The report finds some backsliding in measles vaccine coverage as well, noting that only 83 percent of children globally were vaccinated against that killer disease in 2022, below pre-pandemic levels of 86 percent.

“Fifty-nine countries reported a total of 80 measles outbreaks in 2022,” said Ephrem Tekle Lemango, UNICEF associate director of immunization.

“Since coverage levels declined, we have witnessed outbreaks of diseases such as measles, yellow fever and diphtheria increasing, and our efforts to eradicate polio have been set back,” he said.

“If we do not catch-up vaccinations of older children that were missed since 2019, quickly and urgently,” he warned, “we will inevitably witness more outbreaks and be responsible for more child deaths.”

The WHO’s Kate O’Brien expressed the urgency of vaccinating children against measles in low-income countries, noting that someone who is not immune to the disease could infect between 12 and 20 other people.

“The way children become immune is best done by vaccination, not by actually getting infected and risking severe disease or death or other consequences from measles,” she said.

Ephrem Lemango said reaching children on the African continent, which is home to 12 percent of the world’s population, is particularly challenging as “It is home to 54 percent of the un- or under-vaccinated children,” a significant proportion of whom remain unreached.

“This is because they are facing other challenges, such as conflict and crises,” he said, “but also because, over many years, they have not had the resources to build resilient health systems.”

O’Brien said the overarching, dominant reason why children do not get vaccinated is lack of access. She said families in remote, rural areas in particular have difficulty reaching a clinic where vaccines are administered.

However, she added that “We are very concerned about vaccine confidence and the awareness of families around the benefit of vaccines.

“And clearly, the information and misinformation and disinformation that is growing in size and growing in scope is having some impact in some communities at specific times on the confidence that people have in vaccines.”
…

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of our social media world on our cellphones and computers. Text, images, audio and video are becoming easier for anyone to create using new generative AI tools.

As AI-generated materials become more pervasive, it’s getting harder to tell the difference between what is real and what has been manipulated.

“It’s one of the challenges over the next decade,” said Kristian Hammond, a professor of computer science who focuses on artificial intelligence at Northwestern University.

AI-generated content is making its way into movies, TV shows and social media on Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms.

AI has been used to change images of former President Donald Trump and Pope Francis. The winner of a prestigious international photo competition this year used AI to create a fake photo.

Victor Lee, who specializes in AI as an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, said, “people need to exercise caution when looking at AI-generated materials.”

Whether it’s text, video, an image or audio, with generative AI we are seeing things that look like actual news or an image of a particular person but it’s not true, Lee said.

AI is also being used to create songs that sound like popular musical artists and replicating images of actors.

Recently, an anonymous person on TikTok used artificial intelligence to create a song with a beat, lyrics and voices that fooled many people into believing it was a recording by pop stars Drake and The Weeknd.

Among the demands of television and film actors and writers currently on strike in the U.S. are protections against the use of AI, which has advanced to replicate faces, bodies and voices on movies and TV.

“I think the Avatar movies have been so successful because people were able to identify with the animation of the simulated characters,” said Bernie Luskin, director of the Luskin community college leadership initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Luskin, who does research on media psychology, thinks that as the use of AI becomes a worldwide phenomenon, it will affect people psychologically and influence their behavior.

“It’s definitely going to have a dramatic impact on social media,” he said. “As AI becomes more common, it will become increasingly deceptive, and abusers will abuse it.”

On a positive note, Hammond said AI will promote additional artistic elements.

“We’re going to have a new view of what it means to be creative,” he said, “and there will be a different kind of appreciation because the AI systems are generating things in partnership with a human.”

A major concern, however, is that people are already being duped by AI, and as the technology becomes even more sophisticated, it will be even more difficult to discern its imprint.

Krishnan Vasudevan, assistant professor in visual communication at the University of Maryland, worries that people may become immune to AI-generated materials and won’t care if they are real or not.

“They’ll be wanting visuals that reinforce their viewpoints, and they’ll use the tool as a way to discredit or make fun of political opponents,” he said.

Experts say norms, regulations and guardrails must be considered to keep AI in line.

“Does AI receive credit as a co-author?” Lee asked.

“I think there will be legal battles about using somebody’s voice or likeness,” Vasudevan said.

“We have to start looking hard at exactly what is going out there,” said Hammond. “For example, there should be regulations that say your image should not be associated with anything pornographic.”

Lee said artificial intelligence will create big changes the public will get used to, much like the Internet and social media have done.

“The Internet is not inherently a good or bad thing, but it changed society,” he said. “AI is also not good or bad, and it is going to do something similar.”
…

Chinese livestreamers have set their sights on TikTok shoppers in the U.S. and Europe, hawking everything from bags and apparel to crystals with their eyes on a potentially lucrative market, despite uncertainties over the platform’s future in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In China, where livestreaming ecommerce is forecast to reach 4.9 trillion yuan ($676 billion) by the year’s end, popular hosts like “Lipstick King” Austin Li rack up tens of millions of dollars in sales during a single livestream. Many brands, including L’Oreal, Nike and Louis Vuitton, have begun using livestreaming to reach more shoppers.

But the highly competitive livestreaming market in China has led some hosts to look to Western markets to carve out niches for themselves.

Oreo Deng, a former English tutor, sells jewelry to U.S. customers by livestreaming on TikTok, delivering her sales pitches in English for about four to six hours a day.

“I wanted to try livestreaming on TikTok because it aligned with my experiences as an English tutor and my past jobs working in cross-border e-commerce,” Deng said.

Since 2019, western e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Facebook have experimented with livestreaming e-commerce after seeing the success of Chinese platforms like Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao, and Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart in China.

TikTok started testing its live shopping feature last year. Registered merchants from the U.S., Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore, among other countries, can now sell via livestreams online.

But livestreaming e-commerce has yet to take off in the U.S. The livestreaming e-commerce market in the U.S. — the world’s biggest consumer market — is expected to grow to $68 billion by 2026, according to research and advisory firm Coresight Research.

The relatively lukewarm reception led Facebook to shut down its live shopping feature last year. As for TikTok, the platform has the added risk of potentially facing U.S. restrictions due to tensions between Beijing and Washington.

TikTok, whose parent company is Chinese technology firm ByteDance, has been criticized for its Chinese ties and accused of being a national security risk due to the data it collects.

TikTok did not provide comment for this story.

Despite the scrutiny faced by TikTok, many Chinese hosts view the U.S. as a vast ocean of opportunity, an emerging market that has yet to be saturated with livestreaming hosts.

“There’s more opportunity for growth to target America because the competition is so fierce in China,” said Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai. “Livestreaming in the U.S. is at a beginning starting point. There’s more opportunity to grab market share.”

Rein also said that Chinese merchants can often price items higher in the U.S., where customers are accustomed to paying higher prices compared to in China, where product margins are often razor-thin.

“The format is going to work, because it’s been proven,” said Jacob Cooke, CEO of e-commerce consultancy WPIC.

Smaller companies, including those in China that are attempting to sell on TikTok, might lack enough data on what customers want in markets like the U.S, he said. “Once they do get that figured out, they’ll start to have very good success,” Cooke said.

For some U.S. shoppers, the livestream format is a fascinating form of entertainment.

Freisa Weaver, a 36-year-old who lives in Florida, stumbled on a TikTok livestream selling crystals 10 months ago. It employed a popular tactic called a “lucky scoop” where buyers pay a set price to receive several random items scooped from a large container of crystals. TikTok earlier this year banned this practice from livestreams to comply with gambling laws, although some sellers still offer grab bags of goodies which appear to be scooped off-camera.

“I came across it scrolling through TikTok and at first I was entertained by the lucky scoops,” Weaver said, describing livestreaming shopping as an addictive hobby. “Now I’m a regular buyer in some of the live feeds on TikTok.”

“I personally enjoy the interactions with the host and the possibility of finding something special and unique just for me,” she said

Her favorite channel is Meow Crystals, an account operated by Chinese streaming hosts that often does flash sales selling crystals for as little as $2, and grab bags of crystals from $10. TikTok has yet to roll out its in-built shopping feature on a wide scale, so many streamers, including those from Meow Crystals, often redirect viewers to place orders on an external website.

“The host is willing to go to the warehouse for you and get special items, or they remember what you like and offer it to you as soon as you are online,” Weaver said.

Chinese livestreaming hosts try various tactics to stand out and build a loyal customer base. For some, it’s personalized customer service, while others use quirky catchphrases and concoct flamboyant online personalities to keep their customers entertained.

“Every host is always experimenting and develops their own tactics,” Deng, the livestream host said, declining to share the secrets of her own approach.

Boot camps to teach Chinese livestreamers how to increase their sales have sprung up, including a popular one hosted by Yan Guanghua, one of TikTok earliest livestreamers in China.

Like Deng, Yan is a former English tutor who turned to TikTok livestreaming after a government crackdown on the private education industry.

Yan started out hawking yoga clothes, electronics and apparel online. Finding she had a knack for selling to customers via livestreaming, she at times has racked up sales of 5,000 pounds ($6,510) per stream selling to customers in Britain.

Now she charges about $1,000 for two-day boot camps she holds two or three times a month, teaching people how to sell more on livestreams.

Yan says she has trained more than 600 people, mostly from China but also from the U.S. and Africa.

Like many other TikTok livestreaming hosts, she hopes the overseas livestreaming e-commerce market will take off like it has in China.

“It’s hard to say what the future of this industry is. It’s difficult to predict,” Yan said. “But what we know is that TikTok is the most popular platform right now and there is still opportunity here.”
…

As global warming intensifies and deadly heatwaves spread across the world, becoming the “new normal,” the World Meteorological Organization is calling on governments to adopt heat action plans to protect “hundreds of thousands of people dying from preventable heat-related causes each year.”

WMO’s protective policies incorporate early warning and response systems for urban and nonurban settings that target vulnerable people and critical support infrastructure such as power lines, refrigeration units, roads and rail lines that often buckle under extreme heatwaves.

“Worldwide, more intense and extreme heat is unavoidable,” said John Nairn, senior extreme heat adviser. He said it was imperative to prepare and adapt as cities, homes and workplaces are not built to withstand prolonged high temperatures “and vulnerable people are not sufficiently aware of the seriousness of the risk heat poses to their health and well-being.”

A study published last week in the scientific journal Nature Medicine found more than 60,000 people died in Europe last year from heat-related causes.

Nairn said experts and governments consider this a conservative estimate. “And it is worth noting, those numbers are for Europe, which has some of the strongest early warning systems and heat-health action plans in the world.

“So, you can imagine what the numbers are likely to be globally,” he said.

Heatwaves to be expected

Scientists say global temperatures are at unprecedented levels. While this year’s extensive and intense heatwaves are alarming, they say this should come as no surprise as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been warning of multiple hazards over the next two decades if global temperatures climb 1.5 degrees Celsius or more.

Meteorologists forecast temperatures in North America, Asia, and across North Africa and the Mediterranean will rise above 40 degrees Celsius for a prolonged number of days this week as heat waves intensify.

“These types of events are very concerning and have increased sixfold since the 1980s,” said Nairn.

Minimum temperatures, which are expected to reach new highs, he said, are particularly dangerous for human health because the body is unable to recover from hot days, “leading to increased cases of heart attacks and death.”

“Whilst most of the attention focuses on daytime maximum temperatures, it is the overnight temperatures which have the biggest health risks, especially for vulnerable populations,” he said.  

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies calls heatwaves “an invisible killer.” According to the IFRC World Disasters Report, climate and weather-related disasters have killed more than 400,000 people worldwide in the past 10 years.

Panu Saaristo, IFRC emergency health unit team leader for the Europe region, noted that the continent was experiencing hotter and hotter temperatures for longer stretches of time every summer.

“Seven countries across southern Europe have issued ‘red’ warnings for heat waves for the coming days, with temperatures likely to stay above average into August,” he said, noting that “infants, the elderly and chronic health conditions are at particular risk.”

Causes of heat-related deaths

Saaristo said most heat-related deaths do not occur because of heatstroke, but because of the impact heatwaves have on people with pre-existing conditions.  

“Extreme heat can worsen cardiovascular and respiratory diseases,” although he added that death was not a foregone conclusion.

“Deaths from heat waves can be greatly reduced with relatively simple solutions,” he said. “Red Cross societies around Europe are implementing these simple, low-cost actions all over Europe.”

For example, he said the Italian Red Cross was checking on elderly people by telephone to make sure they were safe from extreme heat. The Portuguese and French Red Cross societies, he said, were sharing practical tips through social media, telling people they must never leave children or animals in parked cars.

He said other potentially lifesaving actions include handing out drinking water so people do not become dehydrated, opening shelters so people can cool off and reminding people impacted by wildfires “to protect themselves from breathing in wildfire smoke, which can aggravate pre-existing health conditions and be dangerous.”

The WMO and IFRC agree that heat is a rapidly growing health risk due to rapid urbanization, increased high temperature extremes and an aging population. The United Nations reports that more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and that this is expected to increase to two-thirds by 2050.

“Now is the time for cities to incorporate heat-reduction measures in their strategy, planning for more green spaces in their cities,” said Saaristo.

The IPCC says limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius instead of 2 degrees Celsius “could result in around 420 million fewer people being frequently exposed to extreme heat waves.”

WMO’s heat adviser Nairn said a major way to address climate change is to “electrify everything. It is a simple way to stop global warming.” 
…

The heatwave engulfing the northern hemisphere is set to intensify this week, causing overnight temperatures to surge and leading to an increased risk of heart attacks and deaths, the World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday.

“Temperatures in North America, Asia, and across North Africa and the Mediterranean will be above 40°C for a prolonged number of days this week as the heatwave intensifies,” the WMO said in a statement.

Overnight minimum temperatures were also set to reach new highs, according to the WMO, creating risks of increased cases of heart attacks and deaths.

“Whilst most of the attention focuses on daytime maximum temperatures, it is the overnight temperatures which have the biggest health risks, especially for vulnerable populations,” the WMO said.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, a researcher specialized in the study of heatwaves said that the high temperatures Europe was experiencing currently were bound to increase.

“The Mediterranean heatwave is big but nothing like what’s been through North Africa,” said John Nairn, Senior Extreme Heat Advisor for WMO. “It’s developing into Europe at this stage.”
…

The United Nations said Tuesday vaccinations for children have generally rebounded since a drop during the COVID-19 pandemic but warned that vaccination rates in many smaller and poorer countries are not experiencing the same progress.

The U.N. said 20.5 million children missed one or more routine vaccinations in 2022, an improvement from 24.4 million the year before.  In 2019, before the pandemic hit worldwide, that figure was 18.4 million.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the overall figures “encouraging,” but said global and regional numbers “mask severe and persistent inequities.”

“When countries and regions lag, children pay the price,” he said.

The U.N. said 73 countries saw substantial declines in child vaccination rates during the pandemic, and that 34 of those countries have seen their rates either fail to improve or get worse.

Rates for measles vaccines followed the larger global trend, with 83% of children receiving a first does during their first year of life in 2022, improving from 81% in 2021 but not reaching the 86% level achieved before the pandemic.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

The excavator tore into the remnants of the damaged building in southeast Turkey, bringing it crashing down into a cloud of dust — the latest menace facing survivors of the deadly February quake that ravaged the region.

Extending to the horizon, a cocoon of fine grey dust envelops the city of Samandag in the south of Hatay province, devastated by the February 6 earthquake that killed more than 55,000 people and laid waste to parts of Turkey and Syria.

“We survived the earthquake, but this dust will kill us,” Michel Atik, founder and president of the Samandag Environmental Protection Association, said. “We are going to die of respiratory diseases and lung cancer with all these hazardous materials.”

Five months after the quake, the scale of cleanup and reconstruction is enormous, with the government estimating that nearly 2.6 million buildings have been destroyed.

According to the UN Environment Programme, some 210 million tonnes of rubble must be disposed of.

By comparison, some 1.8 million tonnes of rubble had to be hauled away after the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City that brought down the World Trade Center skyscrapers.

Environmental activists and local residents worry that in the rush to clean up and rebuild, crucial safety measures are being ignored, with potentially adverse effects on the health of local residents, the environment and the economy.

Landfills

The landfill near Samandag is one of several that have been set up in this province bordering Syria. It lies next to the Mediterranean and the Milleyha natural bird reserve, which is natural bird reserve, which is a nesting site for endangered green sea turtles.

Another landfill, in the Antakya region, lies near a valley of olive trees at the foot of the Nur Mountains. With olive oil the primary source of income in the province, there are fears that the dump could harm the trees.

“They don’t even hose it down,” said Cagdas Can, 33, an environmental activist with the Reconstruct group, as he watched trucks filled with debris leave Samandag toward the huge open-air landfill that lies next to one of Turkey’s longest beaches.

“There were other possible sites. … But the companies that won the tenders (for clearing) chose here to save fuel,” said Can.

“All they care about it recovering the iron and the metal,” he said.

“Nobody wears a mask. The demolition sites are not covered or hosed down and neither are the holds of the trucks, as required by law,” he said.

Can said that his environmental organization had tried to stop the trucks by forming human chains, “but the police intervened. Eighteen people were arrested, and I had my collarbone broken,” he said.

The exhausted local population, faced with a myriad of problems after the quake, has not mobilized, he said, but they are as worried as the conservationists about the impact of the cleanup.

Hidden hazards

“The children are the first to be affected, they cough a lot, so do we. As soon as it’s windy, everything is covered in dust,” said Mithat Hoca, 64, who sells vegetables at a stall in central Samandag.

“We have to cover everything,” said Mehmet Yazici, a 61-year-old retiree who passed by on a scooter. “We wipe the table 15 to 20 times a day. You have to do it every half hour.”

Ali Kanatli, a doctor in Antakya, some 26 kilometers (16 miles) away from Samandag, has already seen cases of “conjunctivitis, allergies, asthma, bronchitis.”

But above all, he worries about the long-term effects, like an increase in cancers, that the hazardous materials in the rubble and dust could cause in the region.

Turkey did not ban asbestos until 2013 and most of the buildings affected by the quake are older, he said.

“In addition to asbestos, we have lead in paint, heavy metals including mercury in electronic equipment such as televisions, household appliances,” he said.
…

A review of the status of a vanishing species of whale found that the mammal’s population is in worse shape than previously thought, federal ocean regulators said Monday.

The North Atlantic right whale numbers less than 350, and it has been declining in population for several years. The federal government declared the whale’s decline an “unusual mortality event,” which means an unexpected and significant die-off, in 2017.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released new data that 114 of the whales have been documented as dead, seriously injured or sub-lethally injured or sick — since the start of the mortality event. That is an increase of 16 whales since the previous estimate released earlier this year.

The agency recently completed a review of the whales using photographs from researchers and surveys to create the new estimate, said Andrea Gomez, a spokesperson for NOAA.

“Additional cases will continue to be reviewed, and animals will be added if appropriate, as more information is obtained,” Gomez said.

Thirty-six of the 114 whales included in the estimate had died, NOAA documents state. The agency cautioned that only about a third of right whale deaths are documented, so the total number of dead or injured animals could be much higher.

Right whales are found off the Atlantic coast of the U.S. They are vulnerable to collisions with large ships and entanglement in commercial fishing gear. The federal government has worked to craft stricter rules to protect the whales from both threats.

Commercial fishing and shipping interests have both vowed to fight stricter protections. A federal appeals court sided with fishermen last month after they filed a complaint that proposed new restrictions could put them out of business.

The new data illustrate how dire the situation is for the whales, said Sarah Sharp, an animal rescue veterinarian with International Fund for Animal Welfare. The number of injured animals is especially significant because injured whales are less likely to reproduce, Sharp said.

“If animals are putting energy into healing from a wound, they are not necessarily going to have those energy stores for other things,” Sharp said. “I think this just paints a much more accurate picture of the threats these whales are facing.”

The whales give birth off Florida and Georgia and feed off New England and Canada. They have been protected under the Endangered Species Act for decades, and federal authorities ruled in December that they must retain that protection.
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