Santos Brizuela spent more than two decades laboring outdoors, persisting despite a bout of heatstroke while cutting sugarcane in Mexico and chronic laryngitis from repeated exposure to the hot sun while on various other jobs.

But last summer, while on a construction crew in Las Vegas, he reached his breaking point. Exposure to the sun made his head ache immediately. He lost much of his appetite.

Now at a maintenance job, Brizuela, 47, is able to take breaks. There are flyers on the walls with best practices for staying healthy — protections he had not been afforded before.

“Sometimes as a worker you ask your employer for protection or for health and safety related needs, and they don’t listen or follow,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

A historic heat wave that began blasting the Southwest and other parts of the country this summer is shining a spotlight on one of the harshest, yet least-addressed effects of U.S. climate change: the rising deaths and injuries of people who work in extreme heat, whether inside warehouses and kitchens or outside under the blazing sun. Many of them are migrants in low-wage jobs.

State and federal governments have long implemented federal procedures for environmental risks exacerbated by climate change, namely drought, flood and wildfires. But extreme heat protections have generally lagged with “no owner” in state and federal governments, said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning with the University of Arizona.

“In some ways, we have a very long way to catch up to the governance gap in treating the heat as a true climate hazard,” Keith said.

There is no federal heat standard in the U.S. despite an ongoing push from President Joe Biden’s administration to establish one. Most of the hottest U.S. states currently have no heat-specific standards either.

Instead, workers in many states who are exposed to extreme heat are ostensibly protected by what is known as the “general duty clause,” which requires employers to mitigate hazards that could cause serious injury or death. The clause permits state authorities to inspect work sites for violations, and many do, but there are no consistent benchmarks for determining what constitutes a serious heat hazard.

“What’s unsafe isn’t always clear,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate from the National Resources Defense Council who tracks extreme heat policy. “Without a specific heat standard, it makes it more challenging for regulators to decide, ‘OK, this employer’s breaking the law or not.’”

Many states are adopting their own versions of a federal “emphasis” program increasing inspections to ensure employers offer water, shade and breaks, but citations and enforcement still must go through the general duty clause.

Extreme heat is notably absent from the list of disasters to which the Federal Emergency Management Agency can respond. And while regional floodplain managers are common throughout the country, there are only three newly created “chief heat officer” positions to coordinate extreme heat planning, in Miami-Dade County, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Federal experts have recommended extreme heat protections since 1972, but it wasn’t until 1997 and 2006, respectively, that Minnesota and California adopted the first statewide protections. For a long time, those states were the exception, with only a scattering of others joining them throughout the early 2000s.

But as heat waves become longer and hotter, the tide is starting to change.

“There are a lot of positive movements that give me some hope,” Keith said.

Colorado strengthened existing rules last year to require regular rest and meal breaks in extreme heat and cold and provide water and shade breaks when temperatures hit 26.7 degrees Celsius. Washington state last month updated 15-year-old heat safety standards to lower the temperature at which cool-down breaks and other protections are required. Oregon, which adopted temporary heat protection rules in 2021, made them permanent last year.

Several other states are considering similar laws or regulations.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently announced new regulations through the heat emphasis program and declared a state of emergency over extreme heat, allowing the state to reimburse various government entities for funds spent on providing relief from high temperatures.

Nevada also adopted a version of the heat emphasis program. But a separate bill that would define what constitutes extreme heat and require employers to provide protections ultimately failed in the final month of the legislative session.

The measure faltered even after the temperature threshold for those protections was increased from 35 degrees Celsius to 40.5 degrees Celsius. Democratic lawmakers in Nevada are now trying to pass those protections through a regulatory process before next summer.

The Biden administration introduced new regulations in 2021 that would develop heat safety standards and strengthen required protective measures for most at-risk private sector workers, but the mandates are likely subject to several more years of review. A group of Democratic U.S. Congress members introduced a bill last month that would effectively speed up the process by legislating heat standards.

The guidelines would apply to all 50 states and include private sector and select federal workers but leave most other public sector workers uncovered. Differing conditions across states and potential discrepancies in how the federal law would be implemented make consistent state standards crucial, Constible said.

For now, protections for those workers are largely at the discretion of individual employers.

Eleazar Castellanos, who trains workers on dealing with extreme heat at Arriba Las Vegas, a nonprofit supporting migrant and low-wage employees, said he experienced two types of employers during his 20 years of working construction.

“The first version is the employer that makes sure that their workers do have access to water, shade and rest,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “And the second type of employer is the kind who threatens workers with consequences for asking for those kinds of preventative measures.”

Heat protection laws have faced steady industry opposition, including chambers of commerce and other business associations. They say a blanket mandate would be too difficult to implement across such a wide range of industries.

“We are always concerned about a one-size-fits-all bill like this,” Tray Abney, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told Nevada legislators.

Opinions vary on why the Nevada bill failed after passing the Senate on party lines.| Some say it was a victim of partisan politics. Others say there were too many bills competing for attention in a session that meets for just four months every other year.

“It all comes down to the dollar,” said Vince Saavedra, secretary-treasurer and lobbyist for Southern Nevada Building Trades. “But I’ll challenge anybody to go work outside with any of these people, and then tell me that we don’t need these regs.”
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Rajee Narinesingh faced struggles throughout her life as a transgender woman, from workplace discrimination to the lasting effects of black market injections that scarred her face and caused chronic infections.

In spite of the roadblocks, the 56-year-old Florida actress and activist has seen growing acceptance since she first came out decades ago.

“If you see older transgender people, it shows the younger community that it’s possible I can have a life. I can live to an older age,” she said. “So I think that’s a very important thing.”

Now, as a wave of state laws enacted this year limit transgender people’s rights, Narinesingh has new uncertainty about her own future as she ages.

“Every now and then I have this thought, like, oh my God, if I end up in a nursing home, how are they going to treat me?” Narinesingh said.

Most of the new state laws have focused attention on trans youth, with at least 22 states banning or restricting gender-affirming care for minors.

For many transgender seniors, it’s brought new fears to their plans for retirement and old age. They already face gaps in health care and nursing home facilities properly trained to meet their needs. That’s likely to be compounded by restrictions to transgender health care that have already blocked some adults’ access to treatments in Florida and sparked concerns the laws will expand to other states.

Transgender adults say they’re worried about finding welcoming spaces to live in their later years.

“I have friends that have retired and they’ve decided to move to retirement communities. And then, little by little, they’ve found that they’re not welcome there,” said Morgan Mayfaire, a transgender man and the executive director of TransSOCIAL, a Florida support and advocacy group.

Discrimination can range from being denied housing to being misgendered and struggling to get nursing homes to acknowledge their visitation rights.

“In order to be welcome there, they have to go into the closet and deny who they are,” Mayfaire said.

About 171,000 of the more than 1.3 million transgender adults in the United States are aged 65 and older, according to numbers compiled by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The growing population has brought more services such as nursing homes and assisted living centers that are geared toward serving the LGBTQ community, although such facilities remain uncommon. They include Stonewall Gardens, a 24-apartment assisted living center that opened in Palm Springs, California, in 2015.

The center’s staff are required to go through sensitivity training to help make the center a more welcoming environment for residents, said interim executive director Lauren Kabakoff Vincent. The training is key for making a more accepting environment for transgender residents and making them feel more at home.

“Do you really want to be moving into a place where you have to explain yourself and have to go through it over and over?” Vincent said. “It’s exhausting, and so I think being able to be in a comfortable environment is important.”

SAGE, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ seniors, offers training to nursing homes and other elder care providers. The group trained more than 46,000 staff at 576 organizations around the country in the most recent fiscal year. But the group said that represents just a fraction of the elder care facilities around the country.

“We have a long way to go in terms of getting to the point where nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care providers are prepared for and ready to provide appropriate and welcoming care to trans elders,” said Michael Adams, SAGE’s CEO.

The gap concerns Tiffany Arieagus, 71, an acclaimed drag performer in south Florida who also works in social services for SunServe, an LGBTQ nonprofit.

“I just am going on my 71 years on this earth and walking in the civil rights march with my mother at age 6 and then marching for gay rights,” Arieagus said. “I’ve been blessed enough to see so many changes being made in the world. And then now I’m having to see these wonderful progressions going backwards.”

A handful of states, including Massachusetts and California, have in recent years enacted laws to ensure that LGBTQ seniors have equal access to programs for aging populations and requiring training on how to serve that community.

The push for restrictions on access to health care has brought uncertainty in other states. Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors also includes restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, for many adults to get treatment.

SAGE has seen a spike in the number of calls to its hotline following the wave of anti-transgender laws, and Adams said about 40% of them have come from trans seniors primarily in conservative parts of the country worried about the new restrictions.

The limits have prompted some trans adults to leave the state for care, with some turning to crowdfunding appeals for help. But for many trans seniors, such a move isn’t as easy.

“You have the general fear, fear that is leading clinicians being concerned and perhaps stepping away from offering care, fear of trans elders of who is a safe clinician to go to,” said Dan Stewart, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Aging Equality Project.

Florida’s law has already created obstacles for Andrea Montanez, LGBTQ immigration organizer at Hope CommUnity Center near Orlando, Florida. Montanez, 57, said her prescription for hormone therapy was initially denied after the restrictions were signed. Montanez, who has been speaking out at Florida Medical Board meetings about the impact of the new state law, said she’s worried about what it will be mean as she approaches retirement.

“I hope I have a happy retirement, but health care is a big problem,” said Montanez, who was eventually able to get her prescription filled.

For Tatiana Williams, 51, the restrictions are stirring painful memories of a time when she and other transgender people had to rely on dangerous and illegal sources for gender-affirming medical care. Now the executive director of the Transinclusive Group in Wilton Manors, Florida, Williams remembers being hospitalized for a collapsed lung after receiving black market silicone injections for her breasts.

“What we don’t want is the community resorting to going back to that,” Williams said.

Still, older transgender adults say they see hope in how their generation is working with younger trans people to speak out against the wave of the restrictions.

“The community’s going to take care of itself. It’s as simple as that. We’re going to find ways to take care of ourselves and we’re going to survive this,” Mayfaire of TransSOCIAL said. “And as far as trans youth panicking over this, look to your elders.”
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Fish auction prices at a port south of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were mixed amid uncertainty over how seafood consumers will respond to the release of treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the ocean.

The plant, which was damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, began sending the treated water into the Pacific on Thursday despite protests at home and in nearby countries that are adding political and diplomatic pressures to the economic worries.

Hideaki Igari, a middleman at the Numanouchi fishing port, said the price of larger flounder, Fukushima’s signature fish known as Joban-mono, was more than 10% lower at the Friday morning auction, the first since the water release began. Prices of some average-size flounder rose, but presumably because of a limited catch, Igari said.

It was a relatively calm market reaction to the water release. But, Igari said, “we still have to see how it goes next week.”

The decadeslong release has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and criticized by neighboring countries. China immediately banned imports of seafood from Japan in response, adding to worries in the fisheries community and related businesses.

In Seoul on Saturday, thousands of South Koreans took to the streets to condemn the release of wastewater and to criticize the South Korean government for endorsing the plan. The protesters called on Japan to store radioactive water in tanks instead of releasing it into the Pacific Ocean.

A citizens’ radiation testing center in Japan said it’s getting inquiries and expects more people might bring in food, water and other samples as radiation data is now a key barometer for what to eat.

Japanese fishing groups fear the release will do more harm to the reputation of seafood from the Fukushima area. They are still striving to repair the damage to their businesses from the meltdown at the power plant after the earthquake and tsunami.

“We now have this water after all these years of struggle when the fish market price is finally becoming stable,” Igari said after Friday’s auction. “Fisheries people fear that prices of the fish they catch for their living may crash again and worry about their future living.”

The Japanese government and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, say the water must be released to make way for the facility’s decommissioning and to prevent accidental leaks of insufficiently treated water. Much of tank-held water still contains radioactive materials exceeding releasable levels.

Some wastewater at the plant is recycled as coolant after treatment, and the rest is stored in around 1,000 tanks, which are filled to 98% of their 1.37-million-ton capacity. The tanks cover much of the complex and must be cleared out to make room for new facilities needed for the decommissioning process, officials say.

Authorities say the wastewater after treatment and dilution is safer than international standards require, and that its environmental impact will be negligible. On Friday, the first seawater samples collected after the release were significantly below the legally releasable levels, the power company said.

But, having suffered a series of accidental and intended releases of contaminated water from the plant early in the disaster, hard feelings and distrust of the government and TEPCO run deep in Fukushima — especially in the fishing community.

TEPCO says the release will take 30 years, or until the end of the plant decommissioning. People fear that could mean a tough future for youths in the fishing town, where many businesses are family-run.

Fukushima’s current catch is only about one-fifth its pre-disaster level because of a decline in the number of fishers and decreased catch sizes.

The government has allocated 80 billion yen ($550 million) to support fisheries and seafood processing, and to combat potential reputation damage by sponsoring campaigns to promote Fukushima’s Joban-mono and processed seafood. TEPCO has promised to deal with reputational damage claims, and those hurt by China’s export ban.

Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima prefectural fisheries cooperatives, said in a statement that worries of the fishing community will continue for as long as the water is released.

“Our only wish is to continue fishing for generations in our hometown, like we used to before the accident,” Nozaki said.

Fish prices largely depend on the sentiment of wholesalers and consumers in the Tokyo region, where large portions of the Fukushima catch goes.

At the Friday auction at the Numanouchi port, the price for flounder was down from its usual level of about 3,500 yen ($24) per kilogram to around 3,000 yen ($20), said Igari, the middleman.

“I suspect the result is because of the start of the treated water release from the Fukushima Daiichi and fear about its impact,” he said.

Igari said the discharge is discouraging but hopes careful testing can prove the safety of their fish.

“From the consumers’ point of view about food safety at home, I think the best barometer is data,” he said.

At Mother’s Radiation Lab Fukushima in Iwaki, a citizens’ testing center known as Tarachine, tests were being conducted on water samples, including on tritium levels for seawater that the lab collected from just off the Fukushima Daiichi plant before the release.

Lab director Ai Kimura said anyone can bring in food, water or even soil, though the lab has big backlogs because testing take time.

She joined the lab after regretting she might not have fully protected her daughters because of the lack of information and knowledge earlier in the disaster. She says having independent test results is important not because of distrust of government data, but because “we learned over the past 12 years the importance of testing in order to get data” on what mothers want to know for serving safe and healthy food to their children and families.

Kimura said people have different views about safety — some are fine with government standards; others want them to be as close to zero as possible.

“It’s very difficult to make everyone feel safe. … That’s why we conduct testing so we can visualize data on food from different places and help people have more options to make a decision,” she said.

Kimura said the lab’s testing has shown Fukushima fish to be safe over the past few years, and she happily eats local fish.

“It’s totally fine to eat fish that does not contain radiation,” she said.

But now the treated wastewater release will bring new questions, she said.

Aeon, a major supermarket chain that has been testing cesium and iodine levels in fish, announced plans to also test for tritium, a radionuclide inseparable from water.

Katsumasa Okawa, a fish store and restaurant operator who was at one of his four shops Thursday, said customers were sparse after the plant started its final steps of the treated water release at 1 p.m. and media reports covered the development.

But on Friday, he said, his Yamako seafood restaurant next to Iwaki’s main train station seemed to be doing business as usual, with customers coming in and out during lunchtime.

Okawa said he’s been looking forward to the wastewater draining as a big step toward decommissioning the nuclear plant.

“I feel more at ease thinking those tanks will finally go away,” he said.
…

Mystery hunters converged on a Scottish lake on Saturday to look for signs of the mythical Loch Ness Monster.

The Loch Ness Center said researchers would seek evidence of Nessie using thermal-imaging drones, infrared cameras and a hydrophone to detect underwater sounds in the lake’s murky waters. The two-day event is being billed as the biggest survey of the lake in 50 years and includes volunteers scanning the water from boats and the lakeshore, with others around the world joining in with webcams.

Alan McKenna of the Loch Ness Center said the aim was “to inspire a new generation of Loch Ness enthusiasts.”

McKenna told BBC radio the searchers were “looking for breaks in the surface and asking volunteers to record all manner of natural behavior on the loch.”

“Not every ripple or wave is a beastie. Some of those can be explained, but there are a handful that cannot,” he said.

The Loch Ness Center is at the former Drumnadrochit Hotel, where the modern-day Nessie legend began. In 1933, manager Aldie Mackay reported spotting a “water beast” in the mountain-fringed loch, the largest body of freshwater by volume in the United Kingdom and at up to 750 feet (230 meters) one of the deepest.

The story kicked off an enduring worldwide fascination with finding the elusive monster, spawning hoaxes and hundreds of eyewitness accounts. Numerous theories have been put forward over the years, including that the creature may have been a prehistoric marine reptile, giant eels, a sturgeon or even an escaped circus elephant.

Many believe the sightings are pranks or can be explained by floating logs or strong winds, but the legend is a boon for tourism in the picturesque Scottish Highlands region.

Such skepticism did not deter volunteers like Craig Gallifrey.

“I believe there is something in the loch,” he said, though he is open-minded about what it is. “I do think that there’s got to be something that’s fueling the speculation.”

He said that whatever the outcome of the weekend search, “the legend will continue.”

“I think it’s just the imagination of something being in the largest body of water in the U.K.. … There’s a lot more stories,” he said. “There’s still other things, although they’ve not been proven. There’s still something quite special about the loch.”
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In a desperate measure to stop students from taking their own lives, authorities in the western Indian city of Kota — the country’s famous academic coaching hub — have directed all local hostels, guest houses and other accommodation facilities to install specially designed spring-fitted ceiling fans in rooms.

The directive from the authorities came on Aug. 16, a day after an 18-year-old student at a test training school in Kota hanged himself from a ceiling fan in his room. It was the 22nd such suicide by a student in the city this year — the highest yearly toll since 2015.

The chief minister of Rajasthan, where Kota is located, held an emergency meeting this week and set up a committee comprising senior government officials, representatives from coaching schools, parents and doctors to address the issue of suicide by the students in Kota.

“We cannot allow the suicide cases to spike further. We do not want to see young students commit suicide,” said Ashok Gehlot, the chief minister. “The committee will investigate why the suicides are taking place and suggest ways to put a halt to these suicides.”

In the past decade in Kota, more than 150 students who were preparing to sit for entrance exams for engineering and medical colleges died by suicide. In most cases, they hanged themselves from the ceiling fans.

The spring-fitted fans that authorities have ordered to be fitted in the accommodations of students are designed to uncoil and lower the moment a load of more than 20 kilograms (44 pounds) is attached to them, making it impossible for someone to commit suicide by hanging from them.

When the spring uncoils, a sensor activates an alarm to alert people in the surroundings.

Spring-fitted fans

The police chief of Kota said the civil administration and the police have been jointly trying their best to curb student suicides in the city. 

“After the [chief minister] held the meeting with senior officials on the issue, we have directed all hostels, guest houses and other places, where the coaching-school students stay in Kota, to attach the special spring and alarm-fitted devices to all ceiling fans,” Sharad Chaudhary, the Kota police superintendent, told VOA. “We have also directed our police forces to visit all accommodation facilities of the students and make sure that devices have been installed.

“With the help of these spring- and alarm-fitted devices, we are aiming to put a halt at least to those suicides taking place by hanging from the ceiling fans,” he said.  

There are about 6,075 engineering and upwards of 600 medical colleges in India, where millions of students seek admission annually, usually after taking entrance tests such as the Joint Entrance Examination and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

Competition among the students to do well on the exams is tough. Kota is known for its 150 coaching centers, where over 200,000 students from across the country come every year, sign up for different courses and prepare for the entrance exams.

These students, mostly from middle-class families, stay in hostels and guest houses.

Over the past decade, Kota has often been in the news for suicides by coaching-school students.

‘Improper parenting’

Experts say that some students take extreme steps, such as attempting suicide, after being unable to cope with the pressure.

Dr. Neena Vijayvargiya, a Kota-based psychiatrist dealing with the mental health issues of many Kota coaching schools’ students, told VOA that in “99% of these suicide cases,” improper parenting was found to be the main factor driving the students to take the extreme step.

“Parents continue to pressure the students that they have to enter the top colleges, and that is the only goal for them,” she said. “The students fear facing their parents and society should they not get admission to top colleges.”

According to Vijayvargiya, every student, while depressed, may provide hints to their parents over the course of weeks or months.

Police chief Chaudhary said that parents can play a key role in checking the crisis.

“We are in the process of setting up a separate committee involving mostly the parents of the students to monitor the issue,” he said. “Also, we have decided to conduct a mandatory psychological assessment process for all students enrolled at the coaching schools, at regular intervals.”

Vijayvargiya urged parents not to pressure students to gain admission into the top colleges and to teach their children that “the failure to meet such targets does not mean the end of the world.”
…

Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.

They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since March.

A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.

It was the first U.S. launch in which every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.

“We’re a united team with a common mission,” NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli radioed from orbit. Added NASA’s Ken Bowersox, space operations mission chief: “Boy, what a beautiful launch … and with four international crew members, really an exciting thing to see.”

Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, is joined on the six-month mission by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.

“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”

The astronauts’ paths to space couldn’t be more different.

Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.

Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon.” He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.

Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he has visited the station before.

Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.

One of the perks of an international crew, they noted, is the food. Among the delicacies soaring with them: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.

SpaceX’s first-stage booster returned to Cape Canaveral several minutes after liftoff, an extra treat for the thousands of spectators gathered in the early-morning darkness.

Liftoff was delayed a day for additional data reviews of valves in the capsule’s life-support system. The countdown almost was halted again Saturday after a tiny fuel leak cropped up in the capsule’s thruster system. SpaceX engineers managed to verify the leak would pose no threat with barely two minutes remaining on the clock, said Benji Reed, the company’s senior director for human spaceflight.

Another NASA astronaut will launch to the station from Kazakhstan in mid-September under a barter agreement, along with two Russians.

SpaceX has now launched eight crews for NASA. Boeing was hired at the same time nearly a decade ago but has yet to fly astronauts. Its crew capsule is grounded until 2024 by parachute and other issues.
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When members of the marine mammal team from the International Fund for Animal Welfare rush to a Cape Cod beach to help a stranded dolphin or porpoise, they have no choice but to treat the endangered animal on site and then immediately release it.

That is about to change.

The organization, which protects animals worldwide, is opening a first-of-its-kind short-term dolphin hospital on Cape Cod this month that it hopes will not only improve survivability rates, but also enhance the research it has developed over 25 years.

Stranded marine mammals are stressed, in shock and dehydrated, said Brian Sharp, director of the rescue team. Simply caring for them at the scene is often not enough. They need additional diagnostics, treatment and recovery time.

“With this ICU for dolphins, we’ll be able to get them treatment that’s needed, then be able to release them quickly,” he said.

While there are marine mammal rehabilitation centers that can take care of animals for months or even years, the goal of this facility is to release them back into the ocean within four days, he said.

“This is the first time that this has been attempted before,” Sharp said.

There are more live marine mammal strandings on Cape Cod than anywhere else in the world, Sharp said. The welfare fund has responded to more than 400 live stranded dolphins, whales and porpoises in the region in the past five years alone, the organization said in a news release.

Cape Cod is a good habitat for dolphins, but a risky one. Its geography — it is basically a hook-shaped spit of sand jutting into the ocean — can make dolphin navigation difficult, and 12-foot tides can quickly expose a mile of beach.

The 4,200-square-foot (390-square-meter) Dolphin Rescue Center is in a renovated retail space in downtown Orleans.

It includes an 1,800-square-foot (167-square-meter) rehabilitation area with two treatment pools 15 feet (4.3 meters) across and a veterinary laboratory. The public will not be permitted to have direct contact with the animals being a cared for, but there is also an education center where visitors will be able to watch the recovering animals on a monitor.

Staffed by four full-time workers, it is equipped to provide round-the-clock care. It will start by treating one animal at a time, but the goal is to eventually treat multiple animals simultaneously.

The privately funded center has been federally inspected and expects to open by the end of the month, Sharp said.

“We want to take what we learn here and share it nationally, internationally,” he said.
…

Health authorities in Bangladesh are wrestling with a surge in dengue fever cases as monsoon rains batter the densely populated country.

According to a World Health Organization report issued this month, “The higher incidence of dengue is taking place in the context of an unusual episodic amount of rainfall, combined with high temperatures and high humidity, which have resulted in an increased mosquito population throughout Bangladesh.”

Almost 90,000 cases of the mosquito-borne viral illness had been reported his year through Aug. 15, according to government figures.

Researchers and public health experts say  the true numbers are much higher. By mid-August, at least 426 people – 81 of whom were age 18 or younger – had died of the fever, according to the Directorate General of Health Services, making this the deadliest year since the first recorded epidemic in 2000.

There are four strains of dengue, including the most life-threatening, hemorrhagic dengue. However, only patients with severe symptoms end up in hospitals, where the government collects data.

Last year, 62,098 dengue cases were recorded in Bangladesh, with 281 deaths.

The dengue virus is transmitted through the bite of infected female Aedes mosquitoes, which also transmit chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika infection and is a recurring problem in Bangladesh during the monsoon season. However, this year’s outbreak has been particularly severe, with the number of cases skyrocketing across urban and rural areas alike.

“We have noticed the disease has changed its characteristics, and so do the mosquitos too. They’ve adapted and become more stronger and prevalent. And now we see that dengue is not an ‘urban,’ problem anymore, the government database now records cases from every corner of the country,” Dr. M.H. Chowdhury Lenin, a physician and public health expert told VOA.

According to Lenin, “Dengue has been present in Bangladesh for over two decades now, and as we now know, dengue mosquitoes had mutations and they are now resistant to the usual insecticide or repellents that we use. So our existing measures are unable to curb the spread of the Aedes mosquitoes.”

Lenin warned the situation could get worse in the coming weeks, as monsoons are likely to intensify, with more rainfall and dengue hospitalizations and deaths. Monsoons in Bangladesh usually surge in August and September, continuing through early October.

“We need to have orchestrated efforts to minimize the fatalities. Dengue is not new in Bangladesh, and as a tropical country, we have to live with such diseases. However, we failed to build a multisectoral approach to prevent this disease from becoming a big public health nightmare,” Lenin added.

This year’s surge in cases has significantly strained Bangladesh’s already fragile health care system, which is plagued by mismanagement and corruption. Hospitals are grappling with the influx of patients, many of whom are suffering severe symptoms of dengue, such as high fever, intense headache, joint and muscle pain, and in severe cases, internal bleeding.

“Health sector in Bangladesh is inundated under corruption and mismanagement. It was nakedly visible during the COVID-19 outbreak. Politicization and commercial interests are the most important causes behind the destruction to this sector,” Sharif Jamil, a prominent Dhaka-based social and environmental activist, wrote in a WhatsApp message.

“The failure to manage dengue spreading across the country is evident now that it is causing casualties in the urban areas in the periphery beyond the city areas.”

Government officials aim to apply the lessons learned from managing the COVID-19 pandemic, when state-run and private hospitals nationwide increased bed capacity, provision of intensive care, and emergency medical preparations.

Dr. Robed Amin, the Directorate General of Health Services line director in the noncommunicable disease control program, said the directorate is hopeful the COVID-era measures will improve the fight against dengue.

“As we have noticed, dengue isn’t just an urban problem anymore. It’s rampant in the entire country. And with the monsoon rain of August and September, the cases will likely to go up. During the COVID pandemic, we strengthened our entire health care network across the country, so I am hopeful most of the severe cases will be able to be managed locally, and not everyone will have to flock to Dhaka or other big cities with better hospitals,” Amin told VOA.

As most of the cases are reported from urban and suburban areas, experts and activists also blame unplanned urbanization and lackluster response from the authorities for the dengue outbreak.

Kabirul Bashar, an entomologist at Dhaka’s Jahangirnagar University, told VOA unplanned construction and lack of awareness helped dengue to become widespread in every corner of the country.

“Climate change is definitely a factor, but there are other man-made factors that are driving the disease. Not only in Dhaka, but even outside the capital, city-centric economic developments drive the rapid construction of high-rise business centers, hotels, and apartments in the urban areas,” he said.

“The entire country has become big construction zones marked by stagnant water on concrete surfaces after rainfall, and potentially breeding Aedes mosquito.”

Bashar said official “anti-mosquito drives” during the monsoon are inadequate to fight the current dengue outbreak, especially because over time and with climate change the mosquitoes have evolved and adapted and have become immune to the repellents used against them.

Activist Jamil said he believes future dengue outbreaks are preventable with a timely and coordinated approach and proper urban planning, among other things.

“A proper urban planning will include people and experts in the planning and implementation processes. If we can engage and empower people meaningfully, community leaders will come forward to work with the local government representatives and administrators to make their own areas safe from dengue outbreaks,” Jamil told VOA.

Bangladesh’s best hope could be a cost-effective vaccine. The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, is leading a clinical trial in Bangladesh for a promising single-dose vaccine created by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, University of Vermont Vaccine Testing Center, and Johns Hopkins University, according to a recent article in the medical journal The Lancet.

Meanwhile, the suffering of the people affected by the disease is mounting.

Saleha, whose name was provided to VOA by her husband, is a 43-year-old patient in the dengue ward of the state-run Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital and was diagnosed with dengue fever almost a week ago. Her husband said the conditions require her to be put in intensive care, but the hospital is already at capacity, and the family is not able to afford private hospital expenses.

“Her platelets count dropped as low as 13,000,” said the husband, who did not give his name. A normal platelet count ranges from 150,000 to 450,000 platelets per microliter of blood. In addition, he said, her blood pressure fell to critically low levels.

“At this stage, doctors said she needs intensive care support, but there are no beds available in ICU,” he said. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday that he is planning to request more money from Congress to develop another new coronavirus vaccine, as scientists track new waves and hospitalizations rise, though not like before. 

Officials are already expecting updated COVID-19 vaccines that contain one version of the omicron strain, called XBB.1.5. It’s an important change from today’s combination shots, which mix the original coronavirus strain with last year’s most common omicron variants. But there will always be a need for updated vaccines as the virus continues to mutate. 

People should be able to start rolling up their sleeves next month for what officials hope is an annual fall COVID-19 shot. Pfizer, Moderna and smaller manufacturer Novavax all are brewing doses of the XBB update but the Food and Drug Administration will have to sign off on each, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must then issue recommendations for their use. 

“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress, a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works,” Biden, who is vacationing in the Lake Tahoe area, told reporters on Friday. 

He added that it’s “tentatively” recommended “that everybody get it,” once the shots are ready. 

The White House’s $40 billion funding request to Congress on August 11 did not mention COVID-19. It included funding requests for Ukraine, to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home after a deadly climate season of heat and storms, and funds to bolster the enforcement at the Southern border with Mexico, including money to curb the flow of deadly fentanyl. Last fall, the administration asked for $9.25 billion in funding to combat the virus, but Congress refused the request. 

For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week. But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022. 
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Operators of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant said Friday that initial ocean water samples taken since the discharge of wastewater from the plant were well within the acceptable range for radioactive material. 

At a news conference near the plant in Fukushima prefecture, officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company — TEPCO — told reporters they took samples Thursday of water from 10 locations within three kilometers of the power plant.  

They reported all the samples showed the concentration of tritium — a radioactive material that is the biproduct of nuclear reactors — was below TEPCO’s self-imposed limit of 700 becquerels per liter. The World Health Organization has set a limit of 10,000 becquerels for drinking water. A becquerel is an internationally recognized unit of measure for radioactivity. 

The testing and reports are part of Japan’s efforts to be transparent about the discharge of the treated radioactive water. TEPCO officials say the discharge is necessary to continue with the cleanup and decommissioning of the plant, which was damaged by a powerful earthquake and resulting tsunami in 2011. 

Earlier Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi held an online meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Rafael Grossi to discuss the discharge of the water. The United Nations agency last month approved the planned discharge and Grossi reiterated on Friday that it was safe. 

Nonetheless, the plan has been met with protests in Japan and abroad. China customs officials announced a ban on Japanese seafood, and South Korean political and civic groups held protests. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department Friday issued a statement in support of Japan, saying, as the IAEA has concluded, Japan’s process is safe and consistent with internationally accepted nuclear safety standards. 

“The United States is satisfied with Japan’s safe, transparent, and science-based process,” it said. 

 

The statement concluded by saying, “We welcome Japan’s continued transparency and engagement with the IAEA as well as with regional stakeholders.” 

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters.
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Ukrainian soldier Ilya Mikhalchuk was wounded near Bakhmut and captured by Wagner Group mercenaries in February. He had both arms amputated while in captivity and was released in April. Thanks to volunteers, he is now in the U.S. getting prostheses. Iryna Shynkarenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Kostiantyn Golubchyk.
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When Reed Cammack hears the first meadowlark of spring, he knows his family has made it through another cold, snowy winter on the western South Dakota prairie. Nothing’s better, he says, than getting up at sunrise as the birds light up the area with song.

“It’s part of the flora and fauna of our Great Plains, and it’s beautiful to hear,” says Cammack, 42, a sixth-generation rancher who raises cattle on 4,047 hectares (10,000 acres) of mostly unaltered native grasslands.

But the number of returning birds has dropped steeply, despite seemingly ideal habitat. “There are quite a few I don’t see any more, and I don’t know for sure why,” says Cammack’s 92-year-old grandfather, Floyd, whose family has allowed conservation groups to install a high-tech tracking tower and conduct bird surveys.

North America’s grassland birds are deeply in trouble 50 years after adoption of the Endangered Species Act, with numbers plunging as habitat loss, land degradation and climate change threaten what remains of a once-vast ecosystem.

Over half the grassland bird population has been lost since 1970 — more than any other type of bird. Some species have declined 75% or more, and a quarter are in extreme peril.

And the 38% — 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) — of historic North American grasslands that remain are threatened by intensive farming and urbanization, and as trees once held at bay by periodic fires spread rapidly, consuming vital rangeland and grassland bird habitat.

Biologists, conservation groups, government agencies and, increasingly, farmers and ranchers are teaming up to stem or reverse losses.

Scientists are sharing survey and monitoring data and using sophisticated computer modeling to determine the biggest threats. They’re intensifying efforts to tag birds and installing radio telemetry towers to track their whereabouts. And they’re working with farmers and ranchers to implement best practices that ensure survival of their livelihoods and native birds — both dependent on a healthy ecosystem.

“Birds are the canary in the coal mine,” says Amanda Rodewald, senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at Cornell University’s ornithology lab. “They’re an early warning of environmental changes that also can affect us.”

Monitoring birds

Daniel Horton sets his timer, cocks his head and listens intently while standing in a fog-shrouded expanse of grasses and wildflowers, the morning horizon glowing pink and orange.

Trills, twitters, chirps and coos create a dawn chorus in the native mixed-grass prairie of western Nebraska, while Horton, a field biologist with the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, records everything he sees and hears on grazing land improved by a local rancher.

Western meadowlarks sing atop flowering yuccas. Grasshopper sparrows flit and disappear. Horned larks hunker in the dense grass. There are rock wrens, nighthawks, mourning doves and lark buntings.

Horton is recording the species and number of birds and assessing their habitat. It’s part of an effort to estimate bird population densities and evaluate whether conservation efforts are making a difference. Once grasslands are gone, he says, “it becomes harder for them to … live in those areas where they evolved and where they have been historically.”

A 2019 study found grassland bird populations had fallen 53% since 1970, compared to overall bird loss of 30%, in the continental United States and Canada. A 2022 report found that, of 24 grassland bird species, two-thirds had experienced significant population declines and eight were at a tipping point — having lost 50% or more of their breeding population and on track to lose another 50% in the next half century — putting them on a path to possible extinction.

The lesser prairie chicken is the only grassland bird federally listed as endangered, but only in part of its range. It has declined by more than 90% with an estimated remaining 2022 population of about 27,000. The Senate and House have voted to delist the bird in an effort led by Republicans who say it hinders oil and gas drilling; environmentalists hope President Joe Biden will veto the measure.

Among birds at a tipping point: Sprague’s pipit, a songbird that’s lost more than 75% of its population since 1970 and breeds only in portions of Montana, North Dakota and small patches of three Canadian provinces. The chestnut-collared longspur, which lives in the northern shortgrass prairie and sings as it flies. The Henslow’s sparrow, which barely sings at all. And the bobolink, known for its robust songs and long-distance travels to South America.

“We’re sort of banging the drum … that we’re having a massive loss of birds,” says Amy Burnett, spokeswoman for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. “If we don’t start turning that curve around, we won’t have the western meadowlark. We won’t have the … beautiful song of the Baird’s sparrow. Imagine if we lost that on the prairies.”

Although some grassland birds require large contiguous prairie lands, most adapted to living alongside agriculture, Cornell’s Rodewald says. That was possible because some habitat was nestled within fields or along the margins and farmers often fallowed some fields.

But more-intensive farming practices — including eliminating hedgerows and buffers, planting fewer crop types and pesticide use — have taken a toll. And climate change is bringing hotter, drier conditions that affect soil health and worsen erosion, while watering holes dry up.

So nonprofits and government agencies are working with farmers and offering incentives to improve soil, preserve grasslands and adopt bird-friendly practices, such as delaying mowing until after nesting season.

It’s a delicate balance, “because everybody needs to eat,” says Brandt Ryder, chief conservation scientist for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. Conservation groups are working to understand what farmers and ranchers need to be profitable while helping reverse grassland and bird decline.

“Private landowners care and are very, very good stewards of [the land] because it’s their livelihood,” he says.

Turning to technology

To help target conservation efforts, the Bird Conservancy is integrating its population and habitat data with other sources, including the U.S. Geological Survey’s long-running breeding bird survey and Cornell’s eBird sightings database.

Still, much is unknown: If birds must travel great distances to find suitable breeding habitat, does that affect breeding success? Where do they stop during migration and for how long? What’s happening on their wintering grounds, and how many birds return from their winter territory?

“Where along that full life cycle both in time and space are these birds suffering the most?” says Andy Boyce, a research ecologist at the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center who studies the Sprague’s pipit. “We need to figure out a lot of this before we can even start to prioritize where conservation actually needs to take place.”

Researchers aim to find out through a growing network of radio telemetry receivers being installed across the Great Plains to help track birds from Canada to Mexico’s Chihuahuan desert.

When a bird fitted with a tiny transmitter flies within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of a receiver — mounted on towers, poles and other structures — information is stored on a computer connected to a cell network accessible to researchers.

Radio telemetry is more efficient than traditional banding that requires birds to be caught or spotted again to provide data on movements and longevity, researchers say. That’s key because many grassland birds roam the Great Plains for the best nesting habitat instead of returning to the same spot every year — a trait that evolved when wildfires and great bison herds created a constantly shifting grassland mosaic.

The receivers, part of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System managed by Birds Canada, have been installed extensively throughout Eastern and Western North America., but there were few in central grasslands until recent years, Boyce says.

Researchers are about halfway to building a network of 150 or more receivers from Canada into Mexico, says Matthew Webb, an ecologist who leads the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies’ installation efforts.

“It is extremely important to get adequate coverage,” including areas where grassland birds aren’t normally found, such as mountain passes where birdwatchers have reported sightings, he says. “We need to fill in those knowledge gaps.”

Several years ago, Baird’s sparrows, which have lost more than half of their population since 1970 and almost exclusively breed in the northern Great Plains states and Canada, suddenly showed up in Colorado and have bred there successfully since. It’s unclear, Webb says, if their range is expanding or if disturbance in their core breeding area — perhaps oil and gas drilling — forced them to turn back and use less-ideal habitat.

In South Dakota, the Cammacks allowed the bird conservancy to install the tracking tower on their ranch and another group has conducted surveys that found several tipping point species.

“Coming up from my grandfather … we do enjoy the native species, maybe more than the average rancher to a certain extent,” Reed Cammack says. “But a healthy ecosystem is a great place to raise cattle, too.”

Saving grasslands

Green prairie stretches for miles as Brian Sprenger heads out to check on his cows, many with days-old calves by their sides.

He brakes his pickup truck as an antelope bounds away and points to a handful of sharp-tailed grouse on a flat area where males gather during mating season to strut and dance.

“It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,” says Sprenger, 44, who sometimes sees two dozen or more grouse performing courtship rituals. He never saw them as a kid, when much of the rangeland near Sidney, Nebraska, was overgrazed or farmed.

But things began to change about 20 years ago, when more ranchers put land into a federal conservation program, replanted native grasses and began frequently moving their cattle to prevent overgrazing.

“We’ve noticed that as we have started allowing these rangelands to flourish … that we have seen a lot of different bird species,” says Sprenger.

Almost all of North America’s remaining prairie is on rangelands — and 90% of all grasslands are in private hands — meaning landowner cooperation is critical to stopping bird declines, scientists say. Without cattle, they say, there would be no high-quality grasslands, which require grazing and hooves on the ground to stay healthy.

Despite the progress, many land owners now must contend with fast-spreading eastern red cedar and juniper trees that are contributing to the grassland ecosystem collapse, says Dirac Twidwell, a University of Nebraska professor and rangeland ecologist.

Tree and shrub encroachment and cultivation now account for roughly the same amount of Great Plains loss every year — a combined 16,000 square kilometers (6,250 square miles), says Twidwell, a science advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. All told, an estimated 756,000 square kilometers (292,000 square miles) have been overtaken by trees and shrubs since settlers arrived.

That leaves less land for ranching and farming — and pushes out grassland birds, which can’t adapt to the wooded environment. Shrinking rangeland now contributes to an estimated $323 million a year in potential losses to ranchers, says Twidwell.

So landowners and environment groups are cutting down trees and stepping up prescribed burns that eliminate their seeds.

“These are some of our last remaining grasslands on the planet that are largescale grasslands; that’s why you’re seeing an increased sense of urgency from bird conservation groups and the livestock industry,” Twidwell says. “All of them are saying the same thing: ‘Wait a minute, this is universally a negative.’ ”

Rancher Reed Cammack says land owners are well aware of their outsized role.

“It’s part of our responsibility … to take good care of what we have,” he says. “If there’s to be anything left for my kids’ kids to see, it’s imperative that we do something now.”
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