After seven weeks held hostage in the tunnels of Gaza, they are finally free to laugh and chat and play. But some of the children who have come back from captivity are still reluctant to raise their voices above a whisper.

In theory, they can eat what they want, sleep as much as they choose and set aside their fears. In practice, some have had to be convinced there’s no longer a need to save a cherished bit of food in case there is none later.

At last, the 86 Israelis released during a short-lived truce between their government and Hamas are home. But the October 7 terror attack by Hamas on roughly 20 towns and villages left many of the children among them without permanent homes to go back to. Some of their parents are dead and others are still held hostage, foreshadowing the difficulty of the days ahead.

And so, step by step, these children, the mothers and grandmothers who were held alongside them, and their families are testing the ground for a path to recovery. No one, including the physicians and psychologists who have been treating them, is sure how to get there or how long it might take.

“It’s not easy in any way. I mean, they’re back. They’re free. But you can definitely see what they went through,” said Yuval Haran, whose family is celebrating the reunion with his two nieces, their mother and grandmother, while yearning for the return of the girls’ father, who remains a captive.

“We’re trying to give them love, to give them hugs, to give them control back of their life,” said Haran, visibly exhausted by the stress of the past two months, but every bit as busy now as he rushes to fix bicycles and set up bank accounts for those who have returned. “I think that’s the most important thing, to give them the sense that they can decide now.”

It was clear as soon as the youngest were helped from helicopters that captivity had been brutal.

“They looked like shadows of children,” said Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev of Schneider Children’s Medical Center in suburban Tel Aviv, who helped treat more than two dozen former captives, most of them youngsters.

Some had not been allowed to bathe during the entirety of their captivity. Many had lost up to 15% of their total weight, but they were reluctant to eat the food they were served.

Asked why, the answer came in whispers: “Because we have to keep it for later.”

One 13-year-old girl recounted how she’d spent the entirety of captivity believing that her family had abandoned her, a message reinforced by her kidnappers, Bron-Harlev said.

“They told me that nobody cares for you anymore. Nobody’s looking for you. Nobody wants you back. You can hear the bombs all around. All they want to do is kill you and us together,” the girl told her doctors.

After enduring such an experience, “I don’t think it’s something that will leave you,” said Dr. Yael Mozer-Glassberg, who treated 19 of the children released. “It’s part of your life story from now on.”

“Be very, very quiet”

In the days since the hostages were freed, nearly all have been released from hospitals and rejoined their families, including some welcomed back by thousands of well-wishers.

Doctors and others charged with treating the former hostages spent weeks preparing for their return. But the reality of caring for so many who endured such extremes has stunned physicians, starting with the reluctance of many children to speak.

“Most of them talk about needing to be very quiet. At all times. Not to stand up. Not to talk. Of course, not to cry. Not to laugh. Just to be very, very quiet,” said Bron-Harlev, the physician.

“What these children have gone through is simply unimaginable.”

Despite that, at times now some appear to be thriving.

Noam Avigdori, 12, who was released with her mother, has spent the past week trading jokes with her father and meeting with friends, and has even ventured out to a store.

“When I say, ‘Noam, do this, go do that,’ she says, ‘Dad, you know what happened to me.’ And she knows that she can squeeze that lemon and … she’s enjoying it,” her father, Hen Avigdori, said in an interview.

But there are also nights when his daughter wakes up screaming, Avigdori said this week at a separate news conference.

Nearly all those who have been freed have said little publicly about the conditions of their captivity. Their families say officials have told them not to disclose details of their individual treatment, for fear of putting those still being held in further jeopardy.

But interviews with their families, doctors and mental health professionals, as well as statements released by officials and others, make clear that while all the hostages suffered, their experiences in captivity varied significantly.

Different experiences

Some were isolated from their fellow hostages. Others, like Noam Avigdori and her mother, Sharon, were held together with relatives, making it possible for the 12-year-old to act as something like an older sibling to the young cousins who were held with her.

“Everyone who was with a family member or with friends was in much better condition” when they were released, said Dani Lotan, a clinical psychologist at Scheider who treated some of the former hostages.

That varies, though, even within families.

In the weeks they were imprisoned, Danielle Aloni and her 5-year-old daughter, Emilia, established a close friendship with one of the imprisoned Thai farm workers, Nutthawaree Munkan. Last week, after all were released, the girl sang to a delighted Munkan when they were reunited in a video call, reciting the numbers she learned in Thai during captivity.

But Emilia’s cousins, 3-year-old twins, are having a difficult time since their return.

In captivity, Sharon Aloni was held with her husband and one of the twin girls in a small room, together with eight or so others. The couple spent “10 agonizing days” believing their other daughter had been killed, when she was snatched away shortly after they were taken into Gaza, Aloni’s brother Moran Aloni told reporters.

That lasted until the day Sharon insisted to her husband that she could hear the cries of their missing daughter, Emma. Minutes later, a woman appeared without explanation to bring them the child, a joyous reunion that allowed mother and daughters to stay together throughout the remainder of their captivity. But a couple of days before they were released, the girls’ father was taken away and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Now free, the girls wake up crying in the middle of the night, Moran Aloni said. Emma won’t allow anyone to leave her side. They have gotten used to speaking up again, but their mother still whispers.

Varying amounts of food

Many former hostages have recounted being given meager amounts of food. But the rations seemed to vary from group to group with little explanation, said Mozer-Glassberg, a senior physician at Schneider.

One family told doctors they each were given a biscuit with tea at 10 every morning and, from time to time, a single dried date. At 5 p.m., they were served rice. It wasn’t enough, but day after day of worry left their appetites withered.

One 15-year-old girl recounted not eating for days so she could give her share of the food to her 8-year-old sister.

Some of the 23 Thai hostages released recently told caregivers they were each given roughly a half liter of water and then had to make it last for three days. Sometimes, they said, it was saltwater.

One group of former captives reported being allowed to bathe three times over seven weeks with buckets of cold water. But one child never bathed at all, doctors say.

“Many of them talk about feeling very hungry. Very, very hungry. Many of them talk about feeling very dirty, not being able to clean, not being able to go to the bathroom,” Bron-Harlev said.

Recuperation will be difficult

The process of recuperation from such prolonged trauma will be slow and piecemeal, doctors say. And while the adults may be better able to process what they have experienced, their recovery poses its own challenges.

Many, particularly the older and infirm, remain weak after losing 9 kilos (20 pounds) or more because of the meager rations provided by their captors. When they speak, their families hear notes of resilience, but also of fragility.

Margalit Moses, a 78-year-old cancer survivor who has long struggled with multiple health problems, is back on the medications she was deprived of as a captive. But she remains too weak to walk more than a few steps.

“I think two months was up to the very, very last limit of her body hanging in there,” her niece Efrat Machikawa said.

In the days since Moses returned, she has been savoring pleasures that once seemed trivial, such as peeling a fresh orange and lingering over crossword puzzles, her niece said.

Yaffa Adar, 85, a Holocaust survivor who was seized from her kibbutz and hustled into Gaza on golf cart, talks at length with her family about her time in captivity. But the days since have become more difficult as she grapples with what happened to her and the community she cherished, granddaughter Adva Adar said.

“She’s incredibly mentally strong, but you can see how the hell got into her soul,” the younger Adar said. “It’s in the way she looks at the world, the way she looks at people.”

In the hospitals, doctors, social workers and psychologists were careful about how they talked with the former hostages, not wanting to magnify their trauma. But as they settle in, both children and adults are confronting the toll of the October attack that captivity kept hidden from them.

Throughout the seven weeks she was held, Shoshan Haran, her daughters and grandchildren had to wonder what had happened to her husband.

“We had to tell them my father was murdered,” Yuval Haran said.

In the days ahead, he and others acknowledge, they will face questions about how to move forward without those who were killed or remain missing. But for most, it is far too soon.
…

The future of fossil fuels is at the center of the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where many activists, experts and nations are calling for an agreement to phase out the oil, gas and coal responsible for warming the planet. On the other side: energy companies and oil-rich nations with plans to keep drilling well into the future.

In the background of those discussions are carbon capture and carbon removal, technologies most, if not all, producers are counting on to meet their pledges to get to net-zero emissions. Skeptics worry the technology is being oversold to allow the industry to maintain the status quo.

“The industry needs to commit to genuinely helping the world meet its energy needs and climate goals — which means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution,” International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said before the start of talks.

What is carbon capture?

Many industrial facilities such as coal-fired power plants and ethanol plants produce carbon dioxide. To stop those planet-warming emissions from reaching the atmosphere, businesses can install equipment to separate that gas from all the other gases coming out of the smokestack and transport it to where it can be permanently stored underground. And even for industries trying to reduce emissions, some are likely to always produce some carbon, such as cement manufacturers that use a chemical process that releases CO2.

“We call that a mitigation technology, a way to stop the increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere,” said Karl Hausker, an expert on getting to net-zero emissions at World Resources Institute, a climate-focused nonprofit that supports sharp fossil fuel reductions along with a limited role for carbon capture.

The captured carbon is concentrated into a form that can be transported in a vehicle or through a pipeline to a place where it can be injected underground for long-term storage.

What is carbon removal?

Then there’s carbon removal. Instead of capturing carbon from a single, concentrated source, the objective is to remove carbon that’s already in the atmosphere. This already happens when forests are restored, for example, but there’s a push to deploy technology, too. One type directly captures it from the air, using chemicals to pull out carbon dioxide as air passes through.

For some, carbon removal is essential during a global transition to clean energy that will take years. For example, despite notable gains for electric vehicles in some countries, gas-fired cars will be operating well into the future. And some industries, like shipping and aviation, are challenging to fully decarbonize.

“We have to remove some of what’s in the atmosphere in addition to stopping the emissions,” said Jennifer Pett-Ridge, who leads the federally supported Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s carbon initiative in the United States, the world’s second-leading emitter of greenhouse gases.

 

How is it going?

Many experts say the technology to capture carbon and store it works, but it’s expensive, and it’s still in the early days of deployment.

There are about 40 large-scale carbon capture projects in operation around the world capturing roughly 45 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, according to the International Energy Agency, or IEA. That’s a tiny amount — roughly 0.1% — of the 36.8 billion metric tons emitted globally as tallied by the Global Carbon Project.

The IEA says the history of carbon capture “has largely been one of unmet expectations.” The group analyzed how the world can achieve net zero emissions, and its guide path relies heavily on lowering emissions by slashing fossil fuel use. Carbon capture is just a sliver of the solution — less than 10% — but despite its comparatively small role, its expansion is still behind schedule.

The pace of new projects is picking up, but they face significant obstacles. In the United States, there’s opposition to CO2 pipelines that move carbon to storage sites. Safety is one concern; in 2020, a CO2 pipeline in Mississippi ruptured, releasing carbon dioxide that displaced breathable air near the ground and sent dozens of people to hospitals.

The federal government is working on improving safety standards.

Who supports carbon capture?

The American Petroleum Institute says oil and gas will remain a critical energy source for decades, meaning that for the world to reduce its carbon emissions, rapidly expanding carbon capture technology is “key to cleaner energy use across the economy.” A check of most oil companies’ plans to get to net-zero emissions also finds most of them relying on carbon capture in some way.

The Biden administration wants more investment in carbon capture and removal, too, building off America’s comparatively large spending compared with the rest of the world.

But it’s an industry that needs subsidies to attract private financing. The Inflation Reduction Act makes tax benefits much more generous. Investors can get a $180-per-ton credit for removing carbon from the air and storing it underground, for example. And the Department of Energy has billions to support new projects.

“What we are talking about now is taking a technology that has been proven and has been tested but applying it much more broadly and also applying it in sectors where there is a higher cost to deploy,” said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, an industry advocacy group.

Investment is picking up. The EPA is considering dozens of applications for wells that can store carbon. And in places such as Louisiana and North Dakota, local leaders are fighting to attract projects and investment.

Who is against it?

Some environmentalists argue that fossil fuel companies are holding up carbon capture to distract from the need to quickly phase out oil, gas and coal.

“The fossil fuel industry has proven itself to be dangerous and deceptive,” said Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

There are other problems. Some projects haven’t met their carbon removal targets. A 2021 U.S. government accountability report said that of eight demonstration projects aimed at capturing and storing carbon from coal plants, just one had started operating at the time the report was published despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.

Opponents also note that carbon capture can serve to prolong the life of a polluting plant that would otherwise shut down sooner. That can especially hurt poorer, minority communities that have long lived near heavily polluting facilities.
…

Majestic cedar trees towered over dozens of Lebanese Christians gathered outside a small mid-19th century chapel hidden in a mountain forest to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, the miracle in which Jesus Christ, on a mountaintop, shined with light before his disciples.

The sunset’s yellow light coming through the cedar branches bathed the leader of Lebanon’s Maronite Church, Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, as he stood at a wooden podium and delivered a sermon. Then the gathering sang hymns in Arabic and the Aramaic language.

For Lebanon’s Christians, the cedars are sacred, these tough evergreen trees that survive the mountain’s harsh snowy winters. They point out with pride that Lebanon’s cedars are mentioned 103 times in the Bible. The trees are a symbol of Lebanon, pictured at the center of the national flag.

The iconic trees in the country’s north are far from the clashes between Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops along the Lebanon-Israel border in recent weeks against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war.

The long-term survival of the cedar forests is in doubt for another reason, as rising temperatures due to climate change threaten to wipe out biodiversity and scar one of the country’s most iconic heritage sites for its Christians.

The lush Cedars of God Forest, some 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) above sea level near the northern town of Bcharre, is part of a landscape cherished by Christians. The preserve overlooks the Kadisha Valley — Aramaic for “sacred” — where many Christians took refuge from persecution over Lebanon’s tumultuous history. One of the world’s largest collections of monasteries remains hidden among the thick trees, caves and rocky outcroppings along the deep, 35-kilometer (22-mile) valley.

The United Nations’ culture agency UNESCO in 1998 listed both the cedar forest and the valley as World Heritage Sites. They’ve become popular destinations for hikers and environmentalists from around the world. A growing number of Lebanese of all faiths visit as well, seeking fresh air away from the cities.

“People from all religions visit here, not just Christians … even Muslims and atheists,” said Hani Tawk, a Maronite Christian priest, as he showed a crowd of tourists around the Saint Elisha Monastery. “But we as Christians, this reminds us of all the saints who lived here, and we come to experience being in this sacred dimension.”

Climate change and mismanagement

Environmentalists and residents say the effects of climate change, exacerbated by government mismanagement, pose a threat to the ecosystem of the valley and the cedar forest.

“Thirty or 40 years from now, it’s quite possible to see the Kadisha Valley’s biodiversity, which is one of the richest worldwide, become much poorer,” said Charbel Tawk, an environmental engineer and activist in Bcharre — unrelated to Hani Tawk.

Lebanon for years has felt the heat of climate change, with farmers decrying lack of rain and forest fires wreaking havoc on pine forests north of the country, similar to blazes that scorched forests in neighboring Syria and nearby Greece. Residents across much of the country, struggling with rampant electricity cuts, could barely handle the summer’s soaring heat.

Temperatures have been above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in Bcharre, not uncommon along Lebanon’s coastal cities but unusual for the mountainous northern town.

Nuns in the medieval Qannoubin Monastery, perched on the side of a hill in the Kadisha Valley, fanned themselves and drank water in the shade of the monastery’s courtyard. They reminisced about when they could sleep comfortably on summer nights without needing much electricity.

Impact already seen

Already, there are worrying signs of the impact on the cedars and Kadisha.

Warmer temperatures have brought larger colonies of aphids, which feed on the bark of cedar trees and leave a secretion that can cause mold, Charbel Tawk said. Bees normally remove the secretion, but they have become less active. Aphids and other pests also last longer in the season and reach higher altitudes because of warmer weather.

Such pests threaten to stunt or damage cedar growth.

Tawk worries that if temperatures continue to change like this, cedars at lower altitudes might not be able to survive. Fires are becoming more of a potential danger.

Cedar trees usually grow at an altitude from 700 up to 1,800 meters (about 1 mile) above sea level. Tawk’s organization has planted some 200,000 cedars over the years at higher altitudes and in areas where they were not present. Some 180,000 survived.

“Is it climate change or whatever it is happening in nature that these cedars are able to survive at 2,100 to 2,400 meters?” Tawk asked, while checking on a grove of cedars on a remote hilltop.

Mitigating solutions

Local priests and environmental activists have urged Lebanon’s government to work with universities to do a wide-ranging study on temperature changes and the impact on biodiversity.

But Lebanon has been in the throes of a crippling economic crisis for years. State coffers are dried up, and many of the country’s top experts are rapidly seeking work opportunities abroad.

“There is nothing today called the state. … The relevant ministries, even with the best intentions, don’t have the financial capabilities anymore,” Bcharre Mayor Freddy Keyrouz said. He and the mayors of nearby towns have asked residents to help with conservation initiatives and Lebanese diaspora abroad to help with funding.

The Maronite Church has strict rules to protect the Cedars of God Forest, including keeping development out of it. Kiosks, tourist shops and a large parking lot have been set far away from the forest.

“We don’t allow anything that is combustible to be brought into the sacred forest,” said Charbel Makhlouf, a priest at Bcharre’s Saint Saba Cathedral.

The Friends of the Cedar Forest Committee, to which Tawk belongs, has been looking after the cedar trees for almost three decades, with the church’s support. It has installed sensors on cedar trees to measure temperature, wind and humidity, watching for worsening conditions that could risk forest fires.

Trouble beyond the forest

Below the forest, in the Kadisha Valley, Tawk points to other concerns.

In particular, the spread of cypress trees threatens to crowd out other species, “breaking this equilibrium that we had in the valley,” he said.

“We’ve seen them increase and tower over other species, whether it’s taking sunlight, wind or expanding their roots,” he said. “It will impact other plants, birds, insects and all the reptile species down there.”

Steps to protect the valley have actually hurt its biodiversity by removing human practices that had been beneficial, Tawk said.

In the past, herders grazing their goats and other livestock in the valley helped prevent the spread of invasive species. Their grazing also reduced fire hazards, as did local families collecting deadwood to burn in the winter.

But residents left the valley when it became a heritage site and the Lebanese government implemented strict regulations. Few live there now other than a handful of priests and nuns.

“Trees have overtaken places where people lived and farmed,” Tawk said. “Now a fire could move from one end of the valley to the other.”

Sitting in a cave near the Qannoubine Monastery, Father Hani Tawk listened to the variety of birds chirping in the valley. He said he believes in the community’s faith and awareness of nature, engrained since their ancestors took refuge here.

“When you violate that tree, you’re intruding on a long history, and possibly the future of your children,” he said.
…

One of the biggest and brightest stars in the night sky will momentarily vanish as an asteroid passes in front of it to produce a one-of-a-kind eclipse.

The rare and fleeting spectacle, late Monday into early Tuesday, should be visible to millions of people along a narrow path stretching from central Asia’s Tajikistan and Armenia, across Turkey, Greece, Italy and Spain, to Miami and the Florida Keys and finally, to parts of Mexico.

The star is Betelgeuse, a red supergiant in the constellation Orion. The asteroid is Leona, a slowly rotating, oblong space rock in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Astronomers hope to learn more about Betelgeuse and Leona through the eclipse, which is expected to last no more than 15 seconds. By observing an eclipse of a much dimmer star by Leona in September, a Spanish-led team recently estimated the asteroid to be about 55 kilometers wide and 80 kilometers long.

There are lingering uncertainties over those predictions as well as the size of the star and its expansive atmosphere. It’s unclear if the asteroid will obscure the entire star, producing a total eclipse. Rather, the result could be a “ring of fire” eclipse with a miniscule blazing border around the star. If it’s a total eclipse, astronomers aren’t sure how many seconds the star will disappear completely, perhaps up to 10 seconds.

“Which scenario we will see is uncertain, making the event even more intriguing,” said astronomer Gianluca Masa, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project, which will provide a live webcast from Italy.

An estimated 700 light-years away, Betelgeuse is visible with the naked eye. Binoculars and small telescopes will enhance the view. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.

Betelgeuse is thousands of times brighter than our sun and some 700 times bigger. It’s so huge that if it replaced our sun, it would stretch beyond Jupiter, according to NASA.

At just 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is considerably younger than the 4.6 billion-year-old sun. Scientists expect Betelgeuse to be short-lived, given its mass and the speed at which it’s burning through its material.

After countless centuries of varying brightness, Betelgeuse dimmed dramatically in 2019 when a huge bunch of surface material was ejected into space. The resulting dust cloud temporarily blocked the starlight, NASA said, and within a half year, Betelgeuse was as bright as before.

Scientists expect Betelgeuse to go supernova in a violent explosion within 100,000 years.
…

European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of technology used in popular generative AI services such as ChatGPT that have promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity. 

Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc’s 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points, including generative AI and police use of facial recognition surveillance, to sign a tentative political agreement for the Artificial Intelligence Act. 

“Deal!” tweeted European Commissioner Thierry Breton, just before midnight. “The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI.” 

The result came after marathon closed-door talks this week, with the initial session lasting 22 hours before a second round kicked off Friday morning. 

Officials were under the gun to secure a political victory for the flagship legislation but were expected to leave the door open to further talks to work out the fine print, likely to bring more backroom lobbying. 

Out front

The EU took an early lead in the global race to draw up AI guardrails when it unveiled the first draft of its rulebook in 2021. The recent boom in generative AI, however, sent European officials scrambling to update a proposal poised to serve as a blueprint for the world. 

The European Parliament will still need to vote on it early next year, but with the deal done, that’s a formality, Brando Benifei, an Italian lawmaker co-leading the body’s negotiating efforts, told The Associated Press late Friday. 

“It’s very, very good,” he said by text message after being asked if it included everything he wanted. “Obviously we had to accept some compromises but overall very good.”  

The eventual law wouldn’t fully take effect until 2025 at the earliest and threatens stiff financial penalties for violations of up to $38 million (35 million euros) or 7% of a company’s global turnover. 

Generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have exploded into the world’s consciousness, dazzling users with the ability to produce humanlike text, photos and songs but raising fears about the risks the rapidly developing technology poses to jobs, privacy and copyright protection, and even human life itself. 

Now, the U.S., U.K., China and global coalitions like the Group of Seven major democracies have jumped in with their own proposals to regulate AI, though they’re still catching up to Europe. 

‘A powerful example’

Strong and comprehensive regulation from the EU “can set a powerful example for many governments considering regulation,” said Anu Bradford, a Columbia Law School professor who’s an expert on EU and digital regulation. Other countries “may not copy every provision but will likely emulate many aspects of it.” 

AI companies that will have to obey the EU’s rules will also likely extend some of those obligations to markets outside the continent, she said. “After all, it is not efficient to retrain separate models for different markets,” she said. 

Others are worried that the agreement was rushed through. 

“Today’s political deal marks the beginning of important and necessary technical work on crucial details of the AI Act, which are still missing,” said Daniel Friedlaender, head of the European office of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a tech industry lobby group. 

The AI Act was originally designed to mitigate the dangers from specific AI functions based on their level of risk, from low to unacceptable. But lawmakers pushed to expand it to foundation models, the advanced systems that underpin general purpose AI services like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot. 

Foundation models looked set to be one of the biggest sticking points for Europe. However, negotiators reached a tentative compromise early in the talks, despite opposition led by France, which called instead for self-regulation to help homegrown European generative AI companies competing with big U.S. rivals, including OpenAI’s backer Microsoft. 

Also known as large language models, these systems are trained on vast troves of written works and images scraped off the internet. They give generative AI systems the ability to create something new, unlike traditional AI, which processes data and completes tasks using predetermined rules. 

Under the deal, the most advanced foundation models that pose the biggest “systemic risks” will get extra scrutiny, including requirements to disclose more information, such as how much computing power was used to train the systems. 

Elevation of threats

Researchers have warned that these powerful foundation models, built by a handful of big tech companies, could be used to supercharge online disinformation and manipulation, cyberattacks or creation of bioweapons. 

Rights groups also caution that the lack of transparency about data used to train the models poses risks to daily life because they act as basic structures for software developers building AI-powered services. 

What became the thorniest topic was AI-powered facial recognition surveillance systems, and negotiators found a compromise after intensive bargaining. 

European lawmakers wanted a full ban on public use of facial scanning and other “remote biometric identification” systems because of privacy concerns, while governments of member countries wanted exemptions so law enforcement could use them to tackle serious crimes like child sexual exploitation or terrorist attacks. 

Civil society groups were more skeptical. 

“Whatever the victories may have been in these final negotiations, the fact remains that huge flaws will remain in this final text,” said Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Access Now. Along with the law enforcement exemptions, he also cited a lack of protection for AI systems used in migration and border control, and “big gaps in the bans on the most dangerous AI systems.” 
…

Thousands of tons of dead sardines have washed up on a beach in northern Japan for unknown reasons, officials said Friday.

The sardines and some mackerel washed ashore in Hakodate on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday morning, creating a silver blanket along a stretch of beach about a kilometer long.

Residents said they have never seen anything like it. Some gathered the fish to sell or eat.

The town, in a notice posted on its website, urged residents not to consume the fish.

Takashi Fujioka, a Hakodate Fisheries Research Institute researcher, said he has heard of similar phenomena before, but it was his first time to see it.

He said the fish may have been chased by larger fish, become exhausted due to a lack of oxygen while moving in a densely packed school, and were washed up by the waves.

The fish also may have suddenly entered cold waters during their migration, he said.

The decomposing fish could lower oxygen levels in the water and affect the marine environment, he said.

“We don’t know for sure under what circumstances these fish were washed up, so I do not recommend” eating them, Fujioka said.
…

In a letter leaked to news organizations this week, OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais urged member nations to reject any agreement from the U.N. climate summit targeting fossil fuels rather than emissions.

In the letter dated Wednesday referencing a draft agreement on climate change action at the 28th U.N. climate conference — known as COP28 — in Dubai, the OPEC leader said, “It seems that the undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences.”

The letter goes on to say, “I … respectfully urge all esteemed OPEC Member Countries and Non-OPEC Countries participating in the CoC and their distinguished delegations in the COP 28 negotiations to proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions.”

The contents of the letter were reported Friday by multiple news organizations, including Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Bloomburg, which verified the letter’s authenticity. OPEC declined when asked to comment.

The reports come as negotiations among 197 countries on a final climate summit agreement are underway ahead of a deadline Tuesday, when the conference is scheduled to end.

Fossil fuels — oil, coal and natural gas — have been a focus of the discussions since COP28 opened last week, with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for an end to their use.

At least 80 countries have called for a COP28 deal that calls for an eventual end to fossil fuel use, as scientists urge ambitious action to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

The focus is on meeting the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement: keeping global temperature increase this century less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

At Friday’s climate summit plenary session, COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber, from OPEC member nation and summit host United Arab Emirates, said, once again, that a shift away from fossil fuels is “inevitable” and “essential.” He added, though, that any energy transition “must be orderly and responsible.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday approved a pair of gene therapies for sickle cell disease, including the first treatment based on the breakthrough CRISPR gene editing technology. 

The agency approved Lyfgenia from bluebird bio, and a separate treatment called Casgevy by partners Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. 

Both the therapies were approved for people aged 12 years and older. 

The Vertex/CRISPR gene therapy uses the breakthrough gene editing technology that won its inventors the Nobel Prize in 2020. 

Sickle cell disease is a painful, inherited blood disorder that can be debilitating and lead to premature death. It affects an estimated 100,000 people in the United States, most of whom are Black. 

In sickle cell disease, the body makes flawed, sickle-shaped hemoglobin, impairing the ability of red blood cells to properly carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. 

The sickle cells tend to stick together and can block small blood vessels, causing intense pain. It also can lead to strokes and organ failure. 

U.S.-listed shares of CRISPR therapeutics were up 1.6%, while Vertex Pharmaceuticals stock was down 1.4%. Shares of bluebird bio were halted for trading ahead of the news. 

Makers of both the therapies have pitched them as one-time treatments, but data on how long their effect lasts is limited. The only longer-term treatment for sickle cell disease is a bone marrow transplant. 

“I actually am very reticent to call them a cure. I prefer to call them a transformative therapy because patients will still have sickle cell disease on the other side of gene therapy,” said Dr Sharl Azar, medical director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Bluebird bio’s sickle cell therapy is designed to work by inserting modified genes into the body through disabled viruses to help the patient’s red blood cells produce normal hemoglobin. 

For Vertex’s therapy, patients must have stem cells harvested from their bone marrow. The cells are then sent to manufacturing facilities where they are edited using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Once the cells are incubated, they are infused back into the patient during a month-long hospital stay. 

Both gene therapies can take several months and involve high-dose chemotherapy, but this has potential risks of infertility. 

“Not everybody who undergoes chemotherapy will end up having infertility, but the majority of them will,” said Dr Azar.  

While the risk can be managed by fertility preservation methods like freezing eggs and sperm banking, this is only covered by insurance for cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy and not those receiving gene therapy, said Dr. Azar. 

He said the out-of-pocket expense on it can be as high as $40,000. 

FDA staff in documents released ahead of an October meeting of a panel of independent experts on Vertex’s therapy had also flagged concerns of unintended genomic alterations from the treatment. 

The company plans to assess potential long-term safety risks through a 15-year follow-up study after approval. 

Vertex’s CRISPR therapy is also under an FDA review for another blood disease, transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia, with a decision expected by March 30. 
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Black people make up about 38% of Mississippi’s population, but a new study shows that Black women were four times more likely to die of causes directly related to pregnancy than white women in the state in 2020.

“It is imperative that this racial inequity is not only recognized, but that concerted efforts are made at the institutional, community, and state levels to reduce these disparate outcomes,” wrote Dr. Michelle Owens and Dr. Courtney Mitchell, leaders of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee that conducted the study.

The Mississippi State Department of Health published the findings Wednesday.

The committee said 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in Mississippi between 2016 and 2020 were considered preventable, and cardiovascular disease and hypertension remain top contributors to maternal mortality.

Women need comprehensive primary care before, during and after pregnancy, but many people live in areas where health care services are scarce, Owens and Mitchell wrote.

“A substantial portion of this care is being shouldered by smaller hospitals with limited resources, many of whom are facing possible closure and limiting or discontinuing the provision of obstetrical services, further increasing the burdens borne by the individuals and their communities,” they wrote.

The Maternal Mortality Review Committee was formed in 2017, and its members include physicians, nurses, public health experts and others who work in health care.

The committee found that from 2016 to 2020, Mississippi’s pregnancy-related mortality rate was 35.2 deaths per 100,000 live births. The study did not provide a comparable five-year number for the U.S. but said the national rate was 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 and 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020.

Mississippi has long been one of the poorest states in the U.S., with some of the highest rates of obesity and heart disease.

A state health department program called Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies offers care management and home visits for pregnant women and for infants who are at risk of having health problems.

“Losing one mother is too many,” Dr. Daniel Edney, the state health officer, said in a news release about the maternal mortality study.

The committee recommended that Mississippi leaders expand Medicaid to people who work in lower-wage jobs that don’t provide private health insurance — a policy proposal that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has long opposed.

Earlier this year, Reeves signed a law allowing postpartum Medicaid coverage for a full year, up from two months.

Medicaid expansion is optional under the health care overhaul that then-President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010, and Mississippi is one of 10 states that have not taken the option. The non-expansion states have Republican governors, Republican-controlled Legislatures or both.

“Medicaid expansion should be incorporated for rural hospitals to remain open and include access to telehealth services,” the Maternal Mortality Review Committee leaders wrote. “There is a need for rural healthcare facilities to provide higher levels of critical care, recruit and retain adequate providers, and have access to life saving equipment, especially in the most vulnerable areas of the state.”

The study examined deaths that occurred during or within one year after pregnancy. It defined pregnancy-related deaths as those “initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiologic effects of pregnancy” and pregnancy-associated deaths as those “from a cause that is not related to pregnancy.”

Pregnancy-related deaths during the five years included 17 homicides and four suicides, plus 26 instances of substance abuse disorder contributing to the maternal death and 30 instances of mental health conditions other than substance abuse disorder contributing to a death.

The study also said obesity contributed to 32 maternal deaths and discrimination contributed to 22. It noted that some pregnancy-related deaths could have more than one contributing factor.

The committee recommended that health care providers develop procedures and training to address maternal patients with severe complaints for the same health concern, including training to eliminate bias or discrimination.
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Environmental watchdogs accused a Mexico-based startup Thursday of violating international trade law by selling a health supplement made from endangered totoaba fish to several countries including the U.S. and China.

Advocates told The Associated Press they also have concerns that the company, The Blue Formula, could be selling fish that is illegally caught in the wild.

The product, which the company describes as “nature’s best kept secret,” is a small sachet of powder containing collagen taken from the fish that is designed to be mixed into a drink.

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, to which Mexico and the U.S. are both signatories, any export for sale of totoaba fish is illegal, unless bred in captivity with a particular permit. As a listed protected species, commercial import is also illegal under U.S. trade law.

The environmental watchdog group Cetacean Action Treasury first cited the company in November. Then on Thursday, a coalition of environmental charities — The Center for Biological Diversity, National Resources Defense Council and Animal Welfare Institute — filed a written complaint to CITES.

The Blue Formula did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment.

The company claims on its website to operate “100%” sustainably by sourcing fish from Cygnus Ocean, a farm which has a permit to breed totoaba, and using a portion of their profits to release some farmed fish back into the wild.

However, Cygnus Ocean does not have a permit for commercial export of their farmed fish, according to the environmental groups. The farm also did not immediately respond to a request from the AP for comment.

While the ecological impact of breeding totoaba in captivity is much smaller relative to wild fishing, advocates like Alejandro Olivera, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Mexico representative, fear the company and farm could be used as a front.

“There is no good enforcement of the traceability of totoaba in Mexico,” said Olivera, “so it could be easily used to launder wild totoaba.”

Gillnet fishing for wild totoaba is illegal and one of the leading killers of critically endangered vaquita porpoise, of which recent surveys suggest less than a dozen may exist in the wild.

Gillnetting is driven by the exorbitant price for totoaba bladders in China, where they are sold as a delicacy for as much as gold. The Blue Formula’s supplement costs just under $100 for 200 grams.

In October U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over $1 million worth of totoaba bladders in Arizona, hidden in a shipment of frozen fish. Roughly as much again was seized in Hong Kong the same month, in transit from Mexico to Thailand.
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NASA celebrates a quarter century of human cooperation in space. Plus, a busy week of space launches, and ‘America’s Dad’ wants you to see the moon like those who’ve been there. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space
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Iran said Wednesday that it had sent a capsule into orbit capable of carrying animals as it prepares for human missions in coming years. 

A report by the official IRNA news agency quoted Telecommunications Minister Isa Zarepour as saying the capsule was launched 130 kilometers into orbit. 

Zarepour said the launch of the 500-kilogram capsule was aimed at sending Iranian astronauts to space in coming years. He did not say whether any animals were in the capsule. 

He told state TV that Iran planned to send astronauts into space by 2029 after further tests involving animals. 

State TV showed footage of a rocket named Salman carrying the capsule. 

Iran occasionally announces successful launches of satellites and other spacecraft. In September, Iran said it sent a data-collecting satellite into space. In 2013, Iran said it sent a monkey into space and returned it successfully. 

Reports said the country’s Defense Ministry built and launched the Salman rocket, while the capsule was built by the Iranian civil space agency. Media reports did not say where the launch took place. Iran usually makes launches from Imam Khomenei Space Center in northern Semnan province. 

Iran says its satellite program is for scientific research and other civilian applications. The U.S. and other Western countries have long been suspicious of the program because the same technology can be used to develop long-range missiles. 

In 2020, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it put the Islamic republic’s first military satellite into orbit, unveiling what experts described as a secret space program.
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After a first-day blur of rare quick action and agreement, negotiators at a critical United Nations climate summit finished their first week Wednesday in a more familiar place: the murky middle where momentum and roadblocks intertwine.

“Negotiations … are a mixed picture right now. We see big differences between individual states in some areas,” German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said, “but there is a will to make progress.”

U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry, said, “We have done a lot in this first week, and we’ve accomplished real things.”

Proponents who are calling for a ground-shifting phase-out of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal have hope for the first time in years, but also see where the possibility could be torpedoed. Key issues of financial help for poor nations to decarbonize and how to adapt to warming need much more work, officials said.

That contrasts with the first day when the conference — called COP28 — put into effect a climate compensation fund and started seeing its coffers grow to more than $720 million.

U.N. Climate Secretary Simon Stiell on Wednesday warned against putting “a tick on the box” for that victory and thinking it solves the multitrillion-dollar problem of financial aid that’s needed to help cut emissions worldwide.

“We need COP to deliver a bullet train to speed up climate action. We currently have an old caboose chugging over rickety tracks,” Stiell said.

Adnan Amin, the No. 2 official in the COP and a veteran U.N. diplomat, was a bit more optimistic, saying all negotiations have ups and downs. This one, he said, is in that time when “there’s still a buzz. There’s still positivity.”

Discussions have been focused on the so-called Global Stocktake — a status of where nations are with meeting their climate goals to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial times and how they can get there. On Tuesday, negotiators produced a new draft of the text, but it had so many possibilities in its 24 pages that it didn’t give much of a hint of what will be agreed upon when the session ends next week.

Negotiators for 197 countries are going over the document word by word to see what they can live with and what they can’t, Amin said. “They have so many demands and needs. But I think it provides a very good basis for moving forward.”

Cedric Schuster, the chair of the Association of Small Island States, said failing on the Global Stocktake would “make it significantly more difficult to leave this COP saying we can achieve the 1.5 C limit.” He said major emitters and developed countries need to take the lead and ramp up efforts to phase out fossil fuels.

“If we fail, the consequences will be catastrophic,” he said.

While U.N. officials highlight worries about finance and adaptation, many at the Dubai conference are focused on language about what to do about fossil fuels. Burning coal, oil and natural gas are the chief causes of climate change. For the first time in nearly three decades of talks, the idea of getting rid of all three of them is on the agenda and a serious possibility.

“We have seen options about fossil fuel phase-out in the text. And while it’s historic to have them, they’re not enough,” said environmental activist Romain Ioualalen of Oil Change International. He pointed to 106 nations signing a document calling for a phase-out, which was mentioned by many world leaders when they made speeches in the first few days.

“The situation we’re in right now, it was unthinkable just three COPs ago to have these debates on the phase-out of all fossil fuels,” Ioualalen said. “There’s definitely momentum in the conversation. There’s definitely opposition, of course. And that’s what’s to be expected. But that’s what we need to solve.

“We’ve never been closer to an agreement for sure,” he said.
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