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The World Meteorological Organization warns this year’s record-breaking heat is likely to continue in 2025, further accelerating climate change and leading to catastrophic consequences if urgent action is not taken to stem the “human activities” behind this looming disaster. 

According to the United Nations weather agency, 2024 is set to be the warmest year on record, “capping a decade of unprecedented heat fueled by human activities.” 

“Greenhouse gas levels continue to grow to record observed highs, locking in even more heat for the future,” the WMO said. The agency stresses the need for greater international cooperation to address extreme heat risks “as global temperatures rise, and extreme heat events become more frequent and severe.” 

Celeste Saulo, who was appointed WMO secretary-general in June 2023 and began her four-year term in January 2024, said that in her first year in office she “issued repeated Red Alerts about the state of the climate” warning that “every fraction of a degree of warming matters, and increases climate extremes, impacts and risks.” 

The WMO State of the Climate 2024 report finds that between January and September global average temperatures were 1.54 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times and above the level stipulated in the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change. 

This year’s U.N. Environment Program’s Emissions Gap report warns temperatures are likely to rise to 3.1 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if preventive action is not taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. 

“Climate change plays out before our eyes on an almost daily basis in the form of increased occurrence and impact of extreme weather events,” Saulo said. “This year we saw record-breaking rainfall and flooding events and terrible loss of life in so many countries, causing heartbreak to communities on every continent,” she said. 

Tropical Cyclone Chido, which hit the French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean in mid-December and then moved on to Mozambique, has had a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of the communities in its wake. However, this cyclone is only the latest of dozens of extreme weather events that have wreaked havoc across the globe this year. 

According to a new report from the World Weather Attribution and Climate Central, climate change intensified 26 of the 29 extreme weather events studied “that killed at least 3,700 people and displaced millions.” 

“Climate change added 41 days of dangerous heat in 2024, harming human health and ecosystems,” it said. 

Extreme weather events have affected all regions of the world. Highlights include Hurricane Helene, which hit the U.S. state of Florida, causing widespread flooding and wind damage. 

Heavy rains have caused severe flooding and mudslides in South America. Massive rains also have led to deadly flash flooding in Europe, notably in Spain, and generated historic flooding across West and Central Africa, killing more than 1,500 people. 

These and other regions also have been affected by raging wildfires and severe drought causing hunger, irreparable suffering and harm, as well as enormous economic losses to countless millions. 

“This is climate breakdown — in real time,” Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general warned in his New Year’s message. “We must exit this road to ruin, and we have no time to lose. 

“In 2024, countries must put the world on a safer path by dramatically slashing emissions, and supporting the transition to a renewable future,” he said. 

In response to the secretary-general’s call to action on extreme heat, a group of experts from 15 international organizations, 12 countries, and several leading academic and NGO partners met at WMO headquarters earlier this month to advance a coordinated framework for tackling this growing threat. 

This plan is one of many WMO initiatives that aim to safeguard public health through improved climate services and early warnings. 

As the U.N. weather agency prepares to mark its 75th anniversary in 2025, WMO officials say they will continue to coordinate worldwide efforts to observe and monitor the state of the climate and support international efforts “to mitigate and adapt to climate change.” 

“Our message will be that if we want a safer planet, we must act now,” WMO chief Saulo said. “It is our responsibility. It is a common responsibility, a global responsibility.” 
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JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu successfully underwent prostate removal surgery on Sunday and is in good condition, according to the hospital treating him.  

The surgery took place while Israel remains at war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, more than 14 months after an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militants on Israel on October 7 last year. 

“The prime minister has awakened from anesthesia and is in good condition. He has been transferred to the recovery unit and will remain under observation in the coming days,” the Hadassah Medical Centre said in a statement. 

On Saturday, Netanyahu’s office announced that he had been diagnosed with a urinary tract infection caused by a benign prostate enlargement.  

Earlier, in March, Netanyahu underwent a hernia surgery, and in July last year, doctors implanted a pacemaker after a medical scare. 
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Abortion has become more common despite bans or deep restrictions in most Republican-controlled states, and the legal and political fights over its future are not over yet.

It’s now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans.

The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Here’s a look at data on where things stand:

Abortions are more common than before Dobbs

Overturning Roe and enforcing abortion bans has changed how woman obtain abortions in the United States.

One thing it hasn’t done is put a dent in the number of abortions being obtained.

There have been slightly more monthly abortions across the country recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling, even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero.

“Abortion bans don’t actually prevent abortions from happening,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at the University of California San Francisco.

For women in some states, there are major obstacles to getting abortions — and advocates say that low-income, minority and immigrant women are least likely to be able to get them when they want.

For those living in states with bans, the ways to access abortion are through travel or abortion pills.

Pills become bigger part of equation — and legal questions

As the bans happened, abortion pills became a bigger part of the equation.

They were involved in about half the abortions before Dobbs. More recently, it’s been closer to two-thirds of them, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute.

The uptick of that kind of abortion, usually involving a combination of two drugs, was underway before the ruling.

But now, it’s become more common for pill prescriptions to be made by telehealth. By the summer of 2024, about 1 in 10 abortions were via pills prescribed via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned.

As a result, the pills are now at the center of battles over abortion access.

This month, Texas sued a New York doctor for prescribing pills to a Texas woman via telemedicine. There’s also an effort by Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to roll back their federal approvals and treat them as “controlled dangerous substances,” and a push for the federal government to start enforcing a 19th-century federal law to ban mailing them.

Travel for abortion has increased

Clinics have closed or halted abortions in states with bans.

A network of efforts to get women seeking abortions to places where they’re legal has strengthened and travel for abortion is now common.

The Guttmacher Institute found that more than twice as many Texas residents obtained abortions in 2023 in New Mexico as New Mexico residents did. And as many Texans received them in Kansas as Kansans.

Abortion funds, which benefitted from “rage giving” in 2022, helped pay the costs for many abortion-seekers. But some funds have had to cap how much they can give.

The ban that took effect in Florida this year has been a game-changer

Florida, the nation’s third most-populous state, began on May 1 enforcing a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy.

That immediately changed the state from one that was a refuge for other Southerners seeking abortions to an exporter of people looking for them.

There were about 30% fewer abortions there in May compared with the average for the first three months of the year. And in June, there were 35% fewer.

While the ban is not unique, the impact is especially large. The average driving time from Florida to a facility in North Carolina where abortion is available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is more than nine hours, according to data maintained by Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economics professor.

Clinics have opened or expanded in some places

The bans have meant clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in some states.

But some states where abortion remains legal until viability – generally considered to be sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy — have seen clinics open and expand.

Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico are among the states with new clinics.

There were 799 publicly identifiable abortion providers in the U.S. in May 2022, the month before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. And by this November, it was 792, according to a tally by Myers, who is collecting data on abortion providers.

Myers said some hospitals that always provided some abortions have begun advertising it. So, they’re now in the count of clinics – even though they might provide few of them.

Lack of access to abortions during emergencies threatens patients’ lives

How hospitals handle pregnancy complications, especially those that threaten the lives of the women, has emerged as a major issue since Roe was overturned.

President Joe Biden’s administration said hospitals must offer abortions when they’re needed to prevent organ loss, hemorrhage or deadly infections, even in states with bans. Texas is challenging the administration’s policy and the U.S. Supreme Court this year declined to take it up after the Biden administration sued Idaho.

More than 100 pregnant women seeking help in emergency rooms were turned away or left unstable since 2022, The Associated Press found in an analysis of federal hospital investigative records.

Among the complaints were a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of Texas emergency room after staff refused to see her and a woman who gave birth in a car after a North Carolina hospital couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official told the AP earlier this year.
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BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — 2024 was a brutal year for the Amazon rainforest, with rampant wildfires and extreme drought ravaging large parts of a biome that’s a critical counterweight to climate change. 

A warming climate fed drought that in turn fed the worst year for fires since 2005. And those fires contributed to deforestation, with authorities suspecting some fires were set to more easily clear land to run cattle. 

The Amazon is twice the size of India and sprawls across eight countries and one territory, storing vast amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm the planet. It has about 20% of the world’s fresh water and astounding biodiversity, including 16,000 known tree species. But governments have historically viewed it as an area to be exploited, with little regard for sustainability or the rights of its Indigenous peoples, and experts say exploitation by individuals and organized crime is rising at alarming rates. 

“The fires and drought experienced in 2024 across the Amazon rainforest could be ominous indicators that we are reaching the long-feared ecological tipping point,” said Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, an organization that works to protect the rainforest. “Humanity’s window of opportunity to reverse this trend is shrinking, but still open.” 

There were some bright spots. The level of Amazonian forest loss fell in both Brazil and Colombia. And nations gathered for the annual United Nations conference on biodiversity agreed to give Indigenous peoples more say in nature conservation decisions. 

“If the Amazon rainforest is to avoid the tipping point, Indigenous people will have been a determinant factor,” Miller said. 

Wildfires and extreme drought 

 

Forest loss in Brazil’s Amazon — home to the largest swath of this rainforest — dropped 30.6% compared to the previous year, the lowest level of destruction in nine years. The improvement under leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva contrasted with deforestation that hit a 15-year high under Lula’s predecessor, far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who prioritized agribusiness expansion over forest protection and weakened environmental agencies. 

In July, Colombia reported historic lows in deforestation in 2023, driven by a drop in environmental destruction. The country’s environment minister, Susana Muhamad, warned that 2024’s figures may not be as promising because a significant rise in deforestation had already been recorded by July due to dry weather caused by El Nino, a weather phenomenon that warms the central Pacific. Illegal economies continue to drive deforestation in the Andean nation. 

“It’s impossible to overlook the threat posed by organized crime and the economies they control to Amazon conservation,” said Bram Ebus, a consultant for Crisis Group in Latin America. “Illegal gold mining is expanding rapidly, driven by soaring global prices, and the revenues of illicit economies often surpass state budgets allocated to combat them.” 

In Brazil, large swaths of the rainforest were draped in smoke in August from fires raging across the Amazon, Cerrado savannah, Pantanal wetland and the state of Sao Paulo. Fires are traditionally used for deforestation and for managing pastures, and those man-made blazes were largely responsible for igniting the wildfires. 

For a second year, the Amazon River fell to desperate lows, leading some countries to declare a state of emergency and distribute food and water to struggling residents. The situation was most critical in Brazil, where one of the Amazon River’s main tributaries dropped to its lowest level ever recorded. 

Cesar Ipenza, an environmental lawyer who lives in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, said he believes people are becoming increasingly aware of the Amazon’s fundamental role “for the survival of society as a whole.” But, like Miller, he worries about a “point of no return of Amazon destruction.” 

It was the worst year for Amazon fires since 2005, according to nonprofit Rainforest Foundation U.S.  Between January and October, an area larger than the state of Iowa — about 15.1 million hectares of Brazil’s Amazon — burned. Bolivia had a record number of fires in the first 10 months of the year. 

“Forest fires have become a constant, especially in the summer months and require particular attention from the authorities who don’t how to deal with or respond to them,” Ipenza said. 

Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Guyana also saw a surge in fires this year. 

Indigenous voices, rights made headway 

The United Nations conference on biodiversity — this year known as COP16 — was hosted by Colombia. The meetings put the Amazon in the spotlight and a historic agreement was made to give Indigenous groups more of a voice on nature conservation decisions, a development that builds on a growing movement to recognize Indigenous people’s role in protecting land and combating climate change. 

Both Ebus and Miller saw promise in the appointment of Martin von Hildebrand as the new secretary general for the Amazon Treaty Cooperation Organization, announced during COP16. 

“As an expert on Amazon communities, he will need to align governments for joint conservation efforts. If the political will is there, international backers will step forward to finance new strategies to protect the world’s largest tropical rainforest,” Ebus said. 

Ebus said Amazon countries need to cooperate more, whether in law enforcement, deploying joint emergency teams to combat forest fires, or providing health care in remote Amazon borderlands. But they need help from the wider world, he said. 

“The well-being of the Amazon is a shared global responsibility, as consumer demand worldwide fuels the trade in commodities that finance violence and environmental destruction,” he said. 

Next year marks a critical moment for the Amazon, as Belem do Para in northern Brazil hosts the first United Nations COP in the region that will focus on climate. 

“Leaders from Amazon countries have a chance to showcase strategies and demand tangible support,” Ebus said. 
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As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its third year, centers focused on soldiers’ rehabilitation and mental health are appearing across Ukraine. An active serviceman started one such place in his native village in the Carpathian Mountains. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. Videographer and video editor: Yuriy Dankevych
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A different approach to energy is at the center of President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to bring down the cost of living for Americans. But as VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, Trump’s plans could be complicated by a complex global interdependence on oil and gas supplies.
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WASHINGTON — Changes are coming to the cold and cough aisle of your local pharmacy: U.S. officials are moving to phase out the leading decongestant found in hundreds of over-the-counter medicines, concluding that it doesn’t actually relieve nasal congestion.

Phenylephrine is used in popular versions of Sudafed, Dayquil and other medications, but experts have long questioned its effectiveness. Last month the Food and Drug Administration formally proposed revoking its use in pills and liquid solutions, kicking off a process that’s likely to force drugmakers to remove or reformulate products.

It’s a win for skeptical academics, including researchers at the University of Florida who petitioned the FDA to revisit the drug’s use in 2007 and again in 2015. For consumers it will likely mean switching to alternatives, including an older decongestant that was moved behind the pharmacy counter nearly 20 years ago.

Doctors say Americans will be better off without phenylephrine, which is often combined with other medicines to treat cold, flu, fever and allergies.

“People walk into the drugstore today and see 55,000 medicines on the shelf and they pick one that is definitely not going to work,” said Dr. Brian Schroer of the Cleveland Clinic. “You take away that option and it will be easier for them to self-direct toward products that really will help them.”

Why is FDA doing this now?

The FDA decision was expected after federal advisers last year voted unanimously that oral phenylephrine medications haven’t been shown to relieve congestion.

Experts reviewed several recent, large studies indicating that phenylephrine was no better than a placebo at clearing nasal passageways. They also revisited studies from the 1960s and 1970s that supported the drug’s initial use, finding numerous flaws and questionable data.

The panel’s opinion only applied to phenylephrine in oral medications, which account for roughly $1.8 billion in annual U.S. sales. The drug is still considered effective in nasal sprays, though those are much less popular.

Phenylephrine wasn’t always the top choice for cold and allergy products. Many were originally formulated with a different drug, pseudoephedrine.

But a 2006 law required pharmacies to move pseudoephedrine products behind the counter, citing their potential to be processed into methamphetamine. Companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Bayer decided to reformulate their products to keep them readily available on store shelves — and labeled many of them as “PE” versions of familiar brand names.

What are some alternatives for congestion?

Consumers who still want to take pills or syrups for relief will probably need to head to the pharmacy counter — where the pseudoephedrine-containing versions of Sudafed, Claritin D and other products remain available without a prescription. Purchasers need to provide a photo ID.

Beyond those products, most of the other options are over-the-counter nasal sprays or solutions.

Saline drops and rinses are a quick way to clear mucus from the nose. For long-term relief from seasonal stuffiness, itching and sneezing, many doctors recommend nasal steroids, sold as Flonase, Nasacort and Rhinocort.

“These medicines are by far the most effective daily treatment for nasal congestion and stuffiness,” Schroer said. “The biggest issue is they’re not great when used on an as-needed basis.”

Nasal steroids generally have to be used daily to be highly effective. For short-term relief, patients can try antihistamine sprays, such as Astepro, which are faster acting.

Phenylephrine-based sprays will also remain on pharmacy shelves.

Why doesn’t phenylephrine work when taken by mouth?

The experts who challenged the drug’s effectiveness say it’s quickly broken down and rendered ineffective when it hits the stomach.

“This is a good drug, but not when it’s swallowed,” said Leslie Hendeles, professor emeritus at the University of Florida’s College of Pharmacy, where he co-authored several papers on the ingredient. “It’s inactivated in the gut and doesn’t get into the bloodstream, so it can’t get to the nose.”

When Hendeles and his colleagues first petitioned the FDA on phenylephrine, they suggested a higher dose might be effective. But subsequent studies showed that even doses 400% higher than those currently recommended don’t treat stuffiness.

The FDA and other researchers concluded that pushing the dosage even higher might carry safety risks.

“If you’re using very high doses, the risk is raising blood pressure so high that it could be hazardous to patients,” said Randy Hatton, a University of Florida professor who co-led the research on phenylephrine.

Because of its cardiovascular effects, the drug is sometimes used to treat dangerously low blood pressure during surgery, Hatton noted.

What happens next?

Oral phenylephrine medicines will still be with us for a while.

Government regulators must follow a public, multistep process to remove the ingredient from FDA’s list of drugs approved for over-the-counter decongestants.

For six months, the FDA must take comments on its proposal, including from consumers and companies. Then, the FDA must review the feedback before writing a final order. Even after that decision is finalized, companies will likely have a year or more to remove or reformulate products.

Drugmakers could further delay the process by requesting additional FDA hearings.

For now, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association — which represents medicine makers — wants the products to stay available, saying Americans deserve “the option to choose the products they prefer for self-care.”

Hatton says he and his colleagues disagree: “Our position is that choosing from something that doesn’t work isn’t really a choice.” 
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A genetic analysis suggests the bird flu virus mutated inside a Louisiana patient who contracted the nation’s first severe case of the illness, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.

Scientists believe the mutations may allow the virus to better bind to receptors in the upper airways of humans — something they say is concerning but not a cause for alarm.

Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious-disease researcher, likened this binding interaction to a lock and key. To enter a cell, the virus needs to have a key that turns the lock, and this finding means the virus may be changing to have a key that might work.

“Is this an indication that we may be closer to seeing a readily transmitted virus between people? No,” Osterholm said. “Right now, this is a key that sits in the lock, but it doesn’t open the door.”

The virus has been causing sporadic, mostly mild illnesses in people in the United States; nearly all of those infected worked on dairy or poultry farms.

The patient in the U.S. state of Louisiana was hospitalized in critical condition with severe respiratory symptoms from bird flu after coming in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. The person, who has not been identified, is older than 65 and has underlying medical problems, officials said earlier this month.

The CDC stressed there has been no known transmission of the virus from the Louisiana patient to anyone else. The agency said its findings about the mutations were “concerning,” but the risk to the general public from the outbreak “has not changed and remains low.”

Still, Osterholm said, scientists should continue to follow what’s happening with mutations carefully.

“There will be additional influenza pandemics, and they could be much worse than we saw with COVID,” he said. “We know that the pandemic clock is ticking. We just don’t know what time it is.”
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Health care organizations may be required to bolster their cybersecurity to better prevent sensitive information from being leaked by cyberattacks like the ones that hit Ascension and UnitedHealth, a senior White House official said Friday.

Anne Neuberger, the U.S. deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, told reporters that proposed requirements are necessary in light of the massive number of Americans whose data has been affected by large breaches of health care information. The proposals include encrypting data so it cannot be accessed, even if leaked, and requiring compliance checks to ensure networks meet cybersecurity rules.

The full proposed rule was posted to the Federal Register on Friday, and the Department of Health and Human Services posted a more condensed breakdown on its website.

She said that the health care information of more than 167 million people was affected in 2023 as a result of cybersecurity incidents.

The proposed rule from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) within HHS would update standards under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and would cost an estimated $9 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in years two through five, Neuberger said.

“We’ve made some significant proposals that we think will improve cybersecurity and ultimately everyone’s health information, if any of these proposals are ultimately finalized,” an OCR spokesperson told Reuters late Friday. The next step in the process is a 60-day public comment period before any final decisions will be made.

Large health care breaches caused by hacking and ransomware have increased by 89% and 102%, respectively, since 2019, Neuberger said.

“In this job, one of the most concerning and really troubling things we deal with is hacking of hospitals, hacking of health care data,” she said.

Hospitals have been forced to operate manually and Americans’ sensitive health care data, mental health information and other information are “being leaked on the dark web with the opportunity to blackmail individuals,” Neuberger said.
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washington — Cosmetics companies would have to take extra steps to ensure that any products containing talc are free of asbestos under a federal rule proposed Thursday.

The proposal from the Food and Drug Administration and mandated by Congress is intended to reassure consumers about the safety of makeup, baby powder and other personal care products.

It follows years of lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and other companies alleging links between talc-based baby powder and cancer.

Despite the lawsuits, research has found mixed evidence of a potential link between cancer and talc, although the possibility has been recognized for decades because of how it is mined.

Talc is a mineral used to absorb moisture or improve the texture, feel and color of cosmetics. It is mined from underground deposits that are sometimes located near the toxic mineral asbestos. The risk of cross contamination has long been recognized by cosmetic companies.

But recent FDA-sponsored testing hasn’t uncovered any safety issues. Since 2021, laboratory analysis of more than 150 cosmetics samples has come back negative for asbestos, according to the FDA.

Still, concerns about the risk prompted Congress to pass a 2023 law requiring the FDA to release new industry standards for asbestos testing.

Dr. Linda Katz, director of the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors, said in a statement that the agency has “carefully considered the scientific evidence and complex policy issues related to detecting and identifying asbestos in talc and talc-containing cosmetic products.”

“We believe that the proposed testing techniques are appropriate methods to detect asbestos to help ensure the safety of talc-containing cosmetic products,” Katz said.

The long-running litigation against J&J alleges that the company’s talc baby powder caused women to develop ovarian cancer, when used for feminine hygiene.

A J&J subsidiary has proposed paying roughly $8 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits. As part of the deal, the subsidiary would declare bankruptcy, although that proposal has been challenged in court by the Justice Department.

J&J removed talc from its baby powder in the U.S. market in 2020 and then internationally in 2023. The company says it continues to stand by the safety of its products.

Determining the root cause of cancer is difficult, especially in cases of ovarian cancer, which is a relatively rare form of the disease. Even large studies in thousands of women might not gather enough data to show a clear connection or definitively rule one out. The American Cancer Society says that if there is an increased risk of cancer due to talc, “it is likely to be very small.”
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday its analysis of samples from the first severe case of bird flu in the country last week showed mutations not seen in samples from an infected backyard flock on the patient’s property.

The CDC said the patient’s sample showed mutations in the hemagglutinin (HA) gene, the part of the virus that plays a key role in it attaching to host cells.

The health body said the risk to the public from the outbreak has not changed and remains low.

Last week, the United States reported its first severe case of the virus, in a Louisiana resident above the age of 65, who was suffering from severe respiratory illness.

The patient was infected with the D1.1 genotype of the virus that was recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States, and not the B3.13 genotype detected in dairy cows, human cases and some poultry in multiple states.

The mutations seen in the patient are rare but have been reported in some cases in other countries and most often during severe infections. One of the mutations was also seen in another severe case from British Columbia, Canada.

No transmission from the patient in Louisiana to other persons has been identified, the CDC said. 
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London — King Charles thanked the medics who have cared for him and his daughter-in-law Kate, after they both underwent treatment for cancer this year, in a Christmas Day message that touched on global conflicts and the summer’s riots in Britain.

In his third Christmas TV broadcast since becoming king, Charles struck an unusually personal tone for the royal seasonal message, a tradition that dates back to a radio speech by George V in 1932.

The year has been traumatic for the royals after Buckingham Palace said in February the 76-year-old had been diagnosed with an unspecified form of cancer detected in tests after a corrective procedure for an enlarged prostate.

A month later, Kate, the wife of his son and heir Prince William, said she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy for cancer that concluded in September. William has said the year has been brutal for the family.

“All of us go through some form of suffering at some stage in our life, be it mental or physical,” Charles, who became king in 2022 after the death of Queen Elizabeth, said.

His words were accompanied by footage of a visit he made to a cancer treatment center on returning to public duties in April and of one of Kate’s first engagements when she resumed working.

“From a personal point of view, I offer special heartfelt thanks to the selfless doctors and nurses who this year have supported me and other members of my family through the uncertainties and anxieties of illness, and have helped provide the strength, care and comfort we have needed,” Charles said.

“I am deeply grateful too to all those who have offered us their own kind words of sympathy and encouragement,” he said in the pre-recorded broadcast that was filmed at an ornate chapel of a former London hospital.

Last week, a palace source said the king’s treatment was progressing well and would continue into next year.

Earlier on Wednesday, Charles was joined by his family, including Kate, William and their children, for a traditional church service on his Sandringham estate in eastern England.

Charles’ brother Prince Andrew, who was embroiled in another scandal this month when a close business associate was banned from Britain over government suspicions he was a Chinese agent, was a notable absentee from the royal get-together.

Diversity a strength

The king spoke about nationwide riots, which broke out following the murder in July of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed event in northern England, and mainly targeted mosques and immigrants.

“Diversity of culture, ethnicity and faith provide strength, not weakness”, he said.

“I felt a deep sense of pride here in the United Kingdom when in response to anger and lawlessness in several towns this summer, communities came together not to repeat these behaviors, but to repair, to repair not just buildings, but relationships,” he said.

Charles also referenced ongoing wars.

“On this Christmas Day, we cannot help but think of those for whom the devastating effects of conflict in the Middle East, in central Europe, in Africa and elsewhere, pose a daily threat to so many people’s lives and livelihoods,” he said.
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WASHINGTON — NASA’s pioneering Parker Solar Probe made history Tuesday, flying closer to the sun than any other spacecraft, with its heat shield exposed to scorching temperatures topping 930 degrees Celsius (1,700 degrees Fahrenheit). 

Launched in August 2018, the spaceship is on a seven-year mission to deepen scientific understanding of our star and help forecast space-weather events that can affect life on Earth. 

Tuesday’s historic flyby should have occurred at precisely 11:53 Greenwich Mean Time, although mission scientists will have to wait until Friday for confirmation as they lose contact with the craft for several days due to its proximity to the sun. 

“Right now, Parker Solar Probe is flying closer to a star than anything has ever been before,” at 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) away, NASA official Nicky Fox said in a video on social media Tuesday morning.  

“It is just a total ‘yay, we did it,’ moment.” 

If the distance between Earth and the sun is the equivalent to the length of an American football field, 109.7 meters, the spacecraft should have been about four meters from the end zone at the moment of closest approach — known as perihelion. 

“This is one example of NASA’s bold missions, doing something that no one else has ever done before to answer long-standing questions about our universe,” Parker Solar Probe program scientist Arik Posner said in a statement on Monday. 

“We can’t wait to receive that first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving the science data in the coming weeks.” 

So effective is the heat shield that the probe’s internal instruments remain near room temperature — around 29 C (85 F) — as it explores the sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona. 

Parker will also be moving at a blistering pace of around 690,000 kilometers per hour (430,000 miles per hourph), fast enough to fly from the U.S. capital, Washington, to Japan’s Tokyo in under a minute. 

“Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory,” said Nick Pinkine, mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.  

“We’re excited to hear back from the spacecraft when it swings back around the sun.” 

By venturing into these extreme conditions, Parker has been helping scientists tackle some of the sun’s biggest mysteries: how solar wind originates, why the corona is hotter than the surface below, and how coronal mass ejections — massive clouds of plasma that hurl through space are formed. 

The Christmas Eve flyby is the first of three record-setting close passes, with the next two — on March 22 and June 19, 2025 — both expected to bring the probe back to a similarly close distance from the Sun. 
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NEW YORK — A NASA spacecraft aims to fly closer to the sun than any object sent before.

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 to get a close-up look at the sun. Since then, it has flown straight through the sun’s corona: the outer atmosphere visible during a total solar eclipse.

The next milestone: closest approach to the sun. Plans call for Parker on Tuesday to hurtle through the sizzling solar atmosphere and pass within a record-breaking 6 million kilometers of the sun’s surface.

At that moment, if the sun and Earth were at opposite ends of a football field, Parker “would be on the 4-yard line,” said NASA’s Joe Westlake.

Mission managers won’t know how Parker fared until days after the flyby since the spacecraft will be out of communication range.

Parker planned to get more than seven times closer to the sun than previous spacecraft, hitting 690,000 kph at closest approach. It’s the fastest spacecraft ever built and is outfitted with a heat shield that can withstand scorching temperatures up to 1,371 degrees Celsius.

It’ll continue circling the sun at this distance until at least September. Scientists hope to better understand why the corona is hundreds of times hotter than the sun’s surface and what drives the solar wind, the supersonic stream of charged particles constantly blasting away from the sun.

The sun’s warming rays make life possible on Earth. But severe solar storms can temporarily scramble radio communications and disrupt power.

The sun is currently at the maximum phase of its 11-year cycle, triggering colorful auroras in unexpected places.

“It both is our closest, friendliest neighbor,” Westlake said, “but also at times is a little angry.”
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The incoming Trump administration inherits efforts by the US space agency, NASA, to return astronauts to the surface of the moon and is turning to commercial space entrepreneurs to help. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more.
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BEIRUT — Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad, industrial-scale manufacturing facilities of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon have been uncovered around the country, which experts say fed a $10 billion annual global trade in the highly addictive drug.

Among the locations used for manufacturing the drug were the Mazzeh air base in Damascus, a car-trading company in Latakia and a factory that once made snack chips in the Damascus suburb of Douma. Government forces seized the factory in 2018.

“Assad’s collaborators controlled this place. After the regime fell … I came here and found it on fire,” Firas al-Toot, the original owner of the factory, told The Associated Press. “They came at night and lit the drugs on fire but couldn’t burn everything.”

“From here, Captagon pills emerged to kill our people,” Abu Zihab, an activist with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the main group now ruling the country, said while his group gave journalists access to the site.

Syria’s nearly 14-year-old civil war fragmented the country, crumbled the economy and created fertile ground for the production of the drug. Militias, warlords and the Assad government transformed the production of Captagon from a small-scale operation run by criminal groups into a billion-dollar industrial revenue stream.

The recent ousting of Assad has disrupted these networks and has given a closer look at its operations — revealing the workings of a war economy that sustained Assad’s power over Syria. Experts say the change in Syria might create an opportunity to dismantle the Captagon industry.

How did Syria build its Captagon empire?

Captagon was first developed in Germany in the 1960s as a prescription stimulant for conditions like narcolepsy. It was later outlawed due to heart issues and its addictive properties.

Its amphetamine-like effects made it popular in the Middle East among both elites and fighters, as it enhanced focus and reduced fatigue.

Assad’s government recognized an opportunity in the cheaply manufactured drug amid Syria’s economic turmoil and the heavy sanctions imposed on it.

Captagon is produced through a simple chemical process that involves mixing amphetamine derivatives with excipients to form tablets, typically in makeshift labs.

The Captagon trade began industrializing around 2018-19 as the Assad regime — and other armed groups in Syria — invested in production facilities, warehouses and trafficking networks. This allowed Syria to emerge as the largest producer of Captagon globally, with some production also occurring in Lebanon.

Most seized consignments of Captagon originated from Syria, according to data by the New Lines Captagon Trade Project, an initiative of the New Lines Institute think tank.

Evidence of the Assad regime’s sponsorship of the Captagon industry is overwhelming, the report published in May said. The Security Office of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Arab Army, headed by Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher oversaw operations and created a coordinated production system, the report added.

Where and how was Captagon smuggled?

Captagon was smuggled across borders in trucks and cargo shipments. Sometimes the drugs were concealed in food, electronics and construction materials to evade detection.

The primary smuggling routes were Syria’s porous borders with Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, from which the drug was distributed throughout the region. The leading markets are wealthy Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In Lebanon, the Captagon trade has flourished, particularly near the Syrian border and in the Bekaa Valley. Lebanese authorities struggled to curb the flow of Captagon from Syria, which analysts say was facilitated by the Hezbollah militant group.

Following the discovery of crates of fruit meticulously packed with bundles of the drug hidden among pomegranates and oranges, Saudi Arabia and the UAE implemented bans on Lebanese agricultural products.

Captagon has also found its way as far as Southeast Asia and parts of Europe.

How much revenue did it produce for the Assad regime?

The annual global trade in Captagon had an estimated value of $10 billion, with the ousted Assad family’s annual profit reaching around $2.4 billion, according to Caroline Rose, director of the New York-based New Lines Institute Captagon Trade Project.

“Seeing the uncovering of so many industrial-scale facilities affiliated with the regime was shocking but not surprising. There was extensive evidence linking key regime-aligned cronies and Assad family members to the trade,” said Rose, whose organization tracks all publicly recorded Captagon seizures and lab raids.

The discovery of the facilities, she said, confirmed “the concrete relationship between Captagon and the former regime.”

The exact number of factories in Syria remains unclear, but experts and HTS members estimate that there are likely hundreds spread throughout the country.

Captagon as a narco-diplomatic tool

While neighboring countries have long sought to curb drug trafficking, their influence over Assad was limited.

Saudi Arabia imposed strict penalties for Captagon trafficking and enhanced border security, collaborating with other Gulf states to monitor smuggling routes. However, these efforts faced challenges from the complex networks operating across Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Captagon provided Assad’s government with leverage to end his political isolation. In recent years, as several Arab states reestablished ties with him, stopping the Captagon trade was a key demand in talks aimed at normalizing relations. In May 2023, Syria was readmitted to the Arab League, where it had been suspended since 2011 due to Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters.

Syria pledged to clamp down on smuggling, leading to the formation of a regional security coordination committee.

Shortly after the summit and in a possible sign of behind-the-scenes trade-offs, Jordan intensified surveillance along the Syrian border. Activists and experts attributed airstrikes on a known drug kingpin’s home and on a suspected Captagon factory near Daraa to Jordan, likely with Assad’s consent.

The future of Captagon in post-Assad Syria

Assad has turned Syria into “the largest Captagon factory in the world,” HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa stated in a victory speech at Damascus’s Umayyad Mosque on Dec. 8. “Today, Syria is being cleansed, thanks to the grace of Almighty God.”

While Assad and his circle may have been the primary beneficiaries, there is also evidence that Syrian opposition groups were involved in drug smuggling. Rebel groups, local militias and organized crime networks manufactured and smuggled the drug to finance their operations, analysts say.

“Likely, we will see a short-term supply reduction in the trade, with a decline in the size and frequency of seizures as industrial-scale production is largely halted. However, criminal actors are innovative, likely seeking out new locations to engage in production and smuggling, particularly as demand levels remain stable,” Rose said.

They may also “seek out alternative illicit trades to engage in instead,” she said.

In addition to dismantling the Captagon trade, the country’s transitional government should “establish programs for economic development that will incentivize Syrians to participate in the country’s formal, licit economic sphere,” Rose said. 
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NEW YORK — Teen drug use hasn’t rebounded from its drop during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the results from a large annual national survey released Tuesday.

About two-thirds of 12th graders this year said they hadn’t used alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes or e-cigarettes in the previous 30 days. That’s the largest proportion abstaining since the annual survey started measuring abstinence in 2017.

Among 10th graders, 80% said they hadn’t used any of those substances recently, another record. Among eighth graders, 90% didn’t use any of them, the same as was reported in the previous survey.

The only significant increase occurred in nicotine pouches. About 6% of 12th graders saying they’d used them in the previous year, up from about 3% in 2023.

Whether that has the makings of a new public health problem is unclear. The University of Michigan’s Richard Miech, who leads the survey, said: “It’s hard to know if we’re seeing the start of something, or not.”

The federally funded Monitoring the Future survey has been operating since 1975. This year’s findings are based on responses from about 24,000 students in grades eight, 10 and 12 in schools across the country. The survey is “one of the best, if not the best” source of national data for substance use by teens, said Noah Kreski, a Columbia University researcher who has studied teen drug use.

Early in the pandemic, students across the country were told not to go to schools and to avoid parties or other gatherings. They were at home, under parents’ supervision. Alcohol and drug use of all kinds dropped because experimentation tends to occur with friends, spurred by peer pressure, experts say.

As lockdowns ended, “I think everyone expected at least a partial rebound,” Miech said.

Even before the pandemic, there were longstanding declines in teen cigarette smoking, drinking and use of several types of drugs. Experts theorized that kids were staying home and communicating on smartphones rather than hanging out in groups, where they sometimes tried illicit substances.

But marijuana use wasn’t falling before the pandemic. And vaping was on the upswing. It was only during the pandemic that those two saw enduring declines, too.

Some experts wonder if the pandemic lockdowns had a deeper influence.

Miech noted that a lot of teens who experiment with e-cigarettes or drugs start in the 9th grade, sometimes because older adolescents are doing it. But the kids who were 9th graders during the lockdowns never picked up the habit, and never had the opportunity to turn into negative influencers of their younger classmates, he said.

“The pandemic stopped the cycle of new kids coming in and being recruited to drug use,” Miech said.

Mental health may also be a factor. There were increased reports of depression and anxiety in kids after the pandemic began. Depression is often associated with substance use, but some people with depression and anxiety are very wary of messing with drugs, said Dr. Duncan Clark, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who researches substance use in kids.

“Some teens with anxiety are worried about the effects of substances. They may also be socially inhibited and have less opportunity to use drugs,” Clark said. “It’s a complicated relationship.” 
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PARIS — France connected the Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor to its grid on Saturday morning, state-run operator EDF said, in the first addition to the country’s nuclear power network in 25 years.

The reactor, which began operating in September ahead of the grid connection, is going online 12 years later than originally planned and at a cost of about $13 billion — four times the original budget.

“EDF teams have achieved the first connection of the Flamanville EPR to the national grid at 11:48 a.m. The reactor is now generating electricity,” EDF said in a statement.

The Flamanville 3 European Pressurized Reactor is France’s largest at 1.6 gigawatts and one of the world’s biggest, along with China’s 1.75 GW Taishan reactor, which is based on a similar design, and Finland’s Olkiluoto.

It is the first to be connected to the grid since COVAX 2 in 1999 but is being brought into service at a time of sluggish consumption, with France exporting a record amount of electricity this year.

EDF is planning to build six new reactors to fulfill a 2022 pledge made by President Emmanuel Macron as part of the country’s energy transition plans, although questions remain around the funding and timeline of the new projects.
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TORONTO — Scientists have long known that light can sometimes appear to exit a material before entering it — an effect dismissed as an illusion caused by how waves are distorted by matter.

Now, researchers at the University of Toronto, through innovative quantum experiments, say they have demonstrated that “negative time” isn’t just a theoretical idea, it exists in a tangible, physical sense, deserving closer scrutiny.

The findings, yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, have attracted both global attention and skepticism.

The researchers emphasize that these perplexing results highlight a peculiar quirk of quantum mechanics rather than a radical shift in our understanding of time.

“This is tough stuff, even for us to talk about with other physicists. We get misunderstood all the time,” said Aephraim Steinberg, a University of Toronto professor specializing in experimental quantum physics.

While the term “negative time” might sound like a concept lifted from science fiction, Steinberg defends its use, hoping it will spark deeper discussions about the mysteries of quantum physics.

Years ago, the team began exploring interactions between light and matter.

When light particles, or photons, pass through atoms, some are absorbed by the atoms and later re-emitted. This interaction changes the atoms, temporarily putting them in a higher-energy or “excited” state before they return to normal.

In research led by Daniela Angulo, the team set out to measure how long these atoms stayed in their excited state.

“That time turned out to be negative,” Steinberg said, meaning a duration less than zero.

To visualize this concept, imagine cars entering a tunnel: Before the experiment, physicists recognized that while the average entry time for 1,000 cars might be, for example, noon, the first cars could exit a little sooner, say 11:59 a.m. This result was previously dismissed as meaningless.

What Angulo and colleagues demonstrated was akin to measuring carbon monoxide levels in the tunnel after the first few cars emerged and finding that the readings had a minus sign in front of them.

The experiments, conducted in a cluttered basement laboratory bristling with wires and aluminum-wrapped devices, took over two years to optimize. The lasers used had to be carefully calibrated to avoid distorting the results.

Still, Steinberg and Angulo are quick to clarify: No one is claiming time travel is a possibility.

“We don’t want to say anything traveled backward in time,” Steinberg said. “That’s a misinterpretation.”

The explanation lies in quantum mechanics, where particles like photons behave in fuzzy, probabilistic ways rather than following strict rules.

Instead of adhering to a fixed timeline for absorption and re-emission, these interactions occur across a spectrum of possible durations, some of which defy everyday intuition.

Critically, the researchers say, this doesn’t violate Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which dictates that nothing can travel faster than light. These photons carried no information, sidestepping any cosmic speed limits.

The concept of “negative time” has drawn both fascination and skepticism, particularly from prominent voices in the scientific community.

German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, for one, criticized the work in a YouTube video viewed by more than 250,000 people, noting, “The negative time in this experiment has nothing to do with the passage of time — it’s just a way to describe how photons travel through a medium and how their phases shift.”

Angulo and Steinberg pushed back, arguing that their research addresses crucial gaps in understanding why light doesn’t always travel at a constant speed.

Steinberg acknowledged the controversy surrounding their paper’s provocative headline but pointed out that no serious scientist has challenged the experimental results.

“We’ve made our choice about what we think is a fruitful way to describe the results,” he said, adding that while practical applications remain elusive, the findings open new avenues for exploring quantum phenomena. 
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NEW YORK — The U.S. flu season is under way, with cases surging across much of the country, health officials said Friday. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted sharp increases in several measures, including lab tests and emergency room visits. 

“It’s been increasing at a pretty steady pace now for the past several weeks. So yeah, we are certainly in flu season now,” said the CDC’s Alicia Budd. 

Thirteen states reported high or very high levels of flu-like illness last week, about double from the week before. One is Tennessee, where a sickness spike is hitting the Nashville area, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University. 

“Flu has been increasing, but just this last week has exploded,” Schaffner said. He noted that in a local clinic that serves as an indicator of illness trends, as many as a quarter of the patients have flu symptoms. 

Louisiana is another early hot spot. 

“Just this week is really that turning point where people are out because of the flu,” said Dr. Catherine O’Neal, an infectious diseases doctor at the largest private hospital in the state, Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. “You hear parents saying, ‘I can’t come to work because of the flu’ and ‘Where can I get a flu test?’” 

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

The most recent CDC data show COVID-19 hospitalizations have been declining since summer. COVID-19 activity is moderate nationally, but high in the Midwest, according to CDC wastewater data. 

RSV hospitalizations started rising before flu did and now show signs of possibly leveling off, but they remain a little more common than admissions for flu. Overall, RSV activity is low nationally, but high in the South, the wastewater data show. 

The CDC called the start of flu season based on several indicators, including lab results for patients in hospitals and doctor’s offices, and the percentage of emergency department visits that had a discharge diagnosis of flu. 

No flu strain seems to be dominant, and it’s too early in the season to know how good a match the flu vaccine will be, Budd said. 

Last winter’s flu season was considered “moderate” overall, but it was long — 21 weeks — and the CDC estimated there were 28,000 flu-related deaths. It was unusually dangerous for children, with 205 pediatric deaths reported. That was the highest number ever reported for a conventional flu season. 

The long season was likely a factor, Budd said. Another factor was a lack of flu vaccinations. Among the children who died who were old enough for flu vaccinations — and for whom their vaccination status was known — 80% were not fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. 

Vaccination rates for children are even lower this year. As of Dec. 7, about 41% of adults had received a flu vaccination, similar to the rate at the same point last year. The percentage is the same for kids, but for them that’s a drop from a year ago, when 44% were vaccinated against the flu, according to CDC data. 

Vaccination rates are lower still against COVID-19, with about 21% of adults and 11% of children up to date. 

Flu experts suggest everyone get vaccinated, especially as people prepare to attend holiday gatherings where respiratory viruses can spread widely. 

“All those gatherings that are so heartwarming and fun and joyous are also an opportunity for this virus to spread person to person,” Schaffner said. “It’s not too late to get vaccinated.”
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The Unforgettable Chorus in New York is using music to help people with memory loss reconnect with family, friends and themselves. Since 2011, the choir has been a beacon of hope, offering a space where those living with dementia can sing, participate and be part of a community. Johny Fernandez reports from New York City.
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NEW YORK — U.S. life expectancy jumped last year, and preliminary data suggests there may be another — much smaller — improvement this year.

Death rates fell last year for almost all leading causes, notably COVID-19, heart disease and drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday. That translated to adding nearly a year the estimated lifespan of Americans.

Experts note it’s part of a bounce-back from the COVID-19 pandemic. But life expectancy has not yet climbed back to prepandemic levels, and the rebound appears to be losing steam.

“What you’re seeing is continued improvement, but slowing improvement,” said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a University Minnesota researcher who studies death trends. “We are sort of converging back to some kind of normal that is worse than it was before the pandemic.”

Last year, nearly 3.1 million U.S. residents died, about 189,000 fewer than the year before. Death rates declined across all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men and women.

Provisional data for the first 10 months of 2024 suggests the country is on track to see even fewer deaths this year, perhaps about 13,000 fewer. But that difference is likely to narrow as more death certificates come in, said the CDC’s Robert Anderson.

That means that life expectancy for 2024 likely will rise — “but probably not by a lot,” said Anderson, who oversees death tracking at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, given death rates at that time. It’s a fundamental measure of a population’s health.

For decades, U.S. life expectancy rose at least a little bit almost every year, thanks to medical advances and public health measures. It peaked in 2014, at nearly 79 years, and then was relatively flat for several years. Then it plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to just under 76 1/2 years in 2021.

It rebounded to 77 1/2 years in 2022 and, according to the new report, to nearly 78 1/2 last year.

Life expectancy for U.S. women continues to be well above that of men — a little over 81 for women, compared with a little under 76 for men.

In the last five years, more than 1.2 million U.S. deaths have been attributed to COVID-19. But most of them occurred in 2020 and 2021, before vaccination- and infection-induced immunity became widespread.

The coronavirus was once the nation’s third leading cause of death. Last year it was the underlying cause in nearly 50,000 deaths, making it the nation’s No. 10 killer.

Data for 2024 is still coming in, but about 30,000 coronavirus deaths have been reported so far. At that rate, suicide may surpass COVID-19 this year, Anderson said.

Heart disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death. Some underappreciated good news is the heart disease death rate dropped by about 3% in 2023. That’s a much smaller drop than the 73% decline in the COVID-19 death rate, but heart disease affects more people so even small changes can be more impactful, Anderson said.

There’s also good news about overdose deaths, which fell to 105,000 in 2023 among U.S. residents, according to a second report released by CDC on Thursday.

The causes of the overdose decline are still being studied but there is reason to be hopeful such deaths will drop more in the future, experts say. Some pointed to survey results this week that showed teens drug use isn’t rising.

“The earlier you start taking a drug, the greater the risk that you could continue using it and the greater the risk that you will become addicted to it — and have untoward consequences,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the survey study. “If you can reduce the pipeline (of new drug users) … you can prevent overdoses.”
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GENEVA — International human and animal health experts warn the H5N1 avian influenza is evolving quickly and posing a global health threat as the virus is increasingly crossing species barriers and infecting a wide range of domestic and wild mammals.

“These developments pose significant challenges to animal, human and environmental health,” Dr. Gregorio Torres, veterinarian and head of the science department at the World Organization for Animal Health, told journalists in Geneva Tuesday.

He noted that avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, has been reported in 108 countries and territories over five continents in the last three years.

“And as of December 2024, the infection has been detected in over 70 species of domestic and wild mammals. This includes the ongoing detection of H5N1 in dairy cattle in the United States,” Torres said.

“So far, the close monitoring of the virus has not found markers that could suggest effective mammalian adaptation, but we know this can change at any time,” he said.

Most human cases in US

The World Health Organization this week reported 76 people were infected with the H5 avian influenza viruses in 2024, most of them among farm workers. Sixty-one of these cases occurred in the United States, which has reported outbreaks in wildlife, poultry and, more recently, dairy cattle.

“This is the first time we have seen the infections from dairy cattle to humans, and so many within the U.S.” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic threat management at WHO.

“In the U.S., all but two have direct links with infected animals, whether this was working on farms, whether this was part of culling exercises,” she said. “We have not seen any detection of human-to-human transmission among these cases.”

While much attention on the bird flu situation has focused on the United States this year, Van Kerkhove noted that Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China and Vietnam also reported outbreaks.

Based on available information, she said that the H5N1 viruses have remained avian viruses and have not adapted to spread among people, stressing that follow-up epidemiologic, virologic and serologic investigations “so far have not reported or identified human-to-human transmission.”

“However, this can change quickly as the virus is evolving, which is why we are actively assessing the situation and why surveillance is so critical,” she said.

300 million birds dead

Although the WHO assesses the current risk of infection for the public as low, it considers the public health risk for farm workers and others exposed to infected animals to be low-to-moderate. The WHO advises exposed groups to use personal protective equipment such as coveralls, respirator masks, eye protection, gloves and boots to minimize the risk.

Since October 2021, H5N1 has caused the deaths of more than 300 million birds worldwide, affecting the livelihood of millions of people.

“In addition to the direct impact on livelihoods, the economic burden on farmers can lead to reduced investments in biosecurity measures,” said Madhur Dhingra, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s senior infectious diseases animal health officer.

“This increases the risk and leads to a dangerous cycle of risk, vulnerability, and loss. … In regions heavily reliant on poultry as a primary protein source, HPAI [highly pathogenic avian influenza] poses a serious threat to food and nutrition security,” she said.

“The impacts of HPAI have spilled over into wildlife, with more than 500 bird species and over 70 mammalian species affected, including endangered animals like the California condor and polar bears,” she said. “The biodiversity impacts, particularly among seabirds and marine mammals, and disruption of fragile ecosystems, such as the Antarctic region, are concerning.”

Health experts agree that increased surveillance and close monitoring of the evolution of the H5N1 virus are essential to prevent the disease from spreading widely around the world.

“We are in an interpandemic period right now where we have a number of different zoonotic viruses, with avian influenza, H5N1 one of several,” Van Kerkhove said.

“While we are operating in a state of readiness, I think the world is not ready for another infectious disease, massive outbreak or pandemic because we have lived through COVID and it was incredibly traumatic, and it is still ongoing.

“We are recommending to our member states and national authorities to increase surveillance and vigilance in human populations, especially those who are occupationally exposed, for the possibility for infection, and, of course, doing thorough investigations around each and every human case,” she said.

In the meantime, she advised people to minimize their risk of becoming sick from bird flu by carefully watching what they eat and drink.

“Cows infected with the H5N1 virus have been reported to have high viral loads in their milk,” she said, so, it is advisable that people “consume pasteurized milk.”

“If pasteurized milk is not available, heating milk until it boils also makes it safe for consumption. Similarly, we recommend thoroughly cooking meat and eggs when in areas affected by avian flu outbreaks,” she said.
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HARARE, ZIMBABWE — A Zimbabwean national park is hosting relocated wildlife from a game park just outside the country’s capital after an autopsy report on Saturday confirmed that four rhinos and several other animals died after drinking contaminated lake water.

Tinashe Farawo, the spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, confirmed to VOA the death of four rhinos after drinking bacteria-polluted water at Lake Chivero Recreational Park, about 20 kilometers west of the capital, Harare.

“We are not only losing the rhinos, but [we] also lost some zebras, wildebeest and some birds,” Farawo said.

“We have tried to treat some of the rhinos, but unfortunately it seems like we are not managing at the moment. But we have made some temporary collective measures to make sure we do the best we can with this challenge,” he said, referring to the temporary transfer of wildlife away from the lake.

“We need to continue to make sure that at least we deal with the issue of pollution around Lake Chivero,” Farawo said.

Amkela Sidange, spokesperson for the Environmental Management Agency of Zimbabwe, said that, nationwide, about 415 megaliters of untreated sewage are being discharged into the environment daily.

The “city of Harare on its own … contributes about 219 megaliters of raw and partly treated sewer that is discharged into the environment on a daily basis, and that goes to show how huge the crisis is,” she said.

“We need the whole of government and societal approach,” Sidange said, adding that temporary solutions aren’t getting the job done.

Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume said he is counting on the central government to provide money to help the city provide proper sewer services, especially for those who live in “informal settlements.”

“We have over 150,000 informal settlements, and these informal settlements do not have sewer reticulation systems,” he said. “Therefore, their discharge is going straight into our water bodies.”

While the bickering continues among high-ranking officials about who is polluting Harare water with cyanobacteria, Farai Maguwu, director of the Center for Natural Resource Governance, is worried about the residents of Zimbabwe’s capital.

“There is a need to carry out scientific investigations about the water that is pumped into people’s homes by Harare city council and see if that water is still safe for drinking and inform the citizens of Harare accordingly,” Maguwu said.

On Tuesday, Mafume declared that Harare’s water was still meeting the World Health Organization’s standards and was safe for drinking.

The city council provides bottled water during its meetings and, for years now, many residents of Harare drink bottled water and water from boreholes.
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