Paris — Climate change played a key role in last year’s record-low levels of Antarctic sea ice, a study published on Monday found, marking an abrupt shift from the growth seen in previous decades.
Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) found that human-caused global warming resulted in a once-in-2,000-year low in ocean surface around the continent blanketed by ice.
Compared to an average winter over the last several decades, the maximum extent of Antarctic sea covered by ice shrank by two million square kilometers — an area four times the size of France, the BAS said.
“This is why we were so interested in studying what climate models can tell us about how often large, rapid losses like this are likely to happen,” the study’s lead author Rachel Diamond told AFP.
Scientists, having analyzed 18 distinct climate models, found that climate change quadrupled the likelihood of such large and rapid melting events.
Understanding the cause of sea ice melt is complex as there are many variables — from ocean water to air temperature to winds — that can effect it, scientists say.
But determining the role of climate change is critical since ice formation has global impacts from ocean currents to sea-level rise.
Sea ice, which forms from freezing salt water already in the ocean, has no discernible impact on sea levels.
But when highly reflective snow and ice give way to dark blue ocean, the same amount of the Sun’s energy that was bounced back into space is absorbed by water instead, accelerating the pace of global warming.
Recovery unlikely
Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice has been declining since satellite records began in the 1970s, the melt trend in Antarctica is a more recent phenomenon.
Antarctic sea ice increased “slightly and steadily” from 1978 until 2015, according to the BAS.
But 2017 brought a sharp decline, followed by several years of low ice levels.
In the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, BAS researchers also ran projections to see whether the ice would return.
“It doesn’t completely recover to original levels even after 20 years,” Diamond told AFP. That means “the average Antarctic sea ice may still stay relatively low for decades to come”, he added.
“The impacts… would be profound, including on local and global weather and on unique Southern Ocean ecosystems — including whales and penguins,” co-author Louise Sime said.
Previous studies by the BAS have shown that the abnormal melt has led to the deaths of thousands of emperor penguin chicks.
Reared on the ice sheets, they perished when they were plunged into the ocean before they had developed their waterproof feathers.
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London — The final report of the U.K.’s infected blood inquiry will be published Monday, nearly six years after it began looking into how tens of thousands of people contracted HIV or hepatitis from transfusions of tainted blood and blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.
The scandal is widely seen as the deadliest to afflict Britain’s state-run National Health Service since its inception in 1948, with around 3,000 people believed to have died as a result of being infected with HIV and hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver.
The report is expected to criticize pharmaceutical firms and medical practitioners, civil servants and politicians, although many have already died given the passage of time. It’s also set to pave the way to a huge compensation bill that the British government will be under pressure to rapidly pay out.
Had it not been for the tireless campaigners, many of whom saw loved ones die decades too soon, the scale of the scandal may have remained hidden forever.
“This whole scandal has blanketed my entire life,” said Jason Evans, who was four when his father died at the age of 31 in 1993 after contracting HIV and hepatitis from an infected blood plasma product.
“My dad knew he was dying and he took many home videos, which I’ve got and replayed over and over again growing up because that’s really all I had,” he added.
Evans was instrumental in the decision by then-Prime Minister Theresa May to establish the inquiry in 2017. He said he just “couldn’t let it go.” His hope is that on Monday, he and countless others, can.
Here is a look at what the scandal was about and what the report’s impact may be.
What is the infected blood scandal?
In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of people who needed blood transfusions, for example after childbirth or surgery, became exposed to blood tainted with hepatitis, including an as yet unknown kind that was later termed Hepatitis C, and HIV.
Those with haemophilia, a condition affecting the blood’s ability to clot, became exposed to what was sold as a revolutionary new treatment derived from blood plasma.
In the U.K., the NHS, which treats the majority of people, started using the new treatment in the early 1970s. It was called Factor VIII. It was more convenient when compared with an alternative treatment and was dubbed a wonder drug.
Demand soon outstripped domestic sources of supply, so health officials began importing Factor VIII from the U.S., where a high proportion of plasma donations came from prisoners and drug users who were paid to donate blood. That dramatically raised the risk of the plasma being contaminated.
Factor VIII was made by mixing plasma from thousands of donations. In this pooling, one infected donor would compromise the whole batch.
The inquiry heard estimates that more than 30,000 people were infected from compromised blood or blood products via transfusions or Factor VIII.
Missed chances
By the mid 1970s, there was evidence haemophiliacs being treated with Factor VIII were more prone to hepatitis. The World Health Organization, which had warned in 1953 of the hepatitis risks associated with the mass pooling of plasma products, urged countries not to import plasma.
AIDS, the biggest public health crisis since World War II, turned up in the early 1980s. Originally thought to be isolated to the gay community, it soon started appearing among haemophiliacs and those who had received blood transfusions.
Though the cause of AIDS — HIV — was not identified until 1983, warnings had been relayed to the U.K. government the year before that the causative agent could be transmitted by blood products. The government argued there was no conclusive proof. Patients were not informed of the risk and persisted with a treatment that put them in mortal danger.
Mistakes
The inquiry is expected to conclude that lessons from as early as the 1940s had been ignored.
Campaigners argue that since the 1940s it had been clear that heat killed hepatitis in another plasma product, albumin. They say authorities could have made Factor VIII safe before it was sold.
Evidence given to the inquiry suggested that authorities’ main objection was financial. Non-heated Factor VIII was prescribed by the NHS until late 1985.
Campaigners hope the inquiry’s core finding is that Factor VIII concentrates should never have been licensed for use unless heated.
Why now?
In the late 1980s, victims and their families called for compensation on the grounds of medical negligence. Though the government set up a charity to make one-off support payments to those infected with HIV in the early 1990s, it did not admit liability or responsibility and victims were pressured to sign a waiver undertaking not to sue the Department of Health to get the money.
Crucially, the waiver also prevented victims from suing for hepatitis, even though at that stage they only knew about their HIV infection. Years after signing, victims were told they had also been infected with hepatitis, mainly Hepatitis C.
There was no further group litigation until Evans, whose mother “crumbled” after his father’s death and who was called “AIDS boy” at school, brought a case claiming misfeasance in public office against the Department of Health.
Combined with political and media pressure, May announced the independent inquiry. It was, she said, “an appalling tragedy which should simply never have happened.”
Compensation
The government has accepted the case for compensation, with most estimates putting the final bill in the region of $12.7 billion. In October 2022, authorities made interim payments of 100,000 pounds to each survivor and bereaved partners.
The government is expected to announce different payments for different infections and address how and when bereaved families can apply for interim payments on behalf of the estates of people who have died.
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Washington — After a nearly two year hiatus, Blue Origin flew adventurers to space on Sunday including a former Air Force pilot who was denied the chance to be the United States’ first Black astronaut decades ago.
It was the first crewed launch for the enterprise owned and founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos since a rocket mishap in 2022 left rival Virgin Galactic as the sole operator in the fledgling suborbital tourism market.
Six people including the sculptor Ed Dwight, who was on track to become NASA’s first ever astronaut of color in the 1960s before being controversially spurned, launched around 09:36 am local time (1436 GMT) from the Launch Site One base in west Texas, a live feed showed.
Dwight — at 90 years, 8 months and 10 days — became the oldest person to ever go to space.
“This is a life-changing experience, everybody needs to do this,” he exclaimed after the flight.
Dwight added: “I thought I didn’t really need this in my life,” reflecting on his omission from the astronaut corps, which was his first experience with failure as a young man. “But I lied,” he said with a hearty laugh.
Mission NS-25 is the seventh human flight for Blue Origin, which sees short jaunts on the New Shepard suborbital vehicle as a stepping stone to greater ambitions, including the development of a full-fledged heavy rocket and lunar lander.
To date, the company has flown 31 people aboard New Shepard — a small, fully reusable rocket system named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
The program encountered a setback when a New Shepard rocket caught fire shortly after launch on September 12, 2022, even though the uncrewed capsule ejected safely.
A federal investigation revealed an overheating engine nozzle was at fault. Blue Origin took corrective steps and carried out a successful uncrewed launch in December 2023, paving the way for Sunday’s mission.
After liftoff, the sleek and roomy capsule separated from the booster, which produces zero carbon emissions. The rocket performed a precision vertical landing.
As the spaceship soared beyond the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 100 kilometers above sea level, passengers had the chance to marvel at the Earth’s curvature and unbuckle their seatbelts to float — or somersault — during a few minutes of weightlessness.
The capsule then reentered the atmosphere, deploying its parachutes for a desert landing in a puff of sand. However, one of the three parachutes failed to fully inflate, possibly resulting in a harder landing than expected.
Bezos himself was on the program’s first ever crewed flight in 2021. A few months later, Star Trek’s William Shatner blurred the lines between science fiction and reality when he became the world’s oldest ever astronaut aged 90, decades after he first played a space traveler.
Dwight, who was almost two months older than Shatner at the time of his flight, became only the second nonagenarian to venture beyond Earth.
Astronaut John Glenn remains the oldest to orbit the planet, a feat he achieved in 1998 at the age 77 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Blue Origin’s competitor in suborbital space is Virgin Galactic, which deploys a supersonic spaceplane that is dropped from beneath the wings of a massive carrier plane at high altitude.
Virgin Galactic experienced its own two-year safety pause because of an anomaly linked with the 2021 flight that carried its founder British tycoon Richard Branson into space. But the company later hit its stride with half a dozen successful flights in quick succession.
Sunday’s mission finally gave Dwight the chance he was denied decades ago.
He was an elite test pilot when he was appointed by President John F Kennedy to join a highly competitive Air Force program known as a pathway for the astronaut corps, but was ultimately not picked.
He left the military in 1966, citing the strain of racial politics, before dedicating his life to telling Black history through sculpture. His art, displayed around the country, includes iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and more.
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DENPASAR, BALI, INDONESIA — Elon Musk and Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin launched SpaceX’s satellite internet service for the nation’s health sector on Sunday, aiming to improve access in remote parts of the sprawling archipelago.
Musk, the billionaire head of SpaceX and Tesla TSLA.O, arrived on the Indonesian resort island of Bali by private jet before attending the launch ceremony at a community health centre in the provincial capital, Denpasar.
Musk, wearing a green batik shirt, said the availability of the Starlink service in Indonesia would help millions in far-flung parts of the country to access the internet. The country is home to more than 270 million people and three different time zones.
“I’m very excited to bring connectivity to places that have low connectivity,” Musk said, “If you have access to the internet you can learn anything.”
Starlink was launched at three Indonesian health centers on Sunday, including two in Bali and one on the remote island of Aru in Maluku.
A video presentation screened at the launch showed how high internet speeds enabled the real-time input of data to better tackle health challenges such as stunting and malnutrition.
Asked about whether he planned to also invest in Indonesia’s electric vehicle industry, Musk said he was focused on Starlink first.
“We are focusing this event on Starlink and the benefits that connectivity brings to remote islands,” he said, “I think it’s really to emphasize the importance of internet connectivity, how much of that can be a lifesaver.”
Indonesia’s government has been trying for years to lure Musk’s auto firm Tesla to build manufacturing plants related to electric vehicles as the government wants to develop its EV sector using the country’s rich nickel resources.
The tech tycoon is scheduled to meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday, where he will also address the World Water Forum taking place on the island.
Communications Minister Budi Arie Setiadi, who also attended the Bali launch, said Starlink was now available commercially, but the government would focus its services first for outer and underdeveloped regions.
Prior to Sunday’s launch, Starlink obtained a permit to operate as an internet service provider for retail consumers and had been given the go-ahead to provide networks, having received a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) permit, Budi Setiadi told Reuters.
SpaceX’s Starlink, which owns around 60% of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting earth, is dominant in the satellite internet sphere.
Indonesia is the third country in Southeast Asia where Starlink will operate. Malaysia issued the firm a license to provide internet services last year and a Philippine-based firm signed a deal with SpaceX in 2022.
Starlink is also used extensively in Ukraine, where it is employed by the military, hospitals, businesses and aid organizations.
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BENGALURU, India — Sizzling heat across Asia and the Middle East in late April that echoed last year’s destructive swelter was made 45 times more likely in some parts of the continent because of human-caused climate change, a study Tuesday found.
Scorching temperatures were felt across large swaths of Asia, from Gaza in the west — where over 2 million people face clean water shortages, lack of health care and other essentials amid the Israeli bombardment — to the Philippines in the southeast, with many parts of the continent experiencing temperatures well above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) several days in a row.
The study was released by the World Weather Attribution group of scientists, who use established climate models to quickly determine whether human-caused climate change played a part in extreme weather events around the world.
In the Philippines, scientists found the heat was so extreme it would have been impossible without human-caused climate change. In parts of the Middle East, climate change increased the probability of the event by about a factor of five.
“People suffered and died when April temperatures soared in Asia,” said Friederike Otto, study author and climate scientist at Imperial College in London. “If humans continue to burn fossil fuels, the climate will continue to warm, and vulnerable people will continue to die.”
At least 28 heat-related deaths were reported in Bangladesh, as well as five in India and three in Gaza in April. Surges in heat deaths have also been reported in Thailand and the Philippines this year according to the study.
The heat also had a large impact on agriculture, causing crop damage and reduced yields, as well as on education, with school vacations having to be extended and schools closed in several countries, affecting thousands of students.
Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam broke records for their hottest April day, and the Philippines experienced its hottest night ever with a low of 29.8 degrees Celsius (85.6 degrees Fahrenheit). In India, temperatures reached as high as 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit). The month was the hottest April on record globally and the 11th consecutive month that broke the hottest-month record.
Climate experts say extreme heat in South Asia during the pre-monsoon season is becoming more frequent and the study found that extreme temperatures are now about 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 Fahrenheit) hotter in the region because of climate change.
Internally displaced people, migrants and those in refugee camps were especially vulnerable to the searing temperatures, the study found.
“These findings in scientific terms are alarming,” said Aditya Valiathan Pillai, a heat plans expert at New Delhi-based think tank Sustainable Futures Collaborative. “But for people on the ground living in precarious conditions, it could be absolutely deadly.” Pillai was not part of the study.
Pillai said more awareness about heat risks, public and private investments to deal with increasing heat, and more research on its impacts are all necessary to deal with future heat waves.
“I think heat is now among the foremost risks in terms of personal health for millions across the world as well as nations’ economic development,” he said.
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mbale, uganda — Barbara Nabulo was one of three girls in her family. But when a sister died, her mother wailed at the funeral that she was left with just one and a half daughters.
The half was the ailing Nabulo, who at age 12 understood her mother’s meaning.
“I hated myself so much,” Nabulo said recently, recalling the words that preceded a period of sickness that left her hospitalized and feeding through a tube.
The scene underscores the lifelong challenges for some people with sickle cell disease in rural Uganda, where it remains poorly understood. Despite Nabulo’s knowledge of how the disease weakens the body, she spoke repeatedly of “the germ I was born with.”
Infections, pain, organ damage
Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited disorders in which red blood cells — normally round — become hard, sticky and crescent shaped. The misshapen cells clog the flow of blood, which can lead to infections, excruciating pain, organ damage and other complications.
The disease, which can stunt physical growth, is more common in malaria-prone regions, notably Africa and India, because carrying the sickle cell trait helps protect against severe malaria. Global estimates of how many people have the disease vary, but some researchers put the number between 6 million and 8 million, with more than 5 million living in sub-Saharan Africa.
The only cure for the pain sickle cell disease can cause is a bone marrow transplant or gene therapies such as the one commercially approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December. Last week, a 12-year-old boy last week became the first person to begin the therapy.
Those options are beyond the reach of most patients in this East African nation, where sickle cell disease is not a public health priority despite the burden it places on communities. There isn’t a national database of sickle cell patients. Funding for treatment often comes from donor organizations.
A patient, a caregiver
In a hilly part of eastern Uganda that’s a sickle cell hot spot, the main referral hospital looks after hundreds of patients arriving from nearby villages to collect medication. Many receive doses of hydroxyurea, a drug that can reduce periods of severe pain and other complications, and researchers there are studying its effectiveness in Ugandan children.
Nabulo, now 37, is one of the hospital’s patients. But she approaches others like her as a caregiver, too.
After dropping out in primary school, she has emerged in recent years as a counselor to fellow patients, speaking to them about her survival. Encouraged by hospital authorities, she makes weekly visits to the ward that has many children watched over by exhausted-looking parents.
Nabulo tells them she was diagnosed with sickle cell disease at 2 weeks old, but now she is the mother of three children, including twins.
Such a message gives hope to those who feel discouraged or worry that sickle cell disease is a death sentence, said Dr. Julian Abeso, head of pediatrics at Mbale Regional Referral Hospital.
Some men have been known to divorce their wives — or neglect them in search of new partners — when they learn that their children have sickle cell disease. Frequent community deaths from disease complications reinforce perceptions of it as a scourge.
Health workers encourage testing
Nabulo and health workers urge openness and the testing of children for sickle cell as early as possible.
Abeso and Nabulo grew close after Nabulo lost her first baby hours after childbirth in 2015. She cried in the doctor’s office as she spoke of her wish “to have a relative I can call mine, a descendant who can help me,” Abeso recalled.
“At that time, people here were so negative about patients with sickle cell disease having children because the complications would be so many,” the doctor said.
Nabulo’s second attempt to have a child was difficult, with some time in intensive care. But her baby is now a 7-year-old boy who sometimes accompanies her to the hospital. The twin girls came last year.
Speaking outside the one-room home she shares with her husband and children, Nabulo said many people appreciate her work despite the countless indignities she faces, including unwanted stares from people in the streets who point to the woman with “a big head” — a manifestation of the disease in her. Her brothers often behave as if they are ashamed of her, she said.
Once, she heard of a girl in her neighborhood whose grandmother was making frequent trips to the clinic over an undiagnosed illness in the child. The grandmother was hesitant to have the girl tested for sickle cell when Nabulo first asked her. But tests later revealed the disease, and now the girl receives treatment.
“I go to Nabulo for help because I can’t manage the illness affecting my grandchild,” Kelemesiya Musuya said. “She can feel pain, and she starts crying, saying, ‘It is here and it is rising and it is paining here and here.'”
Musuya sometimes seeks reassurance. “She would be asking me, ‘Even you, when you are sick, does it hurt in the legs, in the chest, in the head?’ I tell her that, yes, it’s painful like that,” Nabulo said.
Nabulo said she was glad that the girl, who is 11, still goes to school.
The lack of formal education is hurtful for Nabulo, who struggles to write her name, and a source of shame for her parents, who repeatedly apologize for letting her drop out while her siblings studied. One brother is now a medical worker who operates a clinic in a town not far away from Nabulo’s home.
“I am very happy to see her,” said her mother, Agatha Nambuya.
She recalled Nabulo’s swelling head and limbs as a baby, and how “these children used to die so soon.”
But now she knows of others with sickle cell disease who grew to become doctors or whatever they wanted to be. She expressed pride in Nabulo’s work as a counselor and said her grandchildren make her feel happy.
“At that time,” she said, recalling Nabulo as a child, “we didn’t know.”
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BEIJING — Cases of bird flu have been confirmed among wild fowl in western China, the agriculture ministry said Saturday, as concerns grow over a U.S. outbreak infecting cattle.
Two counties in Qinghai province confirmed 275 cases of H5 influenza among dead Pallas’s gull and other wild birds, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a notice on its website.
The ministry received a report on the cases from the China Animal Disease Control Center, and the national Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory confirmed the finding, the notice said.
The H5N1 outbreak among dairy cattle in at least nine U.S. states since late March has raised questions over whether it could spread to humans. No such cases have been reported.
The U.S. announced on May 11 that it would spend close to $200 million to fight the outbreak.
News of the China bird flu cases came as the nation’s anti-graft watchdog announced a corruption probe of the agriculture minister Saturday.
Tang Renjian, 61, is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law” by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and National Supervisory Commission, CCDI said on its website.
The term is CCDI’s typical euphemism for corruption.
The notice gave no further details.
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NEW DELHI — Parts of northwest India sweltered under scorching temperatures Saturday, with the capital, New Delhi, under a severe weather alert as extreme temperatures struck parts of the country.
India’s weather department expects heat wave conditions to persist across the north for the next few days and has put several states on high alert.
On Friday, parts of New Delhi reported up to 47.1 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit). The nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan also saw temperatures soar; they are likely to stay high over the next few days, said Soma Sen Roy, a scientist at the India Meteorological Department.
Roy cautioned people against going outdoors under the afternoon sun. He advised drinking plenty of water and wearing loose-fitting clothes. Those who are especially vulnerable, such as the elderly, should stay indoors, he said.
The extreme temperatures coincide with a six-week-long general election, with experts worried that the heat wave could increase health risks as people wait in long lines to cast their vote or candidates campaign aggressively in the outdoors. One minister fainted due to heat last month while addressing an election rally in Maharashtra state.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his main challenger, Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress Party, were expected to hold rallies in New Delhi later Saturday, as the city heads to the polls on May 25.
Satish Kumar, a 57-year-old rickshaw driver in the capital, said his work was suffering because of the heat. “People are not coming outside, [markets] are nearly empty,” he said.
Pravin Kamath, a 28-year-old who runs a cart selling cold drinks, complained that it was so hot he could hardly stand being outdoors. “But I must work. What can I do? I am poor, so I have to do it.”
The main summer months — April, May and June — are always hot in most parts of India before monsoon rains bring cooler temperatures. But the heat has become more intense in the past decade and is usually accompanied by severe water shortages, with tens of millions of India’s 1.4 billion people lacking running water.
A study by World Weather Attribution, an academic group that examines the source of extreme heat, found that a searing heat wave in April that struck parts of Asia was made at least 45 times more likely in some parts of the continent by climate change.
Climate experts say extreme heat in South Asia during the pre-monsoon season is becoming more frequent and the study found that extreme temperatures are now about 0.85 C (1.5 F) hotter in the region because of climate change.
At least 28 heat-related deaths were reported in Bangladesh, as well as five in India, in April. Surges in heat deaths have also been reported in Thailand and the Philippines this year, according to the study.
Extreme heat is fast becoming a public health crisis in India, with more than 150 people dying last year during heat waves. The government estimates nearly 11,000 people have died during heat waves this century, yet experts say such figures are likely a vast undercount.
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LONDON — A scenic fishing village in southwestern England was under instructions to boil its tap water for a third day on Friday after a parasite sickened more than 45 people in the latest example of Britain’s troubled water system.
Around 16,000 homes and businesses in the Brixham area of Devon were told to boil water after cryptosporidium, a microscopic parasite that causes diarrhea, was found in the water. At least 46 cases of cryptosporidiosis have been confirmed and more than 100 other people have reported similar symptoms, the U.K. Health Security Agency said. Symptoms can last more than two weeks.
Sally Dart, who runs a housewares shop near Brixham Harbor, said people in town first began feeling ill two weeks ago during a pirate festival.
“No one was checking the quality of the water, and we’ve all got sick and it’s stupid,” she said.
South West Water’s Chief Executive Susan Davy apologized for the outbreak and said technicians were working around the clock to identify and fix the problem that may have come from a pipe in a cattle pasture.
“I am truly sorry for the disruption and wider anxiety this has caused,” Davy said. “I know on this occasion we have fallen significantly short of what you expect of us.”
The crisis is unrelated to Britain’s larger ongoing water woes but emblematic of an aging system in distress.
Water companies have been under fire for more than a year to stop frequent sewage overflows into rivers and oceans that have literally caused a stink, sickened swimmers, polluted fishing streams and led to an outcry from the public to clean up their act.
An environmental group this week reported that 70,000 sewage releases spilled for a total of 400,000 hours along England’s coast last year. More than a quarter were within 3.2 kilometers of a swimming spot, Friends of the Earth said in its analysis of government data.
Clean water advocates have blamed the problems on Britain’s privatization of the water system in 1989. They say that companies have put shareholders ahead of customers and not spent enough to update outdated plumbing systems.
Thames Water, the largest of the companies, is on the brink of insolvency and its leaders have said it faces the risk of being nationalized after shareholders refused to inject more cash.
Earlier this week, in another sign of problems, millions of gallons of raw sewage were pumped into England’s largest lake. After a fault caused pumps to fail, backup systems then pumped human waste into Lake Windermere, a UNESCO World Heritage site, for 10 hours, the BBC reported.
The cryptosporidiosis outbreak is hardly the first time South West Water has encountered problems, according to authorities.
The company is facing charges in Plymouth Magistrates’ Court alleging 30 offenses for illegal water discharges or breaches of environmental permits between 2015 and 2021, the Environment Agency said.
The recent outbreak appears to come from a damaged air valve in a pipe that runs through a field where cows graze that is close to a reservoir, said Laura Flowerdew, a spokesperson for South West.
With word out about the outbreak, Dart said her business is down by about a third and other merchants complained about a loss of income as warmer weather arrives and a holiday weekend is just a week away.
“I would say it’s quiet and it shouldn’t be at this time of year,” Dart said.
A primary school was forced to close Thursday because it didn’t have clean drinking water. The water company is providing free bottled water at three locations and has increased compensation to customers from 15 pounds ($19) to 115 ($145).
Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said it’s likely more people will become ill with cryptosporidiosis in coming days or weeks because of a lag in the incubation period.
“Even if they have stopped all new infections by now, you would expect to see further cases for at least 10 days to two weeks,” he told the BBC.
Anthony Mangnall, a Conservative member of Parliament from the area, said residents are likely to have to boil water for another week. He said he was concerned with the water company’s response to the outbreak and vowed to hold it accountable.
“They have been slow to act and communication with customers has been very poor,” Mangnall said. “This has certainly undermined trust in our water network.”
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The effects of recent extreme weather in Southeast Asian countries are far-reaching, from school closures to drought and health advisories. While climate change is part of the problem, this year it was made worse by the cyclical weather pattern called El Nino. VOA’s Chris Casquejo explains.
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SYDNEY — Australian scientists say they have discovered how an enzyme “hidden in nature’s blueprint” could help develop climate-resilient crops able to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
An Australian study, by researchers from Australian National University and the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, focuses on a type of bacteria researchers call “tiny carbon superheroes.”
Cyanobacteria, a type of algae-like bacteria also called blue-green algae, are found in fresh and coastal waters, as well as oceans. They are commonly known for their toxic blooms in lakes and rivers.
Through the process of photosynthesis, Australian scientists say, they capture about 12% of the world’s carbon dioxide each year.
Their study says a carbon dioxide-concentrating mechanism in cyanobacteria lets them turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into sugars for cells to eat more quickly than most standard plants and crops.
Until now, the Australian team was unaware how critical an enzyme in cyanobacteria, called carboxysomal carbonic anhydrase, was to the process. The study says the mystery of how the enzyme maximizes the cyanobacteria’s ability to extract atmospheric carbon dioxide has been solved.
Ben Long, a senior lecturer in molecular plant biology at Australia’s University of Newcastle and is the study’s lead author.
He told VOA that the aim is to engineer crops that can absorb more greenhouse gases.
“We are actually interested in utilizing this CO2-concentrating mechanism from cyanobacteria, which we know is a remarkably efficiently system for capturing CO2 and we want to engineer that into plant cells to make plant cells able to capture CO2 far more effectively and efficiently,” Long said.
The research says that engineered plants that are more efficient at capturing carbon dioxide could increase crop yield, making global food systems that are more resilient to climate change.
Long says the findings should be part of international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.
“Every technology has to be brought to bear to try to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce CO2 in the atmosphere and I think to date we have not really focused much on those potential biological applications to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Long said.
The study has been published in the journal Science Advances.
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In Africa, about 15% of the population faces disability challenges despite advancements in technology. Limited infrastructure and high cost of assistive tech create barriers to digital access, leading to exclusion. A conference in Nairobi this week aims to help change that. Mohammed Yusuf reports.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — The Webb Space Telescope has discovered the earliest known merger of black holes.
These two gigantic black holes and their galaxies consolidated just 740 million years after the universe-forming Big Bang. It’s the most distant detection ever made of merging black holes, scientists reported Thursday.
One black hole is 50 million times more massive than our sun. The other is thought to be similar in size, but is buried in dense gas, which makes it harder to measure.
Until now, astronomers weren’t sure how supermassive black holes got so big.
The latest findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggest mergers are how black holes can grow so rapidly — “even at cosmic dawn,” said lead author Hannah Ubler of the University of Cambridge.
“Massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies from the very beginning,” Ubler said in a statement.
Launched in 2021 as the eventual successor to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Webb is the biggest and most powerful observatory ever sent into space. A joint U.S.-European project, the infrared observatory surveys the universe from a location 1.6 million kilometers from Earth.
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NEW YORK — The number of fatal overdoses in the U.S. fell last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Wednesday.
Agency officials noted that the data is provisional and could change after more analysis, and that they still expect a drop when the final counts are in. It would be only the second annual decline since the current national drug death epidemic began more than three decades ago.
Experts reacted cautiously. One described the decline as relatively small and said it should be thought of as part of a leveling off rather than a decrease. Another noted that the last time a decline occurred — in 2018 — drug deaths shot up in the years that followed.
“Any decline is encouraging,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends. “But I think it’s certainly premature to celebrate or to draw any large-scale conclusions about where we may be headed long term with this crisis.”
It’s also too soon to know what spurred the decline, Marshall and other experts said. Explanations could include shifts in the drug supply, expansion of overdose prevention and addiction treatment, and the grim possibility that the epidemic has killed so many that now there are basically fewer people to kill.
CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry called the dip “heartening news” and praised efforts to reduce the tally, but she noted that “there are still families and friends losing their loved ones to drug overdoses at staggering numbers.”
About 107,500 people died of overdoses in the U.S. last year, including American citizens and noncitizens who were in the country at the time they died, the CDC estimated. That’s down 3% from 2022, when there were an estimated 111,000 such deaths, the agency said.
The drug overdose epidemic, which has killed more than 1 million people since 1999, has had many ripple effects. For example, a study published last week in JAMA Psychiatry estimated that more than 321,000 U.S. children lost a parent to a fatal drug overdose from 2011 to 2021.
“These children need support” and are at a higher risk of mental health and drug use disorders themselves, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped lead the study. “It’s not just a loss of a person. It’s also the implications that loss has for the family left behind.”
Prescription painkillers once drove the nation’s overdose epidemic, but they were supplanted years ago by heroin and more recently by illegal fentanyl. The dangerously powerful opioid was developed to treat intense pain from ailments such as cancer but has increasingly been mixed with other drugs in the illicit drug supply.
For years, fentanyl was frequently injected, but increasingly it’s being smoked or mixed into counterfeit pills.
A study published last week found that law enforcement seizures of pills containing fentanyl are rising dramatically, jumping from 44 million in 2022 to more than 115 million last year.
It’s possible that the seizures indicate that the overall supply of fentanyl-laced pills is growing fast, not necessarily that police are whittling down the illicit drug supply, said one of the paper’s authors, Dr. Daniel Ciccarone of the University of California, San Francisco.
He noted that the decline in overdoses was not uniform. All but two of the states in the eastern half of the U.S. saw declines, but most Western states saw increases. Alaska, Washington and Oregon each saw 27% increases.
The reason? Many Eastern states have been dealing with fentanyl for about a decade, while it’s reached Western states more recently, Ciccarone said.
Nevertheless, some researchers say there are reasons to be optimistic. It’s possible that smoking fentanyl is not as lethal as injecting it, but scientists are still exploring that question.
Meanwhile, more money is becoming available to treat addiction and prevent overdoses, through government funding and legal settlements with drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies, Ciccarone noted.
“My hope is 2023 is the beginning of a turning point,” he said.
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A groundbreaking clinical trial is underway in South Africa, marking a pivotal moment in the fight against tuberculosis. The new vaccine could become the first to help prevent pulmonary TB, the most common form of the disease, in adolescents and adults. It would be the first new TB vaccine in more than a century. Zaheer Cassim has the story.
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Washington — The spectacular auroras that danced across the sky in many parts of the world over the weekend are fading, scientists said Monday, as the massive sunspot that caused them turns its ferocious gaze away from Earth.
Since Friday, the most powerful solar storm to strike our planet in more than two decades has lit up night skies with dazzling auroras in the United States, Tasmania, the Bahamas and other places far from the extreme latitudes where they are normally seen.
But Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at France’s Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur, told AFP that the “most spectacular” period of this rare event has come to an end.
The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun — came just after 1600 GMT Friday, according to the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The event was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 that caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged power infrastructure in South Africa.
Excitement over the phenomenon — and otherworldly photos of pink, green and purple night skies — broke out across the world, from Austria to Australia’s island state of Tasmania.
The storm had been forecast to intensify again until 0600 GMT Monday, the NOAA said, adding that auroras could be viewable as far south as New York.
But thousands of people who came out on Sunday night in the hope of seeing the aurora borealis over the Joshua Tree National Park in California instead saw the Milky Way. AFP pictures showed stars shining clearly in the night sky.
Lagadec said that while there were further solar outbursts on Sunday, it is unlikely that more auroras will be visible to the naked eye in lower latitudes such as in France.
“Only the most experienced photographers will be able to capture them” in such areas, said Lagadec, who was moved by witnessing an aurora during the event’s peak on Friday night.
The solar storm emanated from a massive sunspot cluster that is 17 times wider than our planet.
The storm has not ended, and auroras are expected to continue in the far northern or southern regions where they are normally visible.
But “the source of the storm is a sunspot that is now on the edge of the Sun, (so) we do not expect the next coronal mass ejections to head in Earth’s direction,” Lagadec said.
Scientists had already warned that the intensity of anything seen on Sunday night would unlikely reach the level of Friday’s show.
“This is likely the last of the Earth-directed CMEs from this particular monster sunspot,” Mathew Owens, a professor of space physics at the UK’s University of Reading, told AFP.
When charged particles from solar winds are captured by Earth’s magnetic field, they accelerate towards the planet’s magnetic poles, which is why auroras are normally seen there.
But during periods of heightened solar activity, the effects extend farther toward the equator.
Unlike during 2003’s solar storms, no major disruptions to power or communications networks appear to have been reported this time around.
Elon Musk’s satellite internet operator Starlink said on X that its thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit had “weathered the geomagnetic storm and remain healthy”.
Unlike solar flares, which travel at the speed of light and reach Earth in around eight minutes, CMEs travel at a more sedate pace, with officials putting the current average at 800 kilometers (500 miles) per second.
People with eclipse glasses can still look for the sunspot cluster during the day.
Fluctuating magnetic fields associated with geomagnetic storms induce currents in long wires, including power lines, which can lead to blackouts. Long pipelines can also become electrified.
Spacecraft are at risk from high doses of radiation, although the atmosphere prevents this from reaching Earth.
NASA can ask astronauts on the International Space Station to move to better-shielded places within the outpost.
Even pigeons and other species that have internal biological compasses can be affected.
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