YCLOAK

NEW YORK — The decline in U.S. drug overdose deaths appears to have continued this year, giving experts hope the nation is seeing sustained improvement in the persistent epidemic. 

There were about 97,000 overdose deaths in the 12-month period that ended June 30, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. That’s down 14% from the estimated 113,000 for the previous 12-month period. 

“This is a pretty stunning and rapid reversal of drug overdose mortality numbers,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends. 

Overdose death rates began steadily climbing in the 1990s because of opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. Provisional data had indicated a slight decline for 2023, and the tally released Wednesday showed that the downward trend has kept going. 

Of course, there have been moments in the last several years when U.S. overdose deaths seemed to have plateaued or even started to go down, only to rise again, Marshall noted. 

“This seems to be substantial and sustained,” Marshall said. “I think there’s real reason for hope here.” 

Experts aren’t certain about the reasons for the decline, but they cite a combination of possible factors. 

One is COVID-19. In the worst days of the pandemic, addiction treatment was hard to get, and people were socially isolated — with no one around to help if they overdosed. 

“During the pandemic we saw such a meteoric rise in drug overdose deaths that it’s only natural we would see a decrease,” said Farida Ahmad of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. 

Still, overdose deaths are well above what they were at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The recent numbers could represent the fruition of years of efforts to increase the availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, and addiction treatments such as buprenorphine, said Erin Winstanley, a University of Pittsburgh professor who researches drug overdose trends. 

Marshall said such efforts likely are being aided by money from settlements of opioid-related lawsuits, brought by state, local and Native American governments against drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies. Settlement funds have been rolling out to small towns and big cities across the U.S., and some have started spending the money on naloxone and other measures. 

Some experts have wondered about changes in the drug supply. Xylazine, a sedative, has been increasingly detected in illegally manufactured fentanyl, and experts are sorting out exactly how it’s affecting overdoses. 

In the latest CDC data, overdose death reports are down in 45 states. Increases occurred in Alaska, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. 

The most dramatic decreases were seen in North Carolina and Ohio, but CDC officials voiced a note of caution. Some jurisdictions have had lags in getting death records to federal statisticians — particularly North Carolina, where death investigations have slowed because of understaffing at the state medical examiner’s office. The CDC made estimates to try to account for incomplete death records, but the decline in some places may ultimately turn out not to be as dramatic as initial numbers suggest. 

Another limitation of the provisional data is that it doesn’t detail what’s happening in different groups of people. Recent research noted the overdose deaths in Black and Native Americans have been growing disproportionately larger. 

“We really need more data from the CDC to learn whether these declines are being experienced in all racial ethnic subgroups,” Marshall said.
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Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe has recorded new cases of cholera several months after declaring the end of an outbreak that killed more than 700 people over an 18-month period. 

On Wednesday, Zimbabwe confirmed a new outbreak of cholera has been recorded in the district of Kariba — on the border with Zambia — where 21 cases have been confirmed and one person died. 

Dr. Godfrey Muza, the Kariba district medical officer, said the government is working to contain the situation: 

“We have set up cholera equipment camp and also some oral rehydration points within the affected villages,” said Muza. “We are getting assistance from our local and regional partners like MSF [Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders] and UNICEF. And our teams are on the ground doing risk communication and community engagement activities on health promotion, hygiene promotion and assisting the community in terms of improving sanction.”  

In August, the Zimbabwe government declared that the 18-month long cholera outbreak was over. The outbreak  affected up to 35,000 people and claimed more than 700 lives.

Zimbabwe has dealt with cholera outbreaks in the past.  In 2008, an outbreak resulted in more than 98,000 cases and more than 4,000 reported deaths.  

Independent health experts such as Dr. Norman Matara of Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights said the government needs to address the conditions that enable the waterborne disease to spread. 

“In public health, we often say cholera is a disease of poverty which mainly affects people with inadequate access to safe water and basic sanitation,” said Matara. “In Zimbabwe, we have witnessed perennial cholera outbreaks in recent years and these outbreaks are being caused by a lack of safe drinking water supply and a broken-down sanitation system which leaves residents in densely populated communities surrounded by flowing sewer. This sewer will then contaminate alternative sources of water such as shower wells, streams, rivers and even boreholes resulting in people drinking or eating food contaminated with the cholera bacteria.” 

He said that those conditions have been chronic over the years in Zimbabwe, contributing to the repeated outbreaks. 

How does Zimbabwe get out of this cycle of recurring cholera outbreaks? 

“We need to make sure that our hospitals are well-supposed with the real addressing solutions and medicines so that people can be assisted,” said Matara. ” … Also, those high-risk communities, especially in towns and urban cities, we may give them the oral cholera vaccine so that they may be protected. In the long term, the government needs to invest more in proper sanitation facilities and infrastructure as well as making sure that people are provided with clean safe water for drinking and cooking.” 

Matara said he hopes the current outbreak is contained quickly and does not spread to other parts of Zimbabwe. 

But with raw sewage flowing in some streets of Harare, it might be a question of time.  
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BAKU, Azerbaijan — When more than two dozen world leaders deliver remarks at the United Nations’ annual climate conference on Wednesday, many have detailed their nations’ firsthand experience with the catastrophic weather that has come with climate change.

“Over the past year, catastrophic floods in Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as well as in southern Croatia have shown the devastating impact of rising temperatures,” said Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic. “The Mediterranean, one of the most vulnerable regions, calls for urgent action.”

The Greek prime minister said Europe and the world needs to be “more honest” about the trade-offs needed to keep global temperatures down.

“We need to ask hard questions about a path that goes very fast, at the expense of our competitiveness, and a path that goes some much slower, but allows our industry to adapt and to thrive,” he said. His nation this summer was hammered by successive heat waves after three years of below-average rainfall. In Greece, the misery included water shortages, dried-up lakes and the death of wild horses.

Other speakers on the list include Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose nation has seen deadly flooding this year from monsoon rains that scientists say have become heavier with climate change. Just two years ago, more than 1,700 people died in widespread flooding. Pakistan has also suffered from dangerous heat, with thousands of people hospitalized with heatstroke this spring as temperatures soared to 47 degrees Celsius.

Also on the list of speakers Wednesday is Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Edward Davis. Like many other countries in the Global South, the Bahamas has piled up debt from warming-connected weather disasters it did little to cause, including Hurricanes Dorian in 2019 and Matthew in 2016. Leaders have been seeking help and money from the Global North and oil companies.

Early on Wednesday, ministers and officials from African nations called for initiatives to advance green development on the continent and strengthen resilience to extreme weather events — from floods to droughts — across the region.

Plenty of big names and powerful countries are noticeably absent from COP29 this year. That includes the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries — a group responsible for more than than 70% of the heat-trapping gases emitted last year — were missing. The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — didn’t send their No. 1s. Neither did India and Indonesia.

But U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was there, and he announced an 81% emissions reduction target on 1990 levels by 2035, in line with the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. That’s up from the 78% the U.K. had already pledged.

The main focus of this year’s talks is climate finance — wealthier nations compensating poor countries for damages from climate change’s weather extremes, helping them pay to transition their economies away from fossil fuels and helping them with adaptation.
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TORONTO, canada — A teenager is in critical condition in a British Columbia children’s hospital, sick with Canada’s first presumptive human case of avian influenza.

“This was a healthy teenager prior to this, so no underlying conditions,” said provincial health officer Bonnie Henry in a news conference on Tuesday. “It just reminds us that in young people this is a virus that can progress and cause quite severe illness, and the deterioration that I mentioned was quite rapid.”

British Columbia health officials said on Saturday the province had detected Canada’s first human case of H5 bird flu in a teenager.

Henry said the province is still identifying the exact strain but assumes the case is H5N1.

The World Health Organization says H5N1’s risk to humans is low because there is no evidence of human transmission, but the virus has been found in an increasing number of animals, including cattle in the United States.

Henry would not disclose the teen’s gender or age but said the patient had first developed symptoms on November 2 and was tested on November 8, when admitted to a hospital. Symptoms included conjunctivitis, fever and coughing.

As of Tuesday, the teen was hospitalized with acute respiratory distress syndrome, she said.

The teen had no farm exposure but had been exposed to dogs, cats and reptiles, Henry said. No infection source had been identified. “That is absolutely an ongoing investigation.”

More severe illness takes place when the virus binds to receptors deep in the lungs, she said.

Public health officials had identified and tested about three dozen contacts and had not found anyone infected with the virus.

There has been no evidence that the disease is easily spread between people. But if that were to happen, a pandemic could unfold, scientists have said.

Earlier in November, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked that farm workers exposed to animals with bird flu be tested for the virus even if they did not have symptoms.

Bird flu has infected nearly 450 dairy farms in 15 U.S. states since March, and the CDC has identified 46 human cases of bird flu since April.

In Canada, British Columbia has identified at least 26 affected premises across the province, Henry said Tuesday, and numerous wild birds have tested positive.

Canada has had no cases reported in dairy cattle and no evidence of bird flu in samples of milk.
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BAKU, Azerbaijan — World leaders are converging Tuesday at the United Nations annual climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan although the big names and powerful countries are noticeably absent, unlike past climate talks which had the star power of a soccer World Cup.

But 2024’s climate talks are more like the International Chess Federation world championship, lacking recognizable names but big on nerd power and strategy. The top leaders of the 13 largest carbon dioxide-polluting countries will not appear. Their nations are responsible for more than 70% of 2023’s heat-trapping gases.

The world’s biggest polluters and strongest economies — China and the United States — aren’t sending their No. 1s. India and Indonesia’s heads of state are also not in attendance, meaning the four most populous nations with more than 42% of all the world’s population aren’t having leaders speak.

“It’s symptomatic of the lack of political will to act. There’s no sense of urgency,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. He said this explains “the absolute mess we’re finding ourselves in.”

Transition to clean energy

The world has witnessed the hottest day, months and year on record “and a master class in climate destruction,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the world leaders who did show up.

But Guterres held out hope, saying, in a veiled reference to Donald Trump’s re-election in the United States, that the “clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, no government can stop it.”

United Nations officials said in 2016, when Trump was first elected, there were 180 gigawatts of clean energy and 700,000 electric vehicles in the world. Now there are 600 gigawatts of clean energy and 14 million electric vehicles.

Host Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev kicked off two scheduled days of world leaders’ speeches by lambasting Armenia, western news media, climate activists and critics who highlighted his country’s rich oil and gas history and trade, calling them hypocritical since the United States is the world’s biggest oil producer. He said it was “not fair” to call Azerbaijan a “petrostate” because it produces less than 1% of the world’s oil and gas.

Oil and gas are “a gift of the God” just like the sun, wind and minerals, Aliyev said. “Countries should not be blamed for having them. And should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them.”

As the host and president of the climate talks, called COP29, Aliyev said his country will push hard for a green transition away from fossil fuels, “but at the same time, we must be realistic.”

Lack of star power

Aliyev, United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are the headliners of around 50 leaders set to speak on Tuesday.

There’ll also be a strong showing from the leaders of some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. Several small island nations presidents and over a dozen leaders from countries across Africa are set to speak over the two-day World Leaders’ Summit at COP29.

As a sense of how the bar for celebrity has lowered, on Tuesday morning photographers and video cameras ran alongside one leader walking through the halls of the meeting. It was the emergency management minister for host country Azerbaijan.

United Nations officials downplayed the lack of head of state star power, saying that every country is represented and active in the climate talks.

One logistical issue is that next week, the leaders of the most powerful countries have to be half a world away in Brazil for the G20 meetings. The United States recent election, Germany’s government collapse, natural disasters and personal illnesses also have kept some leaders away.

The major focus of the negotiations is climate finance, which is rich nations trying to help poor countries pay for transitioning their economies away from fossil fuels, coping with climate change’s upcoming harms and compensating for damages from weather extremes.

Nations are negotiating over huge amounts of money, anywhere from $100 billion a year to $1.3 trillion a year. That money “is not charity, it’s an investment,” Guterres said.

“Developing countries must not leave Baku empty-handed,” Guterres said. “A deal is a must.”
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OTTAWA, Ontario — Canada has detected its first presumptive case of H5 bird flu in a person, a teenager in the western province of British Columbia, health officials said Saturday.

The teenager likely caught the virus from a bird or animal and was receiving care at a children’s hospital, the province said in a statement.

The province said it was investigating the source of exposure and identifying the teenager’s contacts. The risk to the public remains low, Canada’s Health Minister Mark Holland said in posting on X.

“This is a rare event,” British Columbia Health Officer Bonnie Henry said in a statement. “We are conducting a thorough investigation to fully understand the source of exposure here in B.C.”

H5 bird flu is widespread in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows, with several recent human cases in U.S. dairy and poultry workers.

There has been no evidence of person-to-person spread so far. But if that were to happen, a pandemic could unfold, scientists have said.

Earlier in November, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked for farm workers who have been exposed to animals with bird flu to be tested for the virus even if they do not have symptoms.

Bird flu has infected nearly 450 dairy farms in 15 U.S. states since March, and the CDC has identified 46 human cases of bird flu since April.

In Canada, British Columbia has identified at least 22 infected poultry farms since October, and numerous wild birds tested positive, according to the province.

Canada has had no cases reported in dairy cattle and no evidence of bird flu in samples of milk.  
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Most strokes could be prevented, according to new guidelines aimed at helping people and their doctors do just that. 

Stroke was the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year. But up to 80% of strokes may be preventable with better nutrition, exercise and identification of risk factors. 

The first new guidelines on stroke prevention in 10 years from the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, include recommendations for people and doctors that reflect a better understanding of who gets strokes and why, along with new drugs that can help reduce risk. 

The good news is that the best way to reduce your risk for stroke is also the best way to reduce your risk for a whole host of health problems — eat a healthy diet, move your body and don’t smoke. The bad news is that it’s not always so easy to sustain. 

Dr. Sean Duke, a stroke doctor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, blames the forces in society that keep people sedentary and eating poorly, like cell phones and cheap, unhealthy food. “Our world is stacked against us,” he said. 

Here’s what to know about stroke and the new guidelines: 

What is a stroke? 

A stroke happens when blood flow to part of the brain is blocked or if a blood vessel in the brain bursts. That deprives the brain of oxygen which can cause brain damage that can lead to difficulty thinking, talking and walking, or even death. 

How eating healthy can reduce your risk for stroke 

Eating healthy can help control several factors that increase your risk for stroke, including high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and obesity, according to the heart association. 

The group recommends foods in the so-called Mediterranean diet such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and olive oil, which can help keep cholesterol levels down. It suggests limiting red meat and other sources of saturated fat. Instead, get your protein from beans, nuts, poultry, fish and seafood. 

Limit highly processed foods and foods and drinks with a lot of added sugar. This can also reduce your calorie intake, which helps keep weight in check. 

Moving your body can help prevent strokes 

Getting up and walking around for at least 10 minutes a day can “drastically” reduce your risk, said Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, a neurologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who was part of the group that came up with the new guidelines. Among the many benefits: Regular exercise can help reduce blood pressure, a major risk factor for stroke. 

Of course, more is better: The heart association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic or 75 minutes of vigorous activity — or some combination — per week. How you do it doesn’t matter so much, experts said: Go to the gym, take a walk or run in your neighborhood or use treadmills or stepper machines at home. 

New tools to reduce obesity, a risk factor for stroke 

Diet and exercise can help control weight, another important risk factor for strokes. But a new class of drugs that can drastically reduce weight have been approved by regulators, providing new tools to reduce stroke risk since guidelines were last updated. 

The guidelines now recommend that doctors consider prescribing these drugs, including those sold under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, to people with obesity or diabetes. 

But while those drugs can help, people still need to eat well and get exercise, cautions Dr. Fadi Nahab, a stroke expert at Emory University Hospital. 

Guidelines help identify people who might be at higher risk 

The new guidelines for the first time recommend doctors screen patients for other factors that could increase stroke risk, including sex and gender and non-medical factors such as economic stability, access to health care, discrimination and racism. For example, the risk for having a first stroke is nearly twice as high for Black adults in the U.S. as it is for white adults, according to the CDC. 

“If somebody doesn’t have insurance or they can’t get to a doctor’s office because of transportation issues or they can’t get off work to get health care … these are all things that can impact the ability to prevent stroke,” Bushnell said. 

Doctors may be able to point to resources for low-cost health care or food, and can give ideas about how to be active without breaking the bank for a gym membership. 

The guidelines also now recommend doctors should screen for conditions that could increase a woman’s risk for stroke, such as high blood pressure during pregnancy or early menopause. 

How do I know if I’m having a stroke and what do I do? 

Three of the most common stroke symptoms include face weakness, arm weakness and difficulty speaking. And time is important, because brain damage can happen quickly and damage can be limited if a stroke is treated quickly. Stroke experts have coined an acronym to help you remember: FAST. F for face, A for arm, S for speech, and T for time. If you think you or a loved one could be having a stroke, call 911 right away. 
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GENEVA — Ahead of next week’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, health experts warn that the climate crisis is also a health crisis and say they must be addressed in tandem to save the planet for future generations.

“Human health and planetary health are intertwined,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “Countries must take meaningful action to protect their people, boost resources, cut emissions, phase out fossil fuels and make peace with nature.”

His call for action is buttressed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, who calls COP29 “a crucial opportunity for global leaders to integrate health considerations into strategies for adapting to and mitigating climate change.”

In preparation for the climate summit, the World Health Organization, in collaboration with more than 100 organizations and 300 experts, has developed a plan of action to protect the health of all people, “particularly the estimated 3.6 billion people who live in areas which are most susceptible to climate change.”

“This document is a collective call from the health community to make sure that everybody understands the devastating impacts that climate change is having on our health” and to know what actions must be taken to prevent the worst from happening, Dr. Maria Neira, director of the WHO’s Environment Department, told journalists at a briefing Thursday.

“We must move away from fossil fuel subsidies,” she said, noting that “implementing fair carbon pricing and, of course, mobilizing the finance that is needed for climate and health action could save millions of lives every year.”

WHO data show the many ways in which climate change threatens human lives. Between 2030 and 2050, the WHO estimates that climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths every year “from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.”

Without preventive action, the WHO warns, temperature and precipitation changes will spread death and illness from vector-borne diseases, which currently stand at more than 700,000 a year. It says heat-related deaths among people over age 65 have risen by 70% in two decades and are likely to rise further as the planet heats up.

“If we were to meet the Paris Agreement goals, we would save somewhere in the region of a million lives a year from reduced air pollution alone,” said Dr. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, WHO team lead for climate change and health.

The 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change enjoins nations to keep greenhouse gas emissions from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The U.N. environment agency’s annual emissions gap report, however, finds the world is headed in the wrong direction, with temperatures likely to rise to 3.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century if preventive action is not taken.

“At the moment, the world is currently massively subsidizing fossil fuel consumption,” Campbell-Lendrum said. “The costs of fossil fuel consumption are not only felt in the atmosphere, they are felt in people’s lungs, old people’s lungs, triggering heart attacks and so on, but also young people’s lungs, impairing their development, giving them asthma, hampering their life chances.

“If we were to invest those resources more wisely, then we would have both a healthier planet and also much healthier populations,” he said, adding that financing climate action “is a really good investment, in that you get a lot more back than you put in.”

“We will be able to save almost 2 million lives a year and bring in $4 in benefits for every $1 that you invest in climate action,” he said.

His colleague, Dr. Vanessa Kerry, WHO director-general special envoy for climate change health, agreed that the world cannot afford to ignore the warnings of the impact of climate change on health.

“Whether we choose to recognize it or not, climate change is here. Its impacts are accelerating, altering our ecosystems and communities and threatening our lives.

“Poor health destabilizes economies, widens inequalities and drives political unrest,” she said. “When people cannot access essential needs for their families and lives, it leads to political and social instability. We must address health as a fundamental part of our climate response to prevent these cascading effects.”

Kerry called on leaders gathering for COP29 to urgently “fast-track a just transition and increase funding for health systems” and for frontline health workers to protect the most vulnerable.
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London — 2024 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded, with global warming already exceeding the threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to scientists, who released the latest data ahead of the COP29 climate summit due to start Monday in Azerbaijan. 

Carlo Buontempo, the director of the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program, which produced the data, said it was an important moment for humankind. 

“I call it psychological because it’s something that has been agreed not only among scientists, but between scientists and policymakers and society and nations to use as a reference point. … It is a benchmark with respect to that global discussion,” he told the Associated Press on Thursday. 

Paris Agreement 

Keeping global warming to within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels was a central pillar of the 2016 Paris Agreement, a deal signed by 196 countries, which forms the basis for the annual COP summits. Scientists say exceeding that threshold will likely have catastrophic impacts. 

“It can be the difference between a country existing, particularly small island developing states, and not. We’re also nearing a lot of Earth system tipping points,” said Ruth Townend, a senior research fellow at Britain’s Chatham House and co-author of its recent report, Azerbaijan’s climate leadership challenge. 

“Our delicate Earth systems are in a fine balance. And once we pass certain thresholds, we can trigger climate impacts that might not be reversible, moving ourselves into new types of systems.” 

Emissions gap 

As for the current trajectory, the United Nations says the world is heading toward around 3°C of warming by the end of this century. 

“We are teetering on a planetary tightrope,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a recorded message ahead of the summit. 

“Either leaders bridge the emissions gap or we plunge headlong into climate disaster, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering the most. This report shows annual greenhouse gas emissions at an all-time high, rising 1.3% last year. They must fall 9% each year to 2030 to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C and avoid the very worst of climate change,” Guterres said. 

COP29 

Such is the backdrop for the COP29 summit in Baku.  

Over 12 days, hundreds of world leaders and thousands of delegates will enter thorny negotiations on how to cut global greenhouse gas emissions — and, crucially, who should pay for those cuts, along with the adaptation measures necessary to mitigate against climate change caused by past emissions. 

Who pays? 

A key part of COP29 is “to establish the finance in place to help developing countries produce strong new climate plans,” explained Townend.  

“And those climate plans are meant to be delivered ahead of COP30 in Brazil next year. Without the finance domino in that line of dominoes, everything will essentially fall apart a little bit because developing countries won’t have any kind of promise of support from developed countries in order to produce those ambitious new climate plans,” Townend said. 

Fossil fuels 

Some have questioned Azerbaijan’s suitability as host of the summit. It is a major producer of oil and gas — among the fossil fuels that drive climate change.  

“Around 90% of its export revenues come from oil and gas. And it is also a climate vulnerable country — so it gets around 50 to 70% of its water from over its borders, outside its borders,” Townend said. 

“So, it really is between a rock and a hard place on climate action and transition. And as such, it has a really strong interest in getting finance in place to help developing countries such as itself to find a feasible path forward,” she told VOA. 

Trump shadow 

Looming over the summit is Donald Trump’s victory in the Tuesday U.S. presidential election. 

In his first term, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and could do so again once he assumes the presidency in January. He has also pledged to open vast areas of the U.S. for oil and gas drilling. 

There are also fears that Trump’s proposed import tariffs could lead to a trade war with China. The U.S. and China are the top two emitters of greenhouse gases and together account for around a third of global emissions. 

The world must adapt to such tensions, said Townend. 

“We’re unlikely to be moving towards a world that is more stable with increasing climate impact. So, we do need to learn to manage under these conditions of geopolitical instability, which will only increase going forward.” 

Extreme weather 

From the wildfires currently raging in California to the recent deadly floods in Spain’s Valencia, scientists say extreme weather events are a clear indication of the urgency of curbing global warming.  

“There is very strong evidence suggesting that many of these extreme events have become more intense because of climate change. And there is a good understanding of why,” said Buontempo of the EU Copernicus program, who added it’s vital that COP29 is a success. 

“These multilateral negotiations and discussion is the mechanism we have to find a global solution,” he added.
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The COP29 climate summit is due to get under way on Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan — a country whose economy is largely based on selling fossil fuels. Over 12 days, world leaders and thousands of delegates will try to negotiate ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, amid warnings that efforts to limit global warming are way off track. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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When a volcanic eruption buried the ancient city of Pompeii, the last desperate moments of its citizens were preserved in stone for centuries.

Observers see stories in the plaster casts later made of their bodies, like a mother holding a child and two women embracing as they died.

But new DNA evidence suggests things were not as they seem — and these prevailing interpretations come from looking at the ancient world through modern eyes.

“We were able to disprove or challenge some of the previous narratives built upon how these individuals were kind of found in relation to each other,” said Alissa Mittnik of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. “It opens up different interpretations for who these people might have been.”

Mittnik and her colleagues discovered that the person thought to be a mother was actually a man unrelated to the child. And at least one of the two people locked in an embrace — long assumed to be sisters or a mother and daughter — was a man. Their research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

The team, which also includes scientists from Harvard University and the University of Florence in Italy, relied on genetic material preserved for nearly two millennia. After Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the Roman city in 79 A.D., bodies buried in mud and ash eventually decomposed, leaving spaces where they used to be. Casts were created from the voids in the late 1800s.

Researchers focused on 14 casts undergoing restoration, extracting DNA from the fragmented skeletal remains that mixed with them. They hoped to determine the sex, ancestry and genetic relationships between the victims.

There were several surprises in “the house of the golden bracelet,” the dwelling where the assumed mother and child were found. The adult wore an intricate piece of jewelry, for which the house was named, reinforcing the impression that the victim was a woman. Nearby were the bodies of another adult and child thought to be the rest of their nuclear family.

DNA evidence showed the four were male and not related to one another, clearly showing “the story that was long spun around these individuals” was wrong, Mittnik said.

Researchers also confirmed Pompeii citizens came from diverse backgrounds but mainly descended from eastern Mediterranean immigrants – underscoring a broad pattern of movement and cultural exchange in the Roman Empire. Pompeii is located about 241 kilometers from Rome.

The study builds upon research from 2022 when scientists sequenced the genome of a Pompeii victim for the first time and confirmed the possibility of retrieving ancient DNA from the human remains that still exist.

“They have a better overview of what’s happening in Pompeii because they analyzed different samples,” said Gabriele Scorrano of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, a co-author of that research who was not involved in the current study. “We actually had one genome, one sample, one shot.”

Though much remains to be learned, Scorrano said, such genetic brushstrokes are slowly painting a truer picture of how people lived in the distant past. 
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Federal health officials on Thursday called for more testing of employees on farms with bird flu after a new study showed that some dairy workers had signs of infection, even when they didn’t report feeling sick. 

Farmworkers in close contact with infected animals should be tested and offered treatment even if they show no symptoms, said Dr. Nirav Shah, principal director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The new guidance comes after blood tests for 115 farmworkers in Michigan and Colorado showed that eight workers — or 7% — had antibodies that indicated previous infection with the virus known as Type A H5N1 influenza. 

“The purpose of these actions is to keep workers safe, to limit the transmission of H5 to humans and to reduce the possibility of the virus changing,” Shah told reporters. 

The CDC study provides the largest window to date into how the bird virus first detected in March in dairy cows may be spreading to people. It suggests that the virus has infected more humans than the 46 farmworkers identified in the U.S. as of Thursday. Nearly all were in contact with infected dairy cows or infected poultry. 

Outside experts said it’s notable that the study prompted the CDC to take new action. Previous recommendations called for testing and treating workers only when they had symptoms. 

“This is a significant move towards the assessment that these H5N1 viruses are a greater risk than the CDC estimated before,” said Dr. Gregory Gray, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. 

Every additional infection in animals or humans gives the virus the chance to change in potentially dangerous ways, said Angela Rasmussen, a virus expert at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. 

“It shows yet again that we are not responding effectively to the H5N1 cattle outbreak in humans or animals and if we continue to let this virus spread and jump from species to species, our luck will eventually run out,” Rasmussen said in an email. 

The CDC study included 45 workers in Michigan and 70 in Colorado tested between June and August. Of the eight workers with positive blood tests, four reported no symptoms. All eight cleaned milking parlors and none used respiratory protection such as face masks. Three said they used eye protection. 

High levels of the virus have been found in the milk of infected cows, increasing the risk of exposure and infection, researchers said. 

Researchers said that efforts to monitor dairy workers for illness have been hindered by several barriers including the reluctance of farm owners and farmworkers to allow testing. 

The virus has been confirmed in at least 446 cattle herds in 15 states. Last week, the Agriculture Department said a pig at an Oregon farm was confirmed to have bird flu, the first time the virus was detected in U.S. swine. 
…

KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO — The spread of mpox has slowed down slightly across Africa, but the epidemic is not over, the African Union’s health watchdog said Thursday.

Fifteen countries across Africa recorded 11,453 mpox cases in the last four weeks, compared with 12,802 in the four weeks prior, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said during an online briefing.

But the head of the Africa CDC, Jean Kaseya, warned the epidemic was not over.

“We are still in the acute phase of the outbreak that is pushing us to double our effort to control mpox in Africa,” Kaseya said.

“Unfortunately, we are still losing a number of people,” he said.

Since the start of the year, authorities have recorded 50,840 mpox cases and 1,083 deaths across Africa.

Central Africa accounts for more than 85% of cases and almost all deaths.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, which has recorded more than 39,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths since the start of the year, launched a vaccination campaign last month that is still “limited,” according to the Africa CDC.

Some 51,649 people have been vaccinated in six provinces, the Africa CDC said.

“We hope that with these vaccines we can continue to support countries to stop this outbreak,” Kaseya said.

Health agencies across the world have allocated just under 900,000 vaccine doses for nine African countries “hard hit by the current mpox surge,” the Africa CDC said in a statement Tuesday.

The countries include the DRC, Kenya and Uganda.

“The largest number of doses — 85% of the allocation — will go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the most affected country, reporting four out of every five laboratory confirmed cases in Africa this year,” the statement said.

Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.

It causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, and can be deadly.
…

Washington — Researchers at Michigan State University recently discovered that honeybees, with their keen sense of smell, can sniff out lung cancer on a patient’s breath.

“Our world is visual. Insects’ world is all based on smell, so their sense of smell is very, very good,” says Debajit Saha, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Michigan State University, who was part of a team that published research on the discovery last month.

“There is quite a bit of research that shows that when some cancer grows inside our body, our breath actually changes. Our research does show that honeybees can detect lung cancer and possibly other diseases based on the smell of those cells.”

Saha and his team harnessed the bees and attached electrodes to their brains. The insects were then exposed to synthetic compounds that mimicked the breath of a lung cancer patient. Ninety-three percent of the time, the bees could tell the difference between the cancer breath and the artificial breath of a healthy person. The bees could also distinguish between different types of lung cancer.

The discovery could have implications for early detection of many cancers, including lung, breast, head and neck, and colorectal cancers.

“We do think breath-based diagnostics of cancer can be a game changer,” Saha says. “The reason is, many times we detect the cancer late, when the tumor has already grown pretty big. But generally, when cancer starts growing in your body, the breath signature starts changing much earlier.”

He hopes to develop a portable system in which electrodes are implanted in a honeybee brain that a patient will be able to breathe into. This cyborg sensor, which is part-brain, part-engineered, would deliver test results in real time.

“Hopefully, within the next five years, we’ll have something to show that humans can be diagnosed using these insect brain disc sensors,” Saha says.

Using animals to detect cancer isn’t a new concept. At the Penn Vet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers are training dogs to recognize certain cancer odors.

“A lot of other animals also have quite intense and capable senses of smell,” says Cindy Otto, executive director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center. “But part of what makes dogs so good is that they cooperate with humans, and so, they communicate that information.”

The dogs are in a foster program where they live with families and are brought to “work” each day. Not all dogs can do the work, according to Clara Wilson, a postdoctoral researcher at the center.

“If the dog is not really interested in this type of work, we find out pretty quickly. And you can’t make a dog want to do this, because they’re not going to give you high-quality answers,” Wilson says. “They need to love it to be engaged. And so, it’s a really fun game for them.”

Sniffing out cancer might be a game to the animals, but researchers are finding that the animals detect cancer better than machines. A dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times more acute than that of humans.

“Why are we finding that these dogs are outperforming the computers?” says Amritha Mallikarjun, another postdoctoral researcher at the center. “Well, part of their success is because of this superior sensitivity to detect odor molecules as compared to anything we currently have on the market.”

The researchers hope to continue isolating characteristics of cancer odors to enhance technological development, eventually creating e-noses that duplicate a dog’s cancer sniffing abilities, enabling earlier detection of cancer.

“This may not be the endgame, but I think it’s going to advance the overall approach to diagnosing not only cancer but many other diseases,” Otto says.

“You can look back in history to the Greeks and Romans. The physicians then used odor as part of their diagnostic tools, and I think as modern humans, we’ve kind of let go of that. I think we can really capitalize on that and advance the health of not only humans, but dogs and other species as well.”
…

CHICAGO — For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it’s ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday.

“It’s this relentless nature of the warming that I think is worrying,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.

Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming.

He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino — the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide — as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapor into the air and variations in energy from the sun. But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like El Nino is a bad sign.

“A very strong El Nino event is a sneak peek into what the new normal will be about a decade from now,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.

News of a likely second year of record heat comes a day after Republican Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and promised to boost oil drilling and production, was reelected to the U.S. presidency. It also comes days before the next U.N. climate conference, called COP29, is set to begin in Azerbaijan. Talks are expected to focus on how to generate trillions of dollars to help the world transition to clean energies like wind and solar, and thus avoid continued warming.

Buontempo pointed out that going over the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold of warming for a single year is different than the goal adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement. That goal was meant to try to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times on average, over 20 or 30 years.

A United Nations report this year said that since the mid-1800s on average, the world has already heated up 1.3 degrees Celsius — up from previous estimates of 1.1 degrees or 1.2 degrees. That’s of concern because the U.N. says the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals of the world’s nations still aren’t nearly ambitious enough to keep the 1.5 degree Celsius target on track.

The target was chosen to try to stave off the worst effects of climate change on humanity, including extreme weather. “The heat waves, storm damage, and droughts that we are experiencing now are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Natalie Mahowald, chair of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.

Going over that number in 2024 doesn’t mean the overall trend line of global warming has, but “in the absence of concerted action, it soon will,” said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.

Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson put it in starker terms. “I think we have missed the 1.5 degree window,” said Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track countries’ carbon dioxide emissions. “There’s too much warming.”

Indiana state climatologist Beth Hall said she isn’t surprised by the latest report from Copernicus, but emphasized that people should remember climate is a global issue beyond their local experiences with changing weather. “We tend to be siloed in our own individual world,” she said. Reports like this one “are taking into account lots and lots of locations that aren’t in our backyard.”

Buontempo stressed the importance of global observations, bolstered by international cooperation, that allow scientists to have confidence in the new report’s finding: Copernicus gets its results from billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.

He said that going over the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmark this year is “psychologically important” as nations make decisions internally and approach negotiations at the annual U.N. climate change summit Nov. 11-22 in Azerbaijan.

“The decision, clearly, is ours. It’s of each and every one of us. And it’s the decision of our society and our policymakers as a consequence of that,” he said. “But I believe these decisions are better made if they are based on evidence and facts.”
…

An initial 899,000 vaccine doses have been allocated for nine countries across Africa that have been hit hard by the current mpox surge, the WHO and other health organizations said on Wednesday.

The WHO declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years in August after a new variant of the virus, called clade Ib, spread from the Democratic Republic of Congo to neighboring countries.

In September, after facing criticism on moving too slowly on vaccines, the World Health Organization cleared Bavarian Nordic’s BAVA.CO vaccine for mpox and said it was considering LC16, made by Japan’s KM Biologics as a potential vaccine option.

The WHO also set up a scheme to help bring mpox vaccines, tests and treatments to the most vulnerable people in the world’s poorest countries, similar to efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The global health agency said on Wednesday the newly allocated vaccines will go to the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.

The largest number of doses – 85% of the allocated vaccines – will go to the Democratic Republic of Congo as the most affected country, the WHO said.

The allocated vaccines are from European countries, the United States, Canada and Gavi, a public-private alliance that co-funds vaccine purchases for low-income countries.

According to the latest WHO figures, there have been more than 46,000 confirmed and suspected cases of mpox in Africa this year, and more than 1,000 deaths in the continent due to the viral illness.
…

In labs across the United States, scientists are working on innovative tests using animals and insects to detect cancer earlier. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, recent research suggests bees and dogs can sniff out the disease sooner than machines can.
…

London — Two new cases of the mpox variant clade 1b detected in the U.K. are the first locally transmitted cases in Europe and the first outside Africa, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) confirmed late Monday that the two new cases were household contacts of Britain’s first case identified last week, bringing the country’s total confirmed cases to three.

The WHO warned that European states should be prepared for “rapid action” to contain the latest mpox variant, which spreads through close physical contact including sexual relations and sharing closed spaces.

The two cases are also the first to be locally transmitted outside Africa since August 2024, when the WHO declared the outbreak of the new variant an international public health emergency — its highest level of alarm.

Those affected are under specialist care and the risk to the U.K. population “remains low,” UKHSA said.

The original case was detected after the person traveled to several African countries on holiday and returned to the U.K. on Oct. 21.

The patient developed flu-like symptoms more than 24 hours later and, on Oct. 24, started to develop a rash that worsened in the following days.

Mpox, a viral disease related to smallpox, has two types, clade 1 and clade 2. Symptoms include fever, a skin rash or pus-filled blisters, swollen lymph nodes and body aches.

The WHO first declared an international public health emergency in 2022 over the spread of clade 2. That outbreak mostly affected gay and bisexual men in Europe and the United States.

Vaccination and awareness drives in many countries helped stem the number of worldwide cases and the WHO lifted the emergency in May 2023 after reporting 140 deaths out of around 87,400 cases.

In 2024, a two-pronged epidemic of clade 1 and clade 1b, a new strain that affects children, has spread widely in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The new strain has also been recorded in neighboring Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, with imported cases in Sweden, India, Thailand, Germany and the U.K.
…

Geneva — The World Health Organization on Tuesday listed 17 pathogens that cause widespread disease and death, including HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, for which it said new vaccines were “urgently needed.”

The U.N. health agency said that it with its list was providing the first global effort to systematically prioritize endemic pathogens based on criteria including disease burdens, antimicrobial resistance risk and the socioeconomic impact.

“We need to do this because we would like to shift the focus from developing vaccines away from commercial returns towards regional and global health needs,” Mateusz Hasso-Agopsowicz, a WHO vaccine specialist, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Poland.

The study reconfirms longstanding priorities for vaccine research and development, including HIV, malaria and tuberculosis — three diseases that collectively kill nearly 2.5 million people each year, WHO said.

But it also identifies lesser-known pathogens as top disease control priorities, highlighting the urgency to develop new vaccines for pathogens that are becoming increasingly resistant to antimicrobials.

Among them was Group A streptococcus, which causes severe infections and contributes to some 280,000 deaths from rheumatic heart disease each year, mainly in lower-income countries.

Ita also highlights the dangers of Klebsiella pneumoniae — a bacterium that is responsible for around 40% of neonatal deaths due to blood infection, or sepsis, in low-income countries.

These vaccines “would not only significantly reduce diseases that greatly impact communities today but also reduce the medical costs that families and health systems face,” WHO vaccine chief Kate O’Brien said in a statement.

Vaccines for the various pathogens listed are at different stages of development, WHO said, with some like ones for HIV, Group A streptococcus and hepatitis C virus still at the research stage. 

Others, like ones for dengue and tuberculosis, have been developed and are approaching regulatory approval or introduction.

Hasso-Agopsowicz explained that the 17 listed pathogens were wreaking the most havoc in lower-income countries, explaining why more progress has not been made previously on developing vaccines against them.

“What typically has happened in the past is that vaccine research and development has been influenced by profitability of new vaccines. What that means is that diseases that severely affect low-income regions unfortunately receive much less attention,” he said.

With the new list, he said, “we want to change the focus… so that the new vaccine research and development is driven by health burden and not just commercial opportunities.”
…

geneva — World Health Organization member countries resumed negotiations Monday to finalize an agreement on pandemic prevention, with outbreaks of mpox, Marburg and H5N1 stressing the urgency of reaching an agreement without repeating the deadly mistakes of COVID-19.

After more than two years of negotiations, there is hope of reaching an agreement in the next 15 days, especially since the negotiators have agreed to postpone discussions on the most contentious points: the sharing of knowledge and equitable access to medical advances.

Recent negotiations at COP16 in Colombia on biodiversity, which provided for a comparable mechanism, stumbled on this point.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed the need to balance timeliness and workable deal.

“Time is not our friend,” Tedros told national negotiators at the opening of the talks. “COVID is still circulating. Mpox is a global health emergency. We have a Marburg outbreak and H5N1 spreading. The next pandemic will not wait.”

Never again

In December 2021, fearing a repeat of the catastrophe caused by COVID-19, which killed millions of people, the 194 member countries of WHO agreed to reach an agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

The emergence of a new strain of mpox, the deadly Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda and the spread of H5N1 avian flu in recent months have clarified the issues.

Diplomats have agreed on most of the draft’s 37 articles during 11 rounds of negotiations.

The main section on which consensus will need to be found concerns access to pathogens for the scientific community and medical research, and then to products to combat the pandemic such as vaccines or other tests derived from this research.

In order not to block everything, the idea is to postpone the discussion on the details of the pathogen access and benefit sharing system (PABS) until later.

Battle for fairness

For the moment, there is an impasse between rich and poor countries, which have not forgotten that they were abandoned to their fate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If the world has failed on one thing, it is on the issue of equity” during the COVID-19 pandemic, the head of WHO stressed on Friday.

“Africa was left behind at the time, and this should not happen,” Tedros said.

‘Bitter taste’

Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister, believes that “the South sees the North as protecting its pharmaceutical industries,” and this “has left an incredibly bitter taste between the North and the South.”

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations called for an agreement “allowing the private sector to innovate.”

“Intellectual property must be respected, and technology transfer must always be voluntary and on mutually agreed terms,” the federation insisted.

Among the country representatives, Malaysia, speaking on behalf of a group of developing countries known as the Equity Group, said “major improvements are still desperately needed in many areas.”

It demanded that at least 20% of real-time production of vaccines, tests and treatments go to developing countries.

Tanzania, on behalf of 48 African countries, said it could not “accept an agreement not based on equity.”

The Indonesian negotiator said an agreement that only preserves the status quo is unacceptable, because “empty promises will not save lives.”

China insisted that “quality should not be sacrificed for time.”

Germany’s representative called for an acceleration of the talks to “focus on what is achievable.”
…

CALI, Colombia — Wealthy nations appeared to hit a limit with how much they are willing to pay to conserve nature around the world, instead shifting their focus at the two-week U.N. biodiversity summit toward discussions of private money filling the funding gap.

At the COP16 negotiations in Cali, Colombia, countries failed to figure out how they would mobilize $200 billion annually in conservation funding by 2030, including $30 billion that would come directly from rich nations.

That money, pledged two years ago as part of the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreement, is meant to finance activities that boost nature, such as sustainable farming or patrolling wildlife reserves.

But there was no consensus as talks dragged on beyond the summit’s scheduled end on Friday, during which dozens of delegations departed. By Saturday morning’s roll call, there was no longer a quorum among the nearly 200 nations for an agreement to pass, forcing organizers to abruptly suspend the meeting.

“I am both saddened and enraged by the non-outcome of COP16,” said Shilps Gautam, chief executive of project finance firm Opna.

“The wild thing about the nature financing discussions is that the numbers discussed are already a pittance.”

Human activities such as farming, mining, and urban development are increasingly pushing nature into crisis, with 1 million or so plant and animal species thought to be at risk of extinction.

Climate change, a result of fossil fuel burning, is also adding to nature’s woes by raising temperatures and disrupting weather cycles.

Countries will meet again in Azerbaijan next week for the U.N.’s COP29 climate summit, which again will be focused on the steep need for funding from wealthy nations to their poorer counterparts to help shoulder climate costs.

Little money from rich nations

Even before the talks broke down, developed nations had signaled an unwillingness to offer large amounts of cash.

European governments including Germany and the Netherlands have slashed their foreign aid budgets over the last year, while France and the U.K. are also cutting back.

Government development money specifically targeted at nature conservation abroad fell to $3.8 billion in 2022 compared with $4.6 billion in 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

At COP16, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded that countries make significant new contributions to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.

The response was muted. Nations at COP16 pledged $163 million in contributions to the fund, bringing total contributions to roughly $400 million – far from a major contribution to the $30 billion target from nations by 2030.

The United States, which is not a party to U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, has not contributed.

“The public money is already leveraged as much as we can,” Florika Fink-Hooijer, the European Union’s director general of environment, told reporters at the summit.

“We now have to look at other sources of funding.”

Private cash

When it came to going after private capital, delegates at the COP16 summit agreed to a plan to charge pharmaceutical and other companies for their use of genetic information in the research and development of new commercial products.

Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca and Land Sanofi did not respond to request for comment on the deal.

Experts estimate the plan could generate about $1 billion annually.

That still doesn’t cover the billions needed to halt the collapse of ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest or coral reefs. The world will need to devise ways for enticing private investment in nature-friendly projects, said Marcos Neto, director of global policy at the U.N. Development Program.

Some tools include green bonds or debt-for-nature swaps, whereby countries refinance their debt at lower interest rates in order to spend the savings on conservation. The World Economic Forum estimates that debt-for-nature swaps could generate $100 billion in nature funding.
…

Goma, Congo — Some health officials say mpox cases in Congo appear to be “stabilizing” — a possible sign that the main epidemic for which the World Health Organization made a global emergency declaration in August might be on the decline.  

In recent weeks, Congo has reported about 200 to 300 lab-confirmed mpox cases every week, according to WHO. That’s down from nearly 400 cases a week in July. The decline is also apparent in Kamituga, the mining city in the eastern part of Congo where the new, more infectious variant of mpox first emerged.  

But the U.N. health agency acknowledged Friday that only 40% to 50% of suspected infections in Congo were being tested — and that the virus is continuing to spread in some parts of the country and elsewhere, including Uganda.  

While doctors are encouraged by the drop in infections in some parts of Congo, it’s still not clear what kinds of physical contact is driving the outbreak. Health experts are also frustrated by the low number of vaccine doses the central African nation has received — 265,000 — and say that delivering the vaccine to where it’s needed in the sprawling country is proving difficult. WHO estimates 50,000 people have been immunized in Congo, which has a population of 110 million.  

Scientists also say there needs to be an urgent, broader vaccination effort for the entire continent to halt mpox’s spread and avoid further worrisome genetic mutations, like the one detected earlier this year in Congo after months of low-level circulation.  

“If we miss this opportunity, the likelihood of another significant outbreak increases substantially,” said Dr. Zakary Rhissa, who heads operations in Congo for the charity Alima.  

So far this year, there have been roughly 43,000 suspected cases in Africa and more than 1,000 people have died, mostly in Congo.  

“We’ve seen how past outbreaks, such as the one in Nigeria in 2017, can lead to larger global events if not effectively contained,” he said. The 2017 epidemic ended up leading to the 2022 global outbreak of mpox that affected more than 100 countries.  

Rhissa said the decline in cases in Kamituga — where mpox initially spread among sex workers and miners — is an opening to put more programs in place for vaccination, surveillance and education.  

Georgette Hamuli, an 18-year-old sex worker, hadn’t been aware of mpox until immunization teams arrived last week in the poor neighborhood where she works in Goma, the biggest city in eastern Congo.  

“They told us we’re highly exposed to the risk of infection,” she said. “We insist on condoms with our clients, but some refuse … if they don’t want to use a condom, they double the amount they pay.”  

Hamuli said she and other friends who are sex workers each received 2,000 Congolese francs ($0.70) from a charity to get vaccinated against mpox — but it wasn’t the money that swayed her. 

“The vaccine is also necessary,” she said. “I think we’re now protected.”   

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the virus, and another 7 million for the rest of Africa. So far, WHO and partners have allocated 900,000 vaccines to nine African countries affected by mpox and expect 6 million vaccines to be available by the end of this year.  

Mpox epidemics in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda had their origins in Congo, and a number of cases in travelers have also been identified in Sweden, Thailand, Germany, India and Britain.  

Fewer than half of the people who are most at risk in Congo have been vaccinated, according to Heather Kerr, Congo director for the International Rescue Committee.  

“We only have a tiny amount of vaccines, and nothing for the kids,” she said.  

The vaccines for Congo are largely coming from donor countries like the U.S and through UNICEF, which mainly uses taxpayer money to buy the shots.  

“We’re getting a charitable approach where we only see very small donations of vaccines to Africa,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Global Health Institute at Duke University. “What we need is a public health approach where we immunize populations at scale.”  

Drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, which makes the most widely used mpox vaccine, said it would sell shots destined for Africa at the lowest price possible.  

The advocacy group Public Citizen estimated UNICEF paid $65 per dose of the Jynneos mpox vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic, far higher than nearly all other vaccines used in public health programs. 

Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, an infectious diseases expert at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, said mpox outbreaks typically peak and disappear quickly because of how the virus spreads. This time, however, he said there are two complicating factors: the virus’ transmission via sex and the continued spillover from infected animals.  

“We’re in new territory with mpox this time,” he added. “But we’re never going to solve this until we vaccinate most of our people.” 
…

KARACHI — Unprecedented air pollution levels in Pakistan’s second-largest city of Lahore prompted authorities to take emergency measures on Sunday, including issuing work-from-home mandates and closing primary schools.  

The city held the top spot on a real-time list of the world’s most polluted cities on Sunday after recording its highest ever pollution reading of 1900 near the Pakistan-India border on Saturday, based on data released by the provincial government and Swiss group IQAir.  

The government has shut primary schools for a week, advising parents to ensure children wear masks, said Senior Minister of Punjab Marriyum Aurangzeb during a press conference, as a thick blanket of smog enveloped the city.  

Citizens have been urged to stay indoors, keep doors and windows shut, and avoid unnecessary travel, she said, adding that hospitals had been given smog counters.  

To reduce vehicle pollution, 50% of office employees would work from home, said Aurangzeb.  

The government has also imposed a ban on three-wheelers known as rickshaws and halted construction in certain areas to reduce the pollution levels. Factories and construction sites failing to comply with these regulations could be shut down, she said.  

Aurangzeb described the situation as “unexpected” and attributed the deterioration in air quality to winds carrying pollution from neighboring India.   

“This cannot be solved without talks with India,” she said, adding the provincial government would initiate talks with its bigger neighbor through Pakistan’s foreign ministry.   

The smog crisis in Lahore, similar to the situation in India’s capital Delhi, tends to worsen during cooler months due to temperature inversion trapping pollution closer to the ground.  
…

ADDIS ABABA — As the price of fuel soared in Ethiopia earlier this year, Awgachew Seleshi decided to buy an electric car. That aligned with the government’s new efforts to phase out gas-powered vehicles. But months later, he’s questioning whether it was the right decision.  

He faces a range of issues, from the erratic supply of electricity in Addis Ababa, the capital, to the scarcity of spare parts.  

“Charging my car has been a challenge,” the civil servant said. “Spare parts that are imported from China are expensive, few mechanics are able to fix such cars and the resale value of such cars is poor.”  

Seleshi’s troubles point to wider challenges for Ethiopia. In January, the East African country became the first in the world to ban the importation of non-electric private vehicles. 

 The decision eased pressure on authorities who spend scarce foreign currency to subsidize the cost of fuel, but it also reflected growing enthusiasm for electric vehicles as the world demands more green technologies to reduce climate-changing emissions.  

Earlier this month, Ethiopia’s government raised the price of fuel by up to 8% as part of a plan to gradually end all fuel subsidies in Africa’s second-most populous country.  

Authorities have claimed some success in enforcing the ban on non-electric vehicles entering Ethiopia, and more than 100,000 electric cars are now being imported into the country each month.  

The official target is to increase the monthly import figure to 500,000 by 2030. By that time, a big new dam Ethiopia has built on the Nile River is expected to be producing power at full capacity.  

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, in a televised address earlier this year, said the Grand Renaissance Dam will start generating more than 5,000 megawatts of electric power within a year. Authorities say such capacity would support the transition to electric vehicles.  

For now, many in Addis Ababa, a city of more than 5 million people, are doubtful the country can achieve its ambitious goals for electric vehicles without further needed infrastructure and services.  

The few garage owners who can fix broken electric cars say they are overwhelmed, while customers say they are being overcharged amid an apparent lack of competition.  

“There are two or three garages that can fix new energy vehicles in Ethiopia and many consumers lack awareness on how to take care of such vehicles,” said Yonas Tadelle, a mechanic in Addis Ababa. “As mechanics, we also lack the tools, the spare parts and the know-how to fix such cars.”  

Many EVs are now parked in garages and parking lots awaiting parts expected to come from China.  

Ethiopia’s minister in charge of transport, Bareo Hassen Bareo, has said he believes the country can be a model nation with a green economy legacy, with the prioritization of electric vehicles a key component.  

The government will invest in public charging stations, he told The Associated Press, and there are plans to create a plant manufacturing EV batteries locally to reduce reliance on imports.   

Private efforts have included a collaboration, which has since fizzled, between Olympian Haile Gebreselassie and South Korean carmaker Hyundai to make electric vehicles in Ethiopia. That effort is believed to have collapsed over the sourcing of materials.  

Samson Berhane, an economist based in Addis Ababa, said the sudden flood of electric vehicles into the local market despite poor infrastructure is making it difficult for customers to adapt comfortably. Some EVs sell for about $20,000.  

“Very few people are willing to take the risk of buying electric cars due to the lack of infrastructure, shortage of mechanics specialized in EV maintenance and the flooding of the market with Chinese brands that have questionable details and long-term visibility,” Berhane said.  

But he said he believes that Ethiopia is more than able to provide electricity to the expected 500,000 EV’s there within the next decade while fulfilling its industrial ambitions.  

Some Ethiopians are already giving up on electric vehicles, and the secondhand trade in gasoline-powered vehicles continues. There are at least 1.2 million vehicles across Ethiopia, and only a small fraction are electric ones.  

Businessman Yared Alemayehu bought a Chinese-made electric vehicle that he had hoped to use for a taxi service. He knew the car had a mechanical defect, but he believed it could be fixed. A mechanic disagreed.  

In the end, he sold the car at a loss and bought a Toyota Corolla — a car made in 2007 that he felt was more reliable — for the equivalent of $20,000, a sum that included the hefty taxes imposed on gasoline vehicles. Taxes can be higher than the cost of importing the vehicle.  

“In addition to having to charge my old electric car, it frequently broke, and the garage was overcharging, and the lineup at the garage was overwhelming us,” he said.  

Taxi driver Dereje Hailu, who had high hopes for his Chinese-made E-Star electric vehicle when he purchased it earlier this year, said his expectations had been dashed.  

“With such a car, I fear I might be stuck if I go far from Addis Ababa where there are no charging stations,” he said. 
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