YCLOAK

People in Somalia are highly traumatized due to political instability, prolonged violence and humanitarian crisis, a new health study said.

The joint study by the United Nations, Somalia’s health ministry and the country’s national university found that mental disorder is prevalent across the country. It said that cases are about 77 percent higher than a previous study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that nearly 40% of the population in Somalia had a mental or psychological disorder.

The study further said that the prevalence of mental disorders among the young is significantly higher than previously reported.

“There is a high prevalence and wide range of the various mental disorders (76.9%), substance abuse disorders (lifetime, 53.3%; current, 50.6%) and poor quality of life in both non-clinical and clinical populations,” the study said.

The study obtained by VOA Somali Service was conducted between October 25 and November 15 2021. The data was collected from 713 participants in the towns of Baidoa, Kismayo and Dolow. The majority of the participants (68.1%) were younger than 35 years and 58.5% were males.

All three towns host internally displaced persons who have been impacted by conflicts, and droughts which forced the pastoral communities to migrate to urban locations in search of food, water, and safety.

“Conflicts and clashes have brought about mental illness because we face many of these challenges in our country,” a young person in Kismayo who was interviewed for the study told the researchers. “For example, explosions occur, and the witness might live with the shock and trauma that can affect their state of mind and even cause mental illness. Stress caused by joblessness also leads to mental health issues.”

The study is a collaboration between the WHO, the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Federal Ministry of Health and the Somali National University (SNU).

According to the WHO, which led the research, this is the first-ever epidemiological study on mental health in Somalia.

“The study findings clearly indicate the prevalence of mental health disorders is higher in the younger population than we initially used to think or assume through various estimates,” said Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO Country Representative.

“Our earlier WHO study suggested that only 40% of the population in Somalia might have a mental or psychological disorder. But what we have seen now is 76%, which is a high prevalence rate,” Malik told VOA.

Somalia Minister of Health Dr. Ali Haji Adam agrees that mental health situation among the population is “very poor.”

“There has been armed conflict, poverty, fear, instability, and unemployment for a long time; this is causing mental wounds,” Adam said. “They cannot cope with what is happening in front of them; mothers and children are being killed in front of them and that is damaging their mental health.”

Malik said a worrying finding is that the most common mental health illness among this population is panic disorder and post-traumatic disorder.

“Panic disorder, 39%, and post-traumatic disorder at 37%. And this is amongst the young age group,” Malik said.

He said if untreated, this might lead to suicidal tendencies. He said in previous estimates WHO saw the suicide rate among the young population in Somalia as one of the highest in the world, 14 to 15 per 100,000 population. This new study finds that the risk of committing suicide among young people in Somalia is 22 per 100,000.

The authors of the study said this is surprising for a community where Islam is the predominant religion, and where teaching prohibits suicide. They urged clinicians to consult with their patients about suicidal thoughts during evaluation, regardless of religious beliefs or practices.

Substance abuse

The other discovery of the study is the high degree of prevalence of substance abuse among the young population.

Adam said that the younger generation who are the most affected by mental health illnesses are turning to drug abuse.

“A young person with an ambition, and a future when they cannot realize their ambition and aspiration, cannot find a job they face mental pressure,” Adam told VOA. “It’s likely they turn to drug abuse.”

Malik agrees that the hopeless situation and lack of sufficient access to mental health facilities are driving the mentally ill to resort to the abuse use of prohibited substances.

“These are coping mechanisms, but this is self-destruction, that’s the most worrying factor for me,” he said.

The most common substance used was tobacco, 38%, followed by sedatives which is 37%, and these are not regulated in the country, Malik said.

He said Somalia is the only country that has not ratified the WHO’s global convention on Tobacco Control. He urged the Somali government to ratify and commit to controlling substance abuse of tobacco and sedatives.

“We are actually at risk of losing a whole generation because these young people have no hopes for the future and they comprise 70% of the people in this country,” Malik said. “Instead of using them as human assets we are at risk of losing them because there is a high burden of mental health and substance abuse, and this is making them non-productive and they’re becoming a huge economic burden.”

The increased mental illnesses can be seen in mental health care clinics.

Dr. Liban Mohamed Omar opened a mental health clinic eight months ago after he returned from Europe. He says his polyclinic and psychiatric center receives dozens of patients every week.

“Of the patients I receive, two to three out of every four persons have got mental health issues,” Omar told VOA.

In addition to the political and social upheavals in the country, women face specific challenges that exacerbate their mental health situation.

“Women face many [cases of] abuse, such as rape,” Omar said.

Omar cited a lack of awareness and a shortage of skilled mental health workers and services which forces many to resort to substance abuse and to even contemplate ending their life.

Peace building

The researchers see improving mental health as an integral part of peace-building in Somalia, a country where there has been civil strife since the collapse of the state in 1991.

Malik said in conflict-affected countries the burden of mental health is high.

“These young people who were carrying a huge burden of mental health can be an easy target for radical forces because these are disillusioned young people,” Malik said.

“Our assumption is if these people can be socially integrated after addressing their mental health condition, social cohesion, and community reconciliation may increase and that can lead to peace-building in a way that these mentally ill young people may not be the targets of radical forces so they can contribute to the society.”

Malik said only 5 to 10 percent of the primary healthcare centers in Somalia currently can offer mental health services, far less than what is needed.

“The total number of mental health professionals in Somalia is 82 in a population of over 15 million,” Malik said. “And if you compare it in terms of mental health professionals, 100,000 population it is less than one. So, the future lies in investing in mental health services at the primary health care level.

The study recommended training of frontline health care workers, increased awareness, and routine screening of mental disorders at the primary health care level.
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There was visible excitement among students when schools reopened Tuesday in Malawi’s two biggest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre, after a two-week suspension caused by a cholera outbreak. 

The bacterial illness has killed close to 800 people, more than 100 of them children, and affected more than 25,000. 

Malawi’s government announced measures to prevent cholera from spreading in schools but warned it will shut down the schools again if needed.  

To many students, especially those who are preparing to take national examinations this year, the closure doomed their hope of passing the exams.

Ronnie Lutepo, a teenaged student at Michiru View secondary school in Blantyre, said returning to the school was the best thing he hoped for.

“Yes, as I was at home my mum was telling me to study, but being in an examination class affected me badly,” he said. “We are all supposed to be here and ready for the exams and if we are not ready, we are not going to get good grades.”

The reopening comes after the government announced that it has put into place preventive measures against the spread of cholera, which is transmitted mainly through dirty water. 

These include fixing broken boreholes and water taps in the schools and banning the sale of cooked food around school premises.

Malawi is battling its worst cholera outbreak in a decade. Government statistics show that as of Monday it had registered 25,458 cases since the start of the outbreak last March, with 550 cases reported on Monday alone.

The disease has so far killed more than 800 people with around 1,000 hospitalizations as of Tuesday.  

Justin Rice Phiri, the deputy head teacher at Michiru View secondary school, told VOA that the school has put in place measures to prevent students from contracting the disease.

“At the same time our support staff; the cleaners and the cooks have been trained on how best to prevent the cholera and also giving them the protective wear; the gloves, the work suits and the like,” he said.

On Tuesday, the U.N.’s children’s agency, UNICEF, started distributing anti-cholera supplies in schools in areas most affected by the outbreak.

Government authorities, however, have warned that they may close the schools again should the outbreak spread among students at an unmanageable level.
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Nearly two thirds of the sharks and rays that live among the world’s corals are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Tuesday, with a warning this could further imperil precious reefs.

Coral reefs, which harbor at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants, are gravely menaced by an array of human threats, including overfishing, pollution and climate change.

Shark and ray species — from apex predators to filter feeders — play an important role in these delicate ecosystems that “cannot be filled by other species”, said Samantha Sherman, of Simon Fraser University in Canada and the wildlife group TRAFFIC International.

But they are under grave threat globally, according to the study in the journal Nature Communications, which assessed extinction vulnerability data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to look at 134 species of sharks and rays linked to reefs.

The authors found 59 percent of coral reef shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, an extinction risk almost double that of sharks and rays in general.

Among these, five shark species are listed as critically endangered, as well as nine ray species, all so-called “rhino rays” that look more like sharks than stingrays.

Keeping reefs healthier

“It was a bit surprising just how high the threat level is for these species,” Sherman told AFP. 

“Many species that we thought of as common are declining at alarming rates and becoming more difficult to find in some places.”

Sherman said the biggest threat to these species by far is overfishing.

Sharks are under most threat in the Western Atlantic and parts of the Indian Ocean, whereas the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia are the highest risks for rays.

These regions are heavily fished and do not currently have management in place to reduce the impact on these species, said Sherman.

Coral reef fisheries directly support the livelihoods and food security of over half a billion people, but this crucial ecosystem is facing an existential threat.

Human-driven climate change has spurred mass coral bleaching as the world’s oceans get warmer.

Modelling research has shown that even if the Paris climate goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is reached, 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs will not be able to recover.

At two degrees of warming, the number rose to 100 percent.

“We know coral reef health is declining, largely due to climate change, however, coral reef sharks and rays can help keep reefs healthier for longer,” said Sherman. 

The study was carried out by an international team of experts from universities, government and regional oceanic and fishery organizations as well as non-governmental organizations across the world.
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Jill Biden’ s advocacy for curing cancer didn’t start with her son’s death in 2015 from brain cancer. It began decades earlier, long before she came into the national spotlight, and could now be further energized by her own brush with a common form of skin cancer.

The first lady often says the worst three words anyone will ever hear are, “You have cancer.” She heard a version of that phrase for herself this past week.

A lesion that doctors had found above her right eye during a routine screening late last year was removed on Wednesday and confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma — a highly treatable form of skin cancer. While Biden was being prepped to remove the lesion, doctors found and removed another one from the left side of her chest, also confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma. A third lesion from her left eyelid was being examined.

While it’s too early to know when and how Biden might address her situation publicly, her experience could inject new purpose into what has become part of her life’s work highlighting research into curing cancer and urging people to get regular screenings.

Personal experiences can add potency to a public figure’s advocacy.

“Nothing like ‘I’ve been there, done that’ and being personally involved,” said Myra Gutin, a first lady scholar at Rider University.

Biden’s spokesperson, Vanessa Valdivia, said “the first lady’s fight against cancer has always been personal. She knows that cancer touches us all.”

Biden’s advocacy dates to 1993, when four girlfriends were diagnosed with breast cancer, including her pal Winnie, who succumbed to the disease. She said last year in a speech that “Winnie inspired me to take up the cause of prevention and education.”

That experience led her to create the Biden Breast Health Initiative, one of the first breast health programs in the United States, to teach 16-to 18-year-old girls about caring for their breasts. Biden was among staffers who went into Delaware’s high schools to conduct lectures and demonstrations.

Her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs, and father, Donald Jacobs, died of cancer, in 2008 and 1999, respectively. A few years ago, one of her four sisters needed an auto-stem cell transplant to treat her cancer.

In May 2015, Beau Biden, President Joe Biden’s son with his late first wife, died of a rare and aggressive brain cancer, leaving behind a wife and two young kids. Joe Biden was vice president at the time and the blow from Beau’s loss led him to decide against running for president in 2016. Jill Biden, who had helped raise Beau from a young age after she married his dad, was convinced he would survive the disease and later described feeling “blinded by the darkness” when he died.

After their son’s death, the Bidens helped push for a national commitment to “end cancer as we know it.” Then-President Barack Obama — Biden’s boss — put the vice president in charge of what the White House named the Cancer Moonshot.

The Bidens resurrected the initiative after Joe Biden became president and added a new goal of cutting cancer death rates by at least 50% over the next 25 years, and improving the experience of living with and surviving cancer for patients and their families.

“We’re ensuring that all of our government is ready to get to work,” Jill Biden said at the relaunch announcement at the White House last February. “We’re going to break down the walls that hold research back. We’re going to bring the best of our nation together — patients, survivors, caregivers, researchers, doctors, and advocates — all of you — so that we can get this done.”

In the years between Biden serving as vice president and running for president, the Bidens headed up the Biden Cancer Initiative, a charity.

Jill Biden, 71, has been using her first lady platform to highlight research into a cancer cure, along with other issues she has long championed, including education and military families.

Her first trip outside of Washington after the January 2021 inauguration was to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center in Richmond to call for an end to disparities in health care that she said have hurt communities of color.

She has toured cancer centers, including those for children, in New York City, South Carolina, Tennessee, Costa Rica, San Francisco and Florida, among others. She joined the Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies — two of her favorite professional sports teams — for events, including during the World Series, to highlight efforts to fight cancer through early detection and to honor patients.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month last October, Jill Biden hosted a White House event with the American Cancer Society and singer Mary J. Blige, who became an advocate for cancer screening after losing aunts and other relatives to various forms of cancer.

The first lady also partnered with the Lifetime cable channel to encourage women to get mammograms. A Democrat, she gave an interview last year to Newsmax, the conservative cable news channel, to discuss the federal investment in accelerating the cancer fight.

She regularly encourages audiences to schedule cancer screening appointments they skipped during the pandemic out of fear of visiting doctor’s offices.

Asked on Friday how the first lady was doing, the president flashed a thumbs-up to reporters.

Basal cell carcinoma, for which the first lady was treated with the procedure known as Mohs surgery, is the most common type of skin cancer, but also the most curable form. It’s considered highly treatable, especially when caught early. It is a slow-growing cancer that doesn’t usually spread and seldom causes serious complications or becomes life-threatening.

The Skin Cancer Foundation says the delicate skin around the eyes is especially vulnerable to damage from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, which makes basal cell carcinoma on and around the eyelids particularly common.
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When Benjamin Franklin fashioned the first lightning rod in the 1750s following his famous experiment flying a kite with a key attached during a thunderstorm, the American inventor had no way of knowing this would remain the state of the art for centuries.

Scientists now are moving to improve on that 18th-century innovation with 21st-century technology — a system employing a high-powered laser that may revolutionize lightning protection. Researchers said on Monday they succeeded in using a laser aimed at the sky from atop Mount Santis in northeastern Switzerland to divert lightning strikes.

With further development, this Laser Lightning Rod could safeguard critical infrastructure including power stations, airports, wind farms and launchpads. Lightning inflicts billions of dollars in damage on buildings, communication systems, power lines and electrical equipment annually while also killing thousands of people.

The equipment was hauled to the mountaintop at an altitude of about 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), some parts using a gondola and others by helicopter, and was focused on the sky above a 400-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) transmission tower belonging to telecommunications provider Swisscom SCMN.S, one of Europe’s structures most affected by lightning.

In experiments during two months in 2021, intense laser pulses — 1,000 times per second — were emitted to redirect lightning strikes. All four strikes while the system was active were successfully intercepted. In the first instance, the researchers used two high-speed cameras to record the redirection of the lightning’s path by more than 160 feet (50 meters). Three others were documented with different data.

“We demonstrate for the first time that a laser can be used to guide natural lightning,” said physicist Aurelien Houard of Ecole Polytechnique’s Laboratory of Applied Optics in France, coordinator of the Laser Lightning Rod project and lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Lightning is a high-voltage electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, within a cloud or between clouds.

“An intense laser can generate on its path long columns of plasmas in the atmosphere with electrons, ions and hot air molecules,” Houard said, referring to positively charged particles called ions and negatively charged particles called electrons.

“We have shown here that these plasma columns can act as a guide for lightning,” Houard added. “It is important because it is the first step toward a laser-based lightning protection that could virtually reach a height of hundreds of meters [yards] or a kilometer [0.6 mile] with sufficient laser energy.”

The laser device is the size of a large car and weighs more than 3 tons. It uses lasers from German industrial machine manufacturing company Trumpf Group. With University of Geneva scientists also playing a key role, the experiments were conducted in collaboration with aerospace company ArianeGroup, a European joint venture between Airbus SE AIR.PA and Safran SA SAF.PA.

This concept, first proposed in the 1970s, has worked in laboratory conditions, but until now not in the field.

Lightning rods, dating back to Franklin’s time, are metal rods atop buildings, connected to the ground with a wire, that conduct electric charges lightning strikes harmlessly into the ground. Their limitations include protecting only a small area.

Houard anticipated that 10 to 15 years more work would be needed before the Laser Lightning Rod can enter common use. One concern is avoiding interference with airplanes in flight. In fact, air traffic in the area was halted when the researchers used the laser.

“Indeed, there is a potential issue using the system with air traffic in the area because the laser could harm the eyes of the pilot if he crosses the laser beam and looks down,” Houard said. 
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Pakistan Monday launched its first nationwide anti-polio campaign of the year to immunize children under the age of five against the crippling disease. The move follows a surge in new infections in 2022.

While no new case has been reported in Pakistan so far this year, the highly infectious wild poliovirus paralyzed 20 children last year. That compares to just one infection reported in 2021.

National eradication program officials said that more than 360,000 health workers would deliver polio drops to at least 44.2 million children across 156 districts during the five-day campaign. They noted that children would also be administered an additional vitamin A supplement to boost their immunity against infectious diseases.

The 20 polio cases in Pakistan in 2022 were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, mostly in its violence-hit North Waziristan district on the Afghan border.

An official statement quoted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as saying on Sunday the resurgence of cases has raised concerns among Pakistan’s global partners, including the World Health Organization and other stakeholders.

The previous nationwide polio campaign in Pakistan was organized last August but was disrupted by catastrophic floods triggered by erratic summer monsoon rains. Authorities later carried out special polio drives in flood-affected districts and vaccinated children against the virus there.

Pakistan has repeatedly come close to eradicating polio but long-running propaganda in conservative rural areas that the vaccines cause sterility in children, coupled with deadly militant attacks on vaccinators, have set back the mission.

The latest militant attack on a polio team took place earlier this month in Dera Ismail Khan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wounding four policemen escorting health workers.

Officials also blame the 2011 killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden by the United States military in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for dealing a serious blow to national polio eradication efforts.

A Pakistani doctor organized a fake vaccination campaign to help the U.S. troops locate the hideout of the fugitive terror leader and kill him. Pakistani authorities later arrested the doctor and a court subsequently sentenced him to 23 years in prison.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio continues to cripple children. Afghan officials detected two cases in 2022 and have reported no new ones this year.

The global polio eradication program has identified Pakistan, Afghanistan, parts of Somalia and Yemen as areas where outbreaks are very difficult to control, according to Hamid Jafari, the director of polio eradication for WHO’s eastern Mediterranean region.

“These are countries, and in fact some national areas, that are prone to be affected by repeated polio outbreaks., and these are usually complex countries, countries that have fragile health systems, conflicts, other complex challenges,” Jafari explained in a video statement tweeted Monday.

“Moreover, these countries export polio virus. So, when there is an outbreak in these countries, the neighboring countries are affected because of international spread but also distant international spread,” he added.
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Pakistan launched its first anti-polio campaign of the year Sunday, targeting 44.2 million children under the age of five.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio continues to threaten the health and well-being of children. Polio affects the nervous system of children and ultimately leads to paralysis.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif kicked off the nationwide drive by administering polio drops to children in the capital, Islamabad, saying Pakistan was unfortunately among the few countries that still suffered from the disease.

Twenty cases were reported in the tribal North Waziristan area last year, though the disease was contained among other children through immunization, Sharif said.

Around 44 million children in 156 districts will be immunized.

This includes 22.54 million children in Punjab, 10.1 million in Sindh and 7.4 million in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

Sharif said his government along with other stakeholders, including U.S. billionaire Bill Gates and the World Health Organization, were effectively contributing to polio eradication in Pakistan.

He gave out appreciation certificates at the launch to front-line polio workers and praised their “invaluable sacrifices.”

Pakistan has witnessed frequent attacks on polio teams and police officers deployed to protect them. Militants falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. 
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The U.S. has now collected 510 reports of unidentified flying objects, many of which are flying in sensitive military airspace. While there’s no evidence of extraterrestrials, they still pose a threat, the government said in a declassified report summary released Thursday.

Last year the Pentagon opened an office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, solely focused on receiving and analyzing all of those reports of unidentified phenomena, many of which have been reported by military pilots. It works with the intelligence agencies to further assess those incidents.

The events “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its 2022 report.

The classified version of the report addresses how many of those objects were found near locations where nuclear power plants operate or nuclear weapons are stored.

The 510 objects include 144 objects previously reported and 366 new reports. In both the old and new cases, after analysis, the majority have been determined to exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” and could be characterized as unmanned aircraft systems, or balloon-like objects, the report said.

But the office is also tasked with reporting any movements or reports of objects that may indicate that a potential adversary has a new technology or capability.

The Pentagon’s anomaly office is also to include any unidentified objects moving underwater, in the air, or in space, or something that moves between those domains, which could pose a new threat.

ODNI said in its report that efforts to destigmatize reporting and emphasize that the objects may pose a threat likely contributed to the additional reports.
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Astronomers have detected in the stellar halo that represents the Milky Way’s outer limits a group of stars more distant from Earth than any known within our own galaxy – almost halfway to a neighboring galaxy.

The researchers said these 208 stars inhabit the most remote reaches of the Milky Way’s halo, a spherical stellar cloud dominated by the mysterious invisible substance called dark matter that makes itself known only through its gravitational influence. The furthest of them is 1.08 million light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion km (5.9 trillion miles).

These stars, spotted using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea mountain, are part of a category of stars called RR Lyrae that are relatively low mass and typically have low abundances of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. The most distant one appears to have a mass about 70% that of our sun. No other Milky Way stars have been confidently measured farther away than these.

The stars that populate the outskirts of the galactic halo can be viewed as stellar orphans, probably originating in smaller galaxies that later collided with the larger Milky Way.

“Our interpretation about the origin of these distant stars is that they are most likely born in the halos of dwarf galaxies and star clusters which were later merged – or more straightforwardly, cannibalized – by the Milky Way,” said Yuting Feng, an astronomy doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the study, presented this week at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

“Their host galaxies have been gravitationally shredded and digested, but these stars are left at that large distance as debris of the merger event,” Feng added.

The Milky Way has grown over time through such calamities.

“The larger galaxy grows by eating smaller galaxies – by eating its own kind,” said study co-author Raja GuhaThakurta, UC Santa Cruz’s chair of astronomy and astrophysics.

Containing an inner and outer layer, the Milky Way’s halo is vastly larger than the galaxy’s main disk and central bulge that are teeming with stars. The galaxy, with a supermassive black hole at its center about 26,000 light years from Earth, contains perhaps 100 billion–400 billion stars including our sun, which resides in one of the four primary spiral arms that make up the Milky Way’s disk. The halo contains about 5% of the galaxy’s stars.

Dark matter, which dominates the halo, makes up most of the universe’s mass and is thought to be responsible for its basic structure, with its gravity influencing visible matter to come together and form stars and galaxies.

The halo’s remote outer edge is a poorly understood region of the galaxy. These newly identified stars are almost half the distance to the Milky Way’s neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

“We can see that the suburbs of the Andromeda halo and the Milky Way halo are really extended – and are almost ‘back-to-back,'” Feng said.

The search for life beyond the Earth focuses on rocky planets akin to Earth orbiting in what is called the “habitable zone” around stars. More than 5,000 planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, already have been discovered.

“We don’t know for sure, but each of these outer halo stars should be about as likely to have planets orbiting them as the sun and other sun-like stars in the Milky Way,” GuhaThakurta said.
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A new report finds nearly a billion people in the world’s poorer countries are treated for often life-threatening conditions in health care facilities that lack a reliable electricity supply.  A joint report by the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and the International Renewable Energy Agency, “Energizing Health: Accelerating Electricity Access in Health-Care Facilities,” has just been issued. 

Health officials say electricity access in health care facilities can make the difference between life and death.  

Heather Adair-Rohani is Acting Unit Head, Air Quality, Energy and Health at the World Health Organization.  She says it is critical that health care facilities have a reliable, always functioning electricity supply available.

“Imagine going to a health care facility with no lights, with no opportunity to have a baby warmer functioning,” said Adair-Rohani. “To have medical devices functioning and powered all the time. It’s absolutely fundamental that we have this electricity. This is an often-overlooked infrastructure aspect of health care facilities that are desperately needed to continue to provide care to those most vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries.”

The report finds more than one in 10 health facilities in South Asia and sub-Saharan African countries lack any electricity access.  It adds power is unreliable for half of all facilities in sub-Saharan Africa.  

It notes electricity is needed to power the most basic devices such as lights and refrigeration as well as devices that measure vital signs like heartbeat and blood pressure. It says increasing the electrification of health-care facilities is essential to save lives. 

Adair-Rohani adds it is important to maintain these systems once they are installed to ensure their reliability and functionality.

“Reliable decentralized renewable electricity in health care facilities can really ensure the resilience of climate change for health care facilities so that they can provide care in the most dire circumstances and provides emergency preparedness so that yes, indeed, when there is a hurricane or floods or what have you, they still are able to have some form of power to provide emergency care as needed,” said Adair-Rohani.

Authors of the report say healthcare systems and facilities increasingly are affected by the accelerating impacts of climate change.  They say decentralized sustainable renewable energy solutions are available.  For example, they note solar photovoltaic systems are cost-effective and clean and can be rapidly deployed on site.

The authors say building climate-resilient health care systems can meet the challenges of a changing climate while ensuring the delivery of quality health care services.  

 
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The U.S. Department of the Interior will reform its regulations for the development of wind energy facilities on the country’s outer continental shelf to help meet crucial climate goals, it said in a statement on Thursday.

The proposed rule changes would save developers a projected $1 billion over a 20-year period by streamlining burdensome processes, clarifying ambiguous provisions, and lowering compliance costs, , the statement said.

“Updating these regulations will facilitate the safe and efficient development of offshore wind energy resources, provide certainty to developers and help ensure a fair return to the U.S. taxpayers,” U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in the release.

The reforms come days after the department named Elizabeth Klein, a lawyer who worked in the Obama and Clinton administrations, to head its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), overseeing offshore oil, gas and wind development.

As part of its offshore clean energy program, the BOEM has over the past two years approved the first two commercial scale offshore wind projects in the United States, held three lease auctions including the first-ever sale off the coast of California, and explored extending offshore wind to other areas like the Gulf of Mexico.

The department expects to hold as many as four more auctions and review at least 16 new commercial facilities by 2025, adding more than 22 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy.

In September last year, President Joe Biden’s administration set a goal of having 15 GW of floating offshore wind capacity by 2035 to accelerate development of next-generation floating wind farms in line with its target of permitting 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030.
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England will ban a range of single-use plastic items such as cutlery, plates and bowls starting in October to limit soaring plastic pollution, Britain’s environment department said Saturday. 

The decision follows a public consultation by the government in which 95% of respondents were in favor of the bans, the department said in a statement. 

“We all know the absolutely devastating impacts that plastic can have on our environment and wildlife,” Environment Secretary Therese Coffey said. “These new single-use plastics bans will continue our vital work to protect the environment.” 

Most plastics can remain intact for centuries and damage oceans, rivers and land where millions of tons end up as waste each year. The United Nations says decades of overuse of single-use plastics has caused a “global environmental catastrophe.” 

The government said it is estimated England uses 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery, most of which are plastic, a year as well as 721 million such plates, but only 10% end up being recycled. 

England’s ban will also include single-use plastic trays, balloon sticks and some types of polystyrene cups and food containers. 

A ban on supplying plastic straws and stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds came into force in England in 2020. 

Anti-plastic campaign group A Plastic Planet welcomed the latest bans but called for further limitations, especially on sachets. 

“The plastic sachet, the ultimate symbol of our grab and go, convenience-addicted lifestyle, should be the next target … 855 billion sachets are used annually, never to be recycled,” Sian Sutherland, the group’s co-founder, said. 

The British government said it was also considering limiting the use of other commonly littered and “problematic” plastic items, including wet wipes, tobacco filters and sachets. 

Governments worldwide are clamping down on the use of single-use plastic to varying degrees, and a global survey last year found three in four people want single-use plastics to be banned as soon as possible. 
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A Swiss company says it has certifiably extracted CO2 from the air and permanently stored it in the ground — for the first time on behalf of paying customers, including Microsoft.

Climeworks, a startup created in 2009 by two Swiss engineers, said its facility in Iceland had successfully removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and injected it into the ground, where it would very gradually be transformed into rock.

The potential for scaling up remains to be proved.

In its announcement on Thursday, Climeworks said its process had been certified in September by DNV, a Norwegian independent auditor, marking the first time carbon had been permanently captured on behalf of paying corporate clients.

Climeworks counts companies including Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify among the clients who have bought into its future carbon removal services, to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions.

The startup said it hoped “to lead as an example for peers, customers and policy makers alike that are committed to climate action.”

The Paris Agreement, adopted by nearly all the world’s nations in 2015, called for the rise in the Earth’s average temperature to be limited at 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say would keep the impact of climate change at manageable levels.

Many businesses, including fossil fuel companies, rely heavily on carbon offset schemes based on afforestation to compensate for continuing carbon emissions.

But there has been growing interest in the newest carbon dioxide removal method, of which Climeworks is the industry leader: a chemical process known as direct air carbon capture and storage.

In its report last year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that regardless of how quickly the world slashes greenhouse gas emissions, it will still need to suck CO2 from the atmosphere to avoid climate catastrophe.

But it remains to be seen whether this can be done at scale.

So far, Climeworks’ direct air capture facility in Iceland, the largest in the world, removes in a year what humanity emits in 3 to 4 seconds.

The company has not divulged how much its clients are paying for the service, and how much CO2 each client wants extracted.
…

It was an anomaly detected in the storm of a nuclear reactor so puzzling that physicists hoped it would shine a light on dark matter, one of the universe’s greatest mysteries. 

However, new research has definitively ruled out that this strange measurement signaled the existence of a “sterile neutrino,” a hypothetical particle that has long eluded scientists.  

Neutrinos are sometimes called “ghost particles” because they barely interact with other matter — around 100 trillion are estimated to pass through our bodies every second. 

Since neutrinos were first theorized in 1930, scientists have been trying to nail down the properties of these shapeshifters, which are one of the most common particles in the universe. 

They appear “when the nature of the nucleus of an atom has been changed,” physicist David Lhuillier of France’s Atomic Energy Commission told AFP. 

That could happen when they come together in the furious fusion in the heart of stars like our sun, or are broken apart in nuclear reactors, he said. 

There are three confirmed flavors of neutrinos: electron, muon and tau. 

However, physicists suspect there could be a fourth neutrino, dubbed “sterile” because it does not interact with ordinary matter at all. 

In theory, it would answer only to gravity and not the fundamental force of weak interactions, which still hold sway over the other neutrinos. 

The sterile neutrino has a place ready for it in theoretical physics, “but there has not yet been a clear demonstration that it exists,” he added. 

Dark matter candidate  

So Lhuillier and the rest of the STEREO collaboration, which brings together French and German scientists, set out to find it. 

Previous nuclear reactor measurements had found fewer neutrinos than the amount expected by theoretical models, a phenomenon dubbed the “reactor antineutrino anomaly.” 

It was suggested that the missing neutrinos had changed into the sterile kind, offering a rare chance to prove their existence. 

To find out, the STEREO collaboration installed a dedicated detector a few meters away from a nuclear reactor used for research at the Laue–Langevin institute in Grenoble, France. 

After four years of observing more than 100,000 neutrinos and two years analyzing the data, the verdict was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. 

The anomaly “cannot be explained by sterile neutrinos,” Lhuillier said.  

But that “does not mean there are none in the universe,” he added. 

The experiment found that previous predictions about the amount of neutrinos being produced were incorrect. 

But it was not a total loss, because it offered a much clearer picture of neutrinos emitted by nuclear reactors. This could help not just with future research, but also for monitoring nuclear reactors. 

Meanwhile, the search for the sterile neutrino continues. Particle accelerators, which smash atoms, could offer up new leads. 

Despite the setback, interest could remain high because sterile neutrinos have been considered a suspect for dark matter, which makes up more than a quarter of the universe but remains shrouded in mystery.  

Like dark matter, the sterile neutrino does not interact with ordinary matter, making it incredibly difficult to observe. 

“It would be a candidate which would explain why we see the effects of dark matter — and why we cannot see dark matter,” Lhuillier said.
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The effects of the war in Ukraine are extending beyond Moscow and Kyiv, and may be impacting not only people but also wildlife. VOA’s Bilal Hussain reports from Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir. VOA Mandarin Service contributed to this report.
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The World Health Organization has issued an alert warning against the use of two Indian cough syrups blamed for the deaths of at least 20 children in Uzbekistan.

WHO said the products, manufactured by India’s Marion Biotech, were “substandard” and that the firm had failed to provide guarantees about their “safety and quality.”

The alert, issued Wednesday, comes after Uzbekistan authorities said last month at least 20 children died after consuming a syrup made by the company under the brand name Doc-1 Max.

India’s health ministry subsequently suspended production at the company and Uzbekistan banned the import and sale of Doc-1 Max.

The WHO alert said an analysis of the syrup samples by the quality control laboratories of Uzbekistan found “unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and /or ethylene glycol as contaminants.”

Diethylene glycol and ethylene are toxic to humans when consumed and can prove fatal.

“Both of these products may have marketing authorizations in other countries in the region. They may also have been distributed, through informal markets, to other countries or regions,” WHO said.

The products were “unsafe and their use, especially in children, may result in serious injury or death,” it said.

Marion Biotech officials could not be reached immediately for comment.

It is the second Indian drugmaker to face a probe by regulators since October, when the WHO linked another firm’s medicines to a spate of child deaths in Gambia.

Maiden Pharmaceuticals was accused of manufacturing several toxic cough and cold remedies that led to the deaths of at least 66 children in the African country.

The victims, mostly between 5 months and 4 years old, died of acute renal failure.

India launched a probe into Maiden Pharmaceuticals but later said the investigation had found the suspect drugs were of “standard quality.”
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Last year was one of the the warmest on record, according to data released Thursday by two U.S. government agencies, and was marked by numerous instances of severe weather around the globe, many of which are exacerbated by global warming.

The Earth’s average global surface temperature was 0.86 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average in 2022, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This made it the sixth-warmest year on record by NOAA’s reckoning, and the fifth-warmest by NASA’s. (The discrepancy between the two is the result of a measurement difference of a tiny fraction of a degree.)

The high temperatures in 2022 were particularly remarkable because of the presence of a major weather phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean called La Niña, which drove global temperatures down by approximately 0.06 degrees, Gavin A. Schmidt, chief of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a conference call with journalists.

Russell Vose, chief of the analysis and synthesis branch at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, said the individual rankings of specific years are less important than the overall trend of a warming planet. Each of the past eight years has been among the eight hottest years on record.

“It’s clear that each of the past four decades has been warmer than the decade that preceded it,” said Vose. “There’s really been a steady rise in temperature since at least the 1960s.”

He added, “It’s certainly warmer now than at any time in at least the past 2,000 years, and probably much longer.”

Regional differences

Differences in global surface temperature were not evenly distributed, with some regions experiencing much higher-than-average temperatures, while others had lower temperatures. While Central Europe experienced significantly higher temperatures than normal, for example, the temperatures of the U.S. Midwest were lower than average. The Northern Hemisphere, for example, was 1.1 degrees Celsius above average last year, while the Southern Hemisphere was up only 0.61 degrees.

Asia experienced its second-hottest year on record, as did Europe. In Africa, though, 2022 was only the tenth-hottest year on record. It was the 12th-hottest year recorded in South America, the 15th-hottest in North America and in the top 20 for Oceania.

Much of the increased heat was focused on the polar regions, which led to significant loss of sea ice. In 2022, average sea ice cover in the Antarctic was near record lows, at 10.5 square kilometers. In the Arctic, sea ice covered 10.6 square kilometers, the 11th-lowest total on record.

In addition, average ocean surface temperatures, which are measured up to a depth of 2,000 meters, were the highest on record. The four highest average global ocean temperatures ever recorded have all occurred in the four years since 2019.

Major weather events

Last year also saw a large number of extreme weather events, including crippling droughts in the western U.S., East Africa and much of Europe, while Pakistan, China and Australia all battled devastating floods.

While major storm systems were not more common than average in 2022, North America suffered a series of extremely damaging hurricanes, while East Asia was battered by several destructive typhoons.

The scientists presenting the NOAA/NASA data declined to blame severe weather events specifically on climate change, but they noted that warmer temperatures create conditions that allow storms to become more damaging than they might otherwise be.

‘Flirting’ with 1.5 degrees Celsius

Countries around the world have reached a number of agreements meant to try to keep average global temperature increases limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (a different, lower baseline than the 20th century average cited above).

Vose said the Earth is already “flirting” with a 1.5-degree increase now, adding that it would not be surprising for a single year in the 2020s to top that number. That would not be the same as reaching a multiyear average increase of 1.5 degrees, though.

Schmidt said the Earth’s average temperature currently stands at between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees above the preindustrial average, and is climbing.

He said the current rate of warming is just over 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. If that rate remains unchanged, within 20 years, the global average will hit 1.5 degrees.

However, he added, continued increases are not inevitable.

“Future warming is a function of future emissions of carbon dioxide. So, we as a society, collectively, we still have agency,” Schmidt said. “So, what we are going to do in the future is going to determine what happens in the future. And so, if we continue to emit at the rate that we are emitting right now, then we are going to continue to warm, and we would be pretty much rushing past 1.5. If we collectively reduce emissions quite quickly, then we can avoid the higher temperatures.”

Climate activists frustrated

Climate activists saw Thursday’s report as further confirmation of the dire effects of global warming and the insufficiency of past efforts to slow it.

“It’s a lot of what we already know — just more confirmation,” said Cherelle Blazer, senior director of the International Climate and Policy Campaign at the Sierra Club. “We’re already at 1.1 degrees warming. All the world’s scientists say that we need to stick to 1.5 in order to not see the worst of the climate catastrophe happen. And no one seems to be willing to do what’s necessary to achieve that. I find it very disheartening.”

Blazer said she hopes the NOAA/NASA report will spur the new Congress into action, particularly in efforts to fully implement the many carbon-reduction efforts included in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, to finance the Green Climate Fund, and to take steps to compensate low-income countries for the disproportionate damage they face from global warming.

“I’m hoping that the Biden administration, our new Senate and our new House — our newly elected officials — are ready to roll up their sleeves and stop playing around with people’s lives,” she said.
…

Exxon Mobil’s scientists were remarkably accurate in their predictions about global warming, even as the company made public statements that contradicted its own scientists’ conclusions, a study says. 

The study published Thursday in the journal Science looked at research that Exxon funded that didn’t just confirm what climate scientists were saying but used more than a dozen different computer models that forecast the coming warming with precision equal to or better than government and academic scientists. 

This was during the same time that the oil giant publicly doubted that warming was real and dismissed climate models’ accuracy. Exxon said its understanding of climate change evolved over the years and that critics are misunderstanding its earlier research. 

Scientists, governments, activists and news sites, including Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, several years ago reported that “Exxon knew” about the science of climate change since about 1977, all while publicly casting doubt. What the new study does is detail how accurate Exxon-funded research was. From 63% to 83% of those projections fit strict standards for accuracy and generally predicted correctly that the globe would warm about .36 degree (.2 degree Celsius) a decade.

‘Astonishing’ hypocrisy 

The Exxon-funded science was “actually astonishing” in its precision and accuracy, said study co-author Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard science history professor. But, she added, so was the “hypocrisy, because so much of the Exxon Mobil disinformation for so many years … was the claim that climate models weren’t reliable.” 

Study lead author Geoffrey Supran, who started the work at Harvard and now is an environmental science professor at the University of Miami, said this is different than what was previously found in documents about the oil company. 

“We’ve dug into not just the language, the rhetoric in these documents, but also the data. And I’d say in that sense, our analysis really seals the deal on ‘Exxon knew,’ ” Supran said. It “gives us airtight evidence that Exxon Mobil accurately predicted global warming years before, then turned around and attacked the science underlying it.” 

The paper quoted then-Exxon CEO Lee Raymond in 1999 as saying future climate “projections are based on completely unproven climate models, or more often, sheer speculation,” while his successor in 2013 called models “not competent.” 

Exxon’s understanding of climate science developed along with that of the broader scientific community, and its four decades of research in climate science resulted in more than 150 papers, including 50 peer-reviewed publications, said company spokesman Todd Spitler. 

Misrepresentation alleged

“This issue has come up several times in recent years, and in each case, our answer is the same: Those who talk about how ‘Exxon knew’ are wrong in their conclusions,” Spitler said in an emailed statement. “Some have sought to misrepresent facts and Exxon Mobil’s position on climate science, and its support for effective policy solutions, by recasting well-intended, internal policy debates as an attempted company disinformation campaign.” 

Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, has been the target of numerous lawsuits that claim the company knew about the damage its oil and gas would cause to the climate, but misled the public by sowing doubt about climate change. In the latest such lawsuit, New Jersey accused five oil and gas companies including Exxon of deceiving the public for decades while knowing about the harmful toll fossil fuels take on the climate. 

Similar lawsuits from New York to California have claimed that Exxon and other oil and gas companies launched public relations campaigns to stir doubts about climate change. In one, then-Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said Exxon’s public relations efforts were ” reminiscent of the tobacco industry’s long denial campaign about the dangerous effects of cigarettes.” 

Oreskes acknowledged in the study that she has been a paid consultant in the past for a law firm suing Exxon, while Supran has gotten a grant from the Rockefeller Family Foundation, which has also helped fund groups that were suing Exxon. The Associated Press receives some foundation support from Rockefeller and maintains full control of editorial content. 

Oil giants including Exxon and Shell were accused in congressional hearings in 2021 of spreading misinformation about climate change, but executives from the companies denied the accusations. 

University of Illinois atmospheric scientist professor emeritus Donald Wuebbles told The Associated Press that in the 1980s, he worked with Exxon-funded scientists and wasn’t surprised by what the company knew or the models. It’s what people who examined the issue knew. 

“It was clear that Exxon Mobil knew what was going on,” Wuebbles said. “The problem is at the same time, they were paying people to put out misinformation. That’s the big issue.” 

There’s a difference between the “hype and spin” that companies do to get you to buy a product, or politicians do to get your vote, and an “outright lie … misrepresenting factual information. And that’s what Exxon did,” Oreskes said.

‘Huge’ harm 

Several outside scientists and activists said what the study showed about Exxon actions is serious. 

“The harm caused by Exxon has been huge,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck. “They knew that fossil fuels, including oil and natural gas, would greatly alter the planet’s climate in ways that would be costly in terms of lives, human suffering and economic impacts. And yet, despite this understanding, they chose to publicly downplay the problem of climate change and the dangers it poses to people and the planet.” 

Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald asked: “How many thousands (or more) of lives have been lost or adversely impacted by Exxon Mobil’s deliberate campaign to obscure the science?” 

Critics say Exxon’s past actions on climate change undermine its claims that it’s committed to reducing emissions. 

After tracking Exxon’s and hundreds of other companies’ corporate lobbying on climate change policies, InfluenceMap, a firm that analyzes data on how companies are impacting the climate crisis, concluded that Exxon is lobbying overall in opposition to the goals of the Paris Agreement and that it is currently among the most negative and influential corporations holding back climate policy. 

“All the research we have suggests that effort to thwart climate action continues to this day, prioritizing the oil and gas industry value chain from the ‘potentially existential’ threat of climate change, rather than the other way around,” said Faye Holder, program manager for InfluenceMap. 

“The messages of denial and delay may look different, but the intention is the same.” 
…

German police Thursday continued efforts to clear hundreds of climate protesters occupying the western village of Luetzerath to prevent the demolition of the town for the expansion of a coal mine.

Police began moving in Tuesday after a regional German court Monday rejected the last legal effort by the protesters to stop the demolition of the town located in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Utility company RWE wants to extract coal beneath Luetzerath, which it says is necessary to ensure energy security in Germany. The company reached a deal with the regional government last year that allows the village to be destroyed in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038.

But the protesters — some of whom have occupied the town for as long as two years — say bulldozing the village to expand the nearby Garzweiler coal mine would result in huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The government and the utility company argue that the coal is needed to ensure Germany’s energy security.

Though reports say many protesters have left voluntarily, there were reports of minor clashes with police that include rock throwing and fireworks. The Reuters news agency, quoting a local police spokesman, reported two people were detained and another three are in custody since the operation started.

Removing those who do not want to leave will not be an easy task, as the village has several houses and buildings where the protesters have holed up or have taken positions on rooftops.

A police press spokesperson told the French news agency AFP the operation “could last several weeks” with another demonstration planned for Saturday. High-profile figures, including Greta Thunberg, and other prominent climate campaigners are expected at the demonstration, lending reinforcements to the protesters.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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For years, 51-year-old Rodney Stotts says he was living a dead-end life. Today, he is a different person, teaching young people about birds of prey and the importance of protecting the environment. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar
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The World Health Organization said Wednesday it is calling on China to provide more information about its surge in COVID-19 cases.

“WHO still believes that deaths are heavily underreported from China, and this is in relation to the definitions that are used but also to the need for doctors and those reporting in the public health system to be encouraged to report these cases and not discouraged,” Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies director, told reporters.

Ryan did praise China’s efforts to increase the number of designated beds in intensive care units and in using antivirals early in the course of treatment.

A lack of extensive data from China has led a number of countries to require testing for Chinese travelers.

“In the absence of data, countries have made a decision to take a precautionary approach and (WHO has) said that that is understandable in the circumstances,” Ryan said.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse. 
…

The race is on to save the ecologically crucial wetlands surrounding the final 160 kilometers of the Mississippi River, America’s most iconic waterway.

“We are losing our communities, our culture, our fisheries, and our first line of defense against the hurricanes that threaten us,” said Kim Reyher, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

Adjacent to New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish is disappearing at an alarming rate. In recent decades, nearly 700 square kilometers of land have been consumed by the Gulf of Mexico because of the devastating combination of sinking land and rising sea levels. The parish includes wetlands that are home to thousands of Louisianans and many species of wildlife deemed critical to the ecology — and economy — of the region.

In December, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed off on the state’s ambitious $2.2 billion plan to divert sediment from the Mississippi River and, it is hoped, protect and restore the vanishing region, which contributes to Louisiana’s robust seafood and energy sectors.

“The most fortunate thing about the situation we find ourselves in,” Reyher told VOA, “is that we have the tools necessary to build more land by mimicking what the Mississippi River had done for millennia. We can make ourselves safer moving forward.”

That is what this plan hopes to do. But not everyone is convinced.

“They say this is a 50-year plan, but who of us is going to be around in 50 years?” asked Dean Blanchard, owner of Dean Blanchard Seafood in vulnerable Grand Isle, Louisiana, speaking with VOA. “They’ve been trying to build back land for decades and so far I haven’t seen them build enough for two of us to stand on. It just doesn’t work.”

Choking the muddy Mississippi

It wasn’t long ago in geological terms that what is now south Louisiana didn’t exist at all. The region is known as an alluvial delta, built over thousands of years as the country’s major rivers carried sediment from the Rocky Mountains in the west and deposited them into the Gulf of Mexico.

Over time, that process created land stretching from Gulf-facing Plaquemines Parish in the south to areas as far north as Baton Rouge, the state capital. New Orleans, a world-renowned hub of culture and tourism, also owes its existence to this sediment.

“But land down here sinks back into the Gulf unless it’s replenished with new sediment,” Reyher explained. “In the past, that replenishment would come from the seasonal overflowing of the muddy, sediment-rich Mississippi River. But, of course, no one wants to live in a place with annual flooding, so that’s why we built the levees.”

Those levees — barriers largely built in the 20th century on either bank of the river — have helped keep residents safe from river flooding.

But the levees also block the flow of new sediment, making the region more vulnerable to land loss due to erosion and rising sea levels. Ecologists project another 400 square kilometers of land could disappear by the end of the century.

But with the Army Corps’ approval of what is being called the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, some believe there is hope.

“We have been studying this for a very long time,” said Chip Kline, board chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which will be responsible for executing the plan.

“The project will mimic the pre-levee natural land building processes of the Mississippi River and strategically reconnect the river to our sediment-starved estuaries,” he said. “It will establish a consistent sediment source to nourish the newly created land in a way that provides a more sustainable solution than other options such as mechanical dredging.”

Doubt and outrage

The architects of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion believe this is the best available plan. They do, however, concede there will be consequences, particularly for the region’s fishermen, shrimpers and oyster harvesters.

“The water in which our oysters, shrimp and many of our fish thrive is salty,” local shrimper George Barisich told VOA. “So, when you divert all of this fresh Mississippi River water in there, it’s going to kill them. It’s going to destroy those fish populations for years and it’s going to destroy us fishermen.”

Even calling it fresh water, according to Barisich, is misleading.

“This isn’t the same water that traveled down the continent hundreds of years ago,” he said. “This now has pesticides and [feces] from every farm and household along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) Mississippi River. It’s not going to build our wetlands; it’s going to destroy it.”

Although the project is backed by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, not everyone in state government is enthusiastic.

“I want what’s best for the people of Louisiana,” Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser told VOA, “and this isn’t it. We’ve tried building land his way before and it doesn’t work. The land gets washed away in six months because the Mississippi River doesn’t carry the same amount of sediment it did thousands of — or even a hundred — years ago.”

Mitigating consequences

Reyher, from the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, said she’s sympathetic to the concerns fishermen in the region have.

“This is going to impact them, we understand that,” she said. “That’s why we are including $360 million in the plan to assist them and mitigate those consequences.”

She continued: “But, if we do nothing, we’re admitting defeat. We’re talking about whole communities and millions of people that would eventually need to be relocated.”

Lieutenant Governor Nungesser said he also hopes to avoid that outcome. But he also says solutions need to be focused on the short term as well.

“We don’t have to sacrifice people now for some plan that we won’t know doesn’t work until 50 years down the road,” he said. “I’ve been a policymaker here for years, and we know what works. We have seen that specifically building up ridges and islands and berms that protect us from storms — that can keep us safe. And it can do it while protecting the culture and communities around Louisiana’s last surviving sacred resource — our seafood.”

Proponents of the project say the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion is the most effective and cost-efficient tool they have — a key component of a 50-year, $50 billion suite of solutions to save south Louisiana.

“Nothing like this has ever been done in the region,” Donald Boesch, professor of marine science at the University of Maryland, told VOA. “This project is designed to capture and distribute sediment during the times of year it is most available. And we can do it in a way that minimizes the water that will kill our fisheries while maximizing the … sediment that will save and re-establish south Louisiana.”

Louisiana must decide by February whether to accept or appeal the Army Corps’ permit conditions. The plan could draw lawsuits from opponents.
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Russia said Wednesday that it will send an empty spacecraft to the International Space Station next month to bring home three astronauts whose planned return vehicle was damaged by a strike from a tiny meteorite.

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, made the announcement after examining the flight worthiness of the Soyuz MS-22 crew capsule at the space station, which sprang a radiator coolant leak in December.

Roscosmos and NASA officials said at a joint press briefing that an uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft, MS-23, would be sent to the station February 20 to bring Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio back to Earth.

“We’re not calling it a rescue Soyuz,” said Joel Montalbano, the space station program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “I’m calling it a replacement Soyuz.

“Right now, the crew is safe onboard the space station,” he added.

MS-22 flew Petelin, Prokopyev and Rubio to the space station in September. They were scheduled to return home in the same spacecraft in mid-March.

But MS-22 began leaking coolant on December 14 after being hit by what U.S. and Russian space officials said they believed was a micrometeorite.

“Everything does point to a micrometeorite,” Montalbano said.

Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, said the “current theory is that this damage was caused by a small particle about 1 millimeter in diameter.”

Krikalev said the decision to use MS-23 to fly the crew home was made because of concern over high temperatures in MS-22 during reentry. 

“The main problem to land the current Soyuz with crew would be thermal conditions because we lost heat rejection capability,” he said. “We may have a high temperature situation on Soyuz in the equipment compartment and in the crew compartment.”

Montalbano said discussions were also underway with SpaceX officials about potentially returning one or more crew members on the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule currently docked with the space station.

Four astronauts were flown to the station by a SpaceX rocket in October for a mission expected to last about six months.

“We could safely secure the crew members in the area that the cargo normally returns on the Dragon,” Montalbano said.

“All that is only for an emergency, only if we have to evacuate ISS,” he stressed. “That’s not the nominal plan or anything like that.”

Krikalev said MS-22 would return to Earth after the two cosmonauts and the NASA astronaut leave on MS-23. It would bring back equipment and experiments that are not “temperature sensitive,” he said.

Soyuz MS-23 had been initially scheduled to fly Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Loral O’Hara to the space station on March 16.

Space has remained a rare venue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia.

The space station was launched in 1998 at a time of increased U.S.-Russia cooperation following the Cold War space race.

Russia has been using the aging but reliable Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts into space since the 1960s.
…

Genomic sequencing allowed the world to track new coronavirus variants throughout the pandemic. Now British researchers plan to use it to better understand a host of other respiratory pathogens, from influenza to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).  

The work is aimed at shedding more light on known threats and, potentially, emerging ones, said the team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute working with the UK Health Security Agency. 

The world has never had access to the kind of real-time information for these viruses that scientists obtained on SARS-CoV-2 through sequencing millions of genomes, Ewan Harrison, head of the new Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative, told reporters Monday. 

That includes granular detail on how they transmit as well as how they evolve in the face of the human immune response.  

“We hope that by expanding our ability to sequence these viruses routinely, we can build upon the work that’s going on COVID, and hopefully supercharge research efforts to understand the transmission of these viruses, but also to help develop new treatments and vaccines,” Harrison said. 

The aim is to make genomic surveillance of this type the norm, to inform public health responses and act as a blueprint for other countries that want to do the same thing, he said. 

The work will begin later this year by using leftover material from swabs taken for COVID-19 diagnostic purposes, sequencing SARS-CoV-2, influenza, RSV and other common respiratory viruses in a combined process.  

While some of the viruses targeted typically cause mild, cold-like symptoms, others can cause serious illness, particularly in vulnerable populations. 

Cases of COVID-19, flu and RSV have all surged this winter in the northern hemisphere in a so-called “tripledemic” that is putting serious pressure on hospitals in a number of countries.  

The team said that, in the future, the initiative could answer questions about outbreaks like this.  

It also aims to sequence everything found in a single nose swab, including the viral, bacterial and fungal species present and how they change during infection. 

The five-year initiative aims to begin work from spring this year and is funded by Wellcome. 

 
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