sydney, australia — The world’s largest platypus conservation center has welcomed its first residents as part of a project to protect the semi-aquatic mammal found only in Australia amid threats to its habitat from extreme weather and humans. 

The four platypuses — two females and two males — were released over the last two weeks into a custom-built research facility at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, about 400 kilometers (250 miles), northwest of Sydney.  

Featuring multi-tiered streams, waterfalls, pools and earth banks for burrowing, the facility will help researchers understand more about the species, Taronga Conservation Society Australia official Phoebe Meagher told Reuters. 

“This facility will allow us to not only save the species from the immediate threats of climate change, but also in the long term, be able to repopulate those populations,” she said. 

“We would love to see some puggles or baby platypus in the facility and understand what led to that reproductive success.” 

The facility was formed as a partnership between the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the University of New South Wales, the New South Wales state government and wildlife rescue organization WIRES. 

Boasting the bill of a duck, webbed feet and a beaver-like tail, the platypus is unique to Australia. The nocturnal mammals lay eggs and live mostly across the eastern seaboard, from the far north of Queensland to the island state of Tasmania, close to rivers and streams whose beds and banks they forage for food. 

Platypus numbers may have more than halved over several decades, research models show, but figures are hard to pinpoint. Environment groups estimate the total population between 30,000 and 300,000. 

“Sadly, we’re not leaving many places left in the wild for platypus,” Meagher said. “So these platypus that we have here … will really fill those knowledge gaps and allow us to help save this species.”  
…

HONOLULU — A Hawaii judge has temporarily blocked the state from enforcing a law requiring the licensing of practitioners and teachers of traditional Native Hawaiian midwifery while a lawsuit seeking to overturn the statute wends its way through the courts.

Lawmakers enacted the midwife licensure law, which asserted that the “improper practice of midwifery poses a significant risk of harm to the mother or newborn, and may result in death,” in 2019. Violations are punishable by up to a year in jail, plus thousands of dollars in criminal and civil fines.

The measure requires anyone who provides “assessment, monitoring, and care” during pregnancy, labor, childbirth and the postpartum period to be licensed.

A group of women sued, arguing that a wide range of people, including midwives, doulas, lactation consultants and even family and friends of the new mother would be subject to penalties and criminal liability.

Their complaint also said the law threatens the plaintiffs’ ability to serve women who seek traditional Native Hawaiian births.

Judge Shirley Kawamura issued a ruling late Tuesday afternoon barring the state from “enforcing, threatening to enforce or applying any penalties to those who practice, teach, and learn traditional Native Hawaiian healing practices of prenatal, maternal and child care.”

Plaintiffs testified during a four-day hearing last month that the law forces them to get licensed through costly out-of-state programs that don’t align with Hawaiian culture.

Ki’inaniokalani Kahoʻohanohano testified that a lack of Native Hawaiian midwives when she prepared to give birth for the first time in 2003 inspired her to eventually become one herself. She described how she spent years helping to deliver as many as three babies a month, receiving them in a traditional cloth made of woven bark and uttering sacred chants as she welcomed them into the world.

The law constitutes a deprivation of Native Hawaiian customary rights, which are protected by the Hawaii constitution, Kawamura’s ruling said, and the “public interest weighs heavily towards protecting Native Hawaiian customs and traditions that are at risk of extinction.”

The dispute is the latest in a long debate about how and whether Hawaii should regulate the practice of traditional healing arts that date to well before the islands became the 50th state in 1959. Those healing practices were banished or severely restricted for much of the 20th century, but the Hawaiian Indigenous rights movement of the 1970s renewed interest in them.

The state eventually adopted a system under which councils versed in Native Hawaiian healing certify traditional practitioners, though the plaintiffs in the lawsuit say their efforts to form such a council for midwifery have failed.

The judge also noted in her ruling that the preliminary injunction is granted until there is a council that can recognize traditional Hawaiian birthing practitioners.

“This ruling means that traditional Native Hawaiian midwives can once again care for families, including those who choose home births, who can’t travel long distances, or who don’t feel safe or seen in other medical environments,” plaintiff and midwife trainee Makalani Franco-Francis said in a statement Wednesday. “We are now free to use our own community wisdom to care for one another without fear of prosecution.”

She testified last month how she learned customary practices from Kahoʻohanohano, including cultural protocols for a placenta, such as burying it to connect a newborn to its ancestral lands.

The judge found, however, that the state’s regulation of midwifery more broadly speaking is “reasonably necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of mothers and their newborns.”

The ruling doesn’t block the law as it pertains to unlicensed midwives who do not focus on Hawaiian birthing practices, said Hillary Schneller, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the women. “That is a gap that this order doesn’t address.”

The case is expected to continue to trial to determine whether the law should be permanently blocked.

The state attorney general’s office said in an email Wednesday that it was still reviewing the decision.
…

…

washington — NASA’s rover Perseverance on Mars has made what could be its most astonishing discovery to date: possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.

The six-wheeled robotic explorer came across an intriguing, arrow-shaped rock dubbed “Cheyava Falls” that may harbor fossilized microbes from billions of years ago, when Mars was a watery world.

Perseverance drilled into the enigmatic rock to collect a core sample on July 21, as it traversed Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley.

The samples carefully stowed beneath the rover’s belly are destined to eventually return to Earth, where they will undergo more comprehensive analysis.

“Cheyava Falls is the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance,” project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech said Thursday.

Three compelling clues have scientists buzzing.

White calcium sulfate veins run the length of the rock, a telltale sign that water once flowed through it.

Between these veins is a reddish middle area, teeming with organic compounds, as detected by the rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument.

Finally, tiny off-white splotches ringed with black, reminiscent of leopard spots, contain chemicals that suggest energy sources for ancient microbes, according to scans by the PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) instrument.

“On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface,” said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

The quest to confirm ancient Martian life is far from over, however.

The real test will come when Perseverance’s precious rock samples are returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return Program, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency slated for the 2030s.

While there are alternative explanations for these findings that do not involve microbes, there is a tantalizing chance that Perseverance’s core sample might contain actual fossilized microbes — potentially making history as the first proof of life beyond Earth.

“We have zapped that rock with lasers and X-rays and imaged it literally day and night from just about every angle imaginable,” said Farley.

“Scientifically, Perseverance has nothing more to give. To fully understand what really happened in that Martian river valley at Jezero Crater billions of years ago, we’d want to bring the Cheyava Falls sample back to Earth, so it can be studied with the powerful instruments available in laboratories,” he explained.
…

washington — Thousands of policymakers, health care professionals and advocates gathered this week in Munich, Germany, to take stock of the global fight against HIV as they try to meet the 2030 deadline set by world leaders for eliminating AIDS as a public health threat.

Advocates hailed sub-Saharan Africa’s progress in the global HIV response, with tens of millions of people now on lifesaving drugs.

A new UNAIDS survey released during the conference reported that “approximately 30.7 million of the estimated 39.9 million people living with HIV globally were receiving antiretroviral therapy in 2023.”

The report called that result a “landmark public health achievement,” and health officials at the conference said it would not be possible without the “immense political will” of regional leaders and NGOs.

Anne Githuku-Shongwe, the UNAIDS regional director for eastern and southern Africa, told VOA from Johannesburg that recently there has been a “huge focus” on ensuring that anyone living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa gets access to testing and treatment to ensure virus suppression, so the virus becomes untransmissible.

“The data is telling us that 84% of people living with HIV in our region have access to treatment. And 94% of those on treatment have been able to keep [the virus] suppressed so it is untransmissible,” she said.

However, Githuku-Shongwe pointed out that despite the progress that has been made, some countries in Africa are lagging behind in the battle against HIV/AIDS, partly because of civil wars, humanitarian setbacks and sheer negligence. She mentioned South Sudan, Angola, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and the Comoros as examples.

“[Countries] like Mauritius are barely at 50% of the treatment target,” she said, adding that another critical challenge being faced is the lack of attention to children living with the virus.

The report said children aged 0-14 years are still contracting HIV. An estimated 120,000 children got the virus in 2023, bringing the number of children living with HIV globally to 1.4 million, 86% of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UNAIDS report.

Worries about donor funding

Githuku-Shongwe said there have been major investments from partners – particularly from PEPFAR, a U.S.-funded initiative to tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. She noted that in some countries, up to 99% of the HIV response is externally funded.

“But with time we are seeing that dwindling,” she said.

Nearly $19.8 billion was available in 2023 for HIV programs in low- and middle-income countries, almost $9.5 billion short of the amount needed by 2025, the report said.

Catherine Connor, vice president in charge of public policy and advocacy at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, a Washington nonprofit, told VOA from Munich that the data on infections in children were “troubling” and pointed to a lackadaisical approach toward pediatric HIV.

“The report clearly shows that children are one out of every 10 new infections, which is really high,” she said. “But there’s also an outsized mortality issue around children. Children make up 3% of the HIV-infected population, but they represent 12% of deaths.”

Connor said there’s inequity in treatment, particularly for children living with HIV.

“Children can’t take themselves to clinics. They often don’t even know they’ve been exposed to HIV,” she said. “So they really rely on caregivers, the community around them, to ensure not just that they can be identified as being HIV-exposed or potentially HIV-positive, but also get the needed support to maintain their health, even if they are on treatment.”

Connor concluded that world leaders and policymakers should be made aware how significant it is to act on HIV prevention, because if the world fails to take steps to curtail the virus, then “we will not end AIDS.”

“It’s almost like having a dam holding back a river of water,” she said.

“HIV is preventable and treatable, but it is not curable. And so, if we let cracks in that dam get so bad, it’s going to break, and we are going to see a reemergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in ways we have never seen,” Connor said.
…

United Nations — The U.N. Secretary-General warned Thursday that the Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, killing nearly a half-million people annually, and he blamed fossil fuels for driving global warming.

“Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic — wilting under increasingly deadly heat waves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world. That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit. And halfway to boiling,” Antonio Guterres told reporters.

Sunday was the Earth’s hottest day on record, only to have the record broken the following day. Temperatures have been rising steadily, with scientists declaring the last 13 consecutive months all heat record-breakers. Urban areas are heating up at twice the global average.

Heat waves have killed scores of people this year in India and in Africa’s Sahel region. Last month, extreme heat killed 1,300 Muslim pilgrims in Saudi Arabia. This month, Europe, the United States and Asia have also seen exceptional heat.

He said that the World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization estimate that improvements to heat health warning systems in 57 countries could save nearly 100,000 lives a year.

Fossil fuels

Guterres has repeatedly called on greenhouse gas emitters to meet the 2015 Paris Climate Accord’s target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a goal that many worry is slipping away. He said that fossil fuel expansion and new coal plants are obstacles to meeting that target.

“I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” he said. “In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future.”

He urged leaders to quickly and fairly phase out fossil fuels and end new coal projects.

“The G20 must shift fossil fuel subsidies to renewables and support vulnerable countries and communities,” he said of the world’s largest economies.

And he urged more climate adaptation and mitigation financing from the richest countries — which are the biggest emitters — to help the poorest, most vulnerable nations that have contributed the least to global warming.

Guterres said he is launching a global call to action focused on caring for the most vulnerable, including protecting workers who are exposed to extreme heat.

“A new report from the International Labor Organization — being released today — warns that over 70% of the global workforce — 2.4 billion people — are now at high risk of extreme heat,” he said.

In addition to the rights and health of individual workers, there are economic impacts of extreme heat too.

“Heat stress at work is projected to cost the global economy $2.4 trillion by 2030. Up from $280 billion in the mid-1990s,” Guterres said, adding measures need to be taken to “heat proof” critical sectors of the global economy, like farming and construction work.

The U.N. chief warned that extreme heat widens social inequality, undermines development, furthers food insecurity, and pushes people deeper into poverty.

“Leaders across the board must wake up and step up,” he said.
…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A super Jupiter has been spotted around a neighboring star by the Webb Space Telescope — and it has a super orbit. 

The planet is roughly the same diameter as Jupiter, but with six times the mass. Its atmosphere is also rich in hydrogen like Jupiter’s. 

One big difference: It takes this planet more than a century, possibly as long as 250 years, to go around its star. It’s 15 times the distance from its star than Earth is to the sun. 

Scientists had long suspected a big planet circled this star 12 light-years away, but not this massive or far from its star. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. These new observations show the planet orbits the star Epsilon Indi A, part of a three-star system. 

An international team led by Max Planck Institute for Astronomy’s Elisabeth Matthews in Germany collected the images last year and published the findings Wednesday in the journal Nature. 

Astronomers directly observed the incredibly old and cold gas giant — a rare and tricky feat — by masking the star through use of a special shading device on Webb. By blocking the starlight, the planet stood out as a pinpoint of infrared light. 

The planet and star clock in at 3.5 billion years old, 1 billion years younger than our own solar system, but still considered old and brighter than expected, according to Matthews. 

The star is so close and bright to our own solar system that it’s visible with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Don’t bet on life, though. 

“This is a gas giant with no hard surface or liquid water oceans,” Matthews said in an email. 

It’s unlikely this solar system sports more gas giants, she said, but small rocky worlds could be lurking there. 

Worlds similar to Jupiter can help scientists understand “how these planets evolve over giga-year timescales,” she said. 

The first planets outside our solar system — dubbed exoplanets — were confirmed in the early 1990s. NASA’s tally now stands at 5,690 as of mid-July. The vast majority were detected via the transit method, in which a fleeting dip in starlight, repeated at regular intervals, indicates an orbiting planet. 

Telescopes in space and also on the ground are on the hunt for even more, especially planets that might be similar to Earth. 

Launched in 2021, NASA and the European Space Agency’s Webb telescope is the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever placed in space.
…

A group of young African students is shooting for the stars thanks to a program called ‘Pathways to Space.’ Aerospace company Boeing and a South African science organization backed an education program that just celebrated its first batch of graduates. Vicky Stark reports from Cape Town.
…

…

Geneva — A senior World Health Organization official expressed alarm Tuesday at the high risk of polio spreading within the Gaza Strip because of dire sanitary conditions in the war-wracked enclave, and that the paralytic disease it causes could spill across borders without prompt action to stem the outbreak.

“I am, like, super worried,” Dr. Avadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at the WHO in the occupied Palestinian territory, told journalists from Jerusalem. “I am extremely worried about an outbreak happening in Gaza … and that it may spill over internationally at a very high point.” 

Saparbekov, who recently returned from a weeklong visit to Gaza, confirmed that “circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2” has been identified in samples of Gazan sewage assessed by researchers and that an epidemiological probe “to identify the potential source of this importation” is underway.

“Based on the results of the assessment, WHO and the GPEI (Global Polio Eradication Initiative) partners will consolidate a set of recommendations, including the need for a mass vaccination campaign,” he said.

On July 16, the Global Polio Laboratory Network isolated the virus in six environmental surveillance samples collected from sewage on June 23 in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah in Gaza.

The WHO reports that further genomic sequencing of the samples by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that they are related to environmental samples that were circulating in Egypt during the second half of last year.

“It is important to note that poliovirus has been isolated from environmental samples only at this time; no associated paralytic cases have been detected,” Saparbekov stressed.

Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus is transmitted from person to person mainly through the fecal-oral route. It can invade a person’s nervous system and cause paralysis and death.

“We have not yet collected the human samples to identify any viruses because of the lack of equipment to collect those and lack of capacity to test those samples,” Saparbekov said, noting that WHO and UNICEF teams entering Gaza on Thursday will bring up to 50 sample collection kits “so we will be able to collect human samples, stool samples from humans.”

The samples, he said, will be sent to a lab in Jordan to confirm any cases of infection.

“Until that is done, I cannot say that there are any humans that are affected with this circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus,” he said.

The WHO said that wild poliovirus was eliminated more than 25 years ago in the Palestinian territories. Before the start of the war in Gaza, following a vicious attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, the U.N. health agency says 89% of the population was vaccinated against polio, primarily conducted through routine immunization.

Last Sunday, Israel’s military said it would offer polio vaccinations to soldiers serving in Gaza to protect against the paralytic disease.

Saparbekov said the WHO will be reaching out to COGAT, the Israeli authority responsible for the coordination of government activities in the Palestinian territories, “to see how they can facilitate” the response to the outbreak. One way to do that, he added, is to have vaccines available for Gazans in case “there is a decision to conduct a mass campaign.”

“We have so far received assurances that this will be done,” he said.

The WHO official expressed hope that the epidemiological investigation and risk assessment would be completed by the end of the week, such that his team “will have a joint recommendation from the GPEI network about what to do with this particular outbreak” by Sunday.

In the meantime, he said, aid workers are doing their best to inform the population as to health measures they must take to prevent a polio outbreak.

“Given the water and sanitation limitations in Gaza, it will be very difficult for the population to follow the advice to wash their hands, to drink safe water,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the majority that live in shelters with one toilet for 600 people and maybe 1.5 liters of water per person, will definitely not be able to follow the recommendations that we are providing,” he said.

While reiterating concerns about polio spreading in the Palestinian enclave, WHO health emergency chief Saparbekov said he also is very worried about the possible outbreak of other communicable diseases.

“We had Hepatitis A confirmed last year and now we may have a polio outbreak,” he said. “So, with the crippled health system, lack of water and sanitation, as well as lack of access of the population to health services, specifically primary health services, this is going to be a very bad situation that will happen in Gaza.

“We may have more people dying from communicable diseases than from injuries and related conditions,” he warned.
…

Some people who have lost the ability to speak can still move their vocal cords. California researchers are working to transform those muscle movements into audible speech. Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles in this week’s edition of LogOn.
…

United Nations — Nearly 40 million people were living with the HIV virus that causes AIDS last year, over 9 million weren’t getting any treatment, and the result was that every minute someone died of AIDS-related causes, the U.N. said in a new report launched Monday.

While advances are being made to end the global AIDS pandemic, the report said progress has slowed, funding is shrinking, and new infections are rising in three regions: the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America.

In 2023, around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses, a significant decline from the 2.1 million deaths in 2004. But the latest figure is more than double the target for 2025 of fewer than 250,000 deaths, according to the report by UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end the pandemic.

Gender inequality is exacerbating the risks for girls and women, the report said, citing the extraordinarily high incidence of HIV among adolescents and young women in parts of Africa.

The proportion of new infections globally among marginalized communities that face stigma and discrimination – sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who inject drugs also increased to 55% in 2023 from 45% in 2010, it said.

UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said: “World leaders pledged to end the AIDS pandemic as a public health threat by 2030, and they can uphold their promise, but only if they ensure that the HIV response has the resources it needs, and that the human rights of everyone are protected.”

As part of that pledge, leaders vowed to reduce annual new HIV infections to below 370,000 by 2025, but the report said in 2023 new infections were more than three times higher at 1.3 million.

Last year, among the 39.9 million people globally living with HIV, 86% knew they were infected, 77% were accessing treatment, and for 72% the virus was suppressed, the report said

Cesar Nunez, director of the UNAIDS New York office, told a news conference there has been progress in HIV treatments — injections that can stay in the body for six months, but the two doses cost $40,000 yearly, out of reach for all but the richest people with the virus.

He said UNAIDS has been asking the manufacturer to make it available at lower cost to low and middle-income countries.

Nunez said there have also been seven cases where people with HIV who were treated for leukemia emerged with no sign of the HIV virus in their system.

He said injections and the seven cases will be discussed at the 25th International AIDS Conference which began Monday in Munich.

At present, he said, daily treatment with pills costs about $75 per person per year. It has allowed many countries to increase the number of people with HIV to receive treatment.

Nunez said UNAIDS will continue advocating for a vaccine to prevent AIDS.
…

BENGALURU, India — At a Coca-Cola factory on the outskirts of Chennai in southern India, a giant battery powers machinery day and night, replacing a diesel-spewing generator. It’s one of just a handful of sites in India powered by electricity stored in batteries, a key component to fast-tracking India’s energy transition away from dirty fuels.   

The country’s lithium ion battery storage industry — which can store electricity generated by wind turbines or solar panels for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing — makes up just 0.1% of global battery storage systems. But battery storage is growing fast, with around a third of India’s total battery infrastructure coming online just this year.   

“Our orders are growing exponentially,” said Ayush Misra, CEO of Amperehour Energy, the company that installed the batteries at the Chennai factory. “It’s a really exciting time to be a battery storage provider.”   

Businesses invest in industry

India currently has around 100 megawatts of storage capacity from batteries, with another 3.3 gigawatts of clean energy storage coming from hydropower. The Indian government estimates that the country will need about 74 gigawatts of energy storage from batteries, hydropower and nuclear energy by 2032, but experts think the country actually needs closer to double that amount to meet the country’s energy needs. 

Some customers are still wary of using battery technology for storage, and the storage systems can be seen as more expensive than the more commonly used coal. The supply chain of batteries is also concentrated in China, meaning the sector is vulnerable to geopolitical volatility. 

But markets don’t think customers will be hesitant about batteries for long, with major Indian businesses announcing significant investments in the industry.   

In January this year, energy giant Reliance Industries said it will build a 5,000-acre factory in Jamnagar, Gujarat. And in March, Goodenough Energy said it will spend $53 million by 2027 to set up a 20 million kilowatt-hour battery factory in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir.   

Alexander Hogeveen Rutter, an independent energy analyst based in Bengaluru, said upping storage capacity should be done alongside ramping up renewables. 

“Clean energy combined with adequate storage can be an alternative to coal. Not in the future but right now,” he said. He added that it’s a “myth” that clean energy is more expensive than coal, as current prices of renewable energy combined with storage is cheaper than new coal.   

Global battery costs are declining faster than expected, and experts say that if costs continue to plummet, energy storage systems can better compete with both coal and clean energy sources like hydropower and nuclear energy that can also control their supply to meet demand. 

“Battery storage is now the largest resource to meet California’s evening peak electricity requirements. It’s more than gas, nuclear or coal,” he said. This is being replicated in the U.K., China and even smaller nations like Tonga. “There’s no reason why this can’t happen in India too,” he said.   

India’s energy needs grow

One of India’s unique challenges is that energy needs are growing more rapidly than most nations: the population is increasing and extreme heat fueled by climate change means more and more people are using energy-guzzling air conditioning. India’s electricity demand grew by 7% last year and is expected to grow by at least 6% every year for the next three years, according to the International Energy Agency. 

“The country needs to quadruple its renewable energy deployment just to meet demand growth,” said Hogeveen Rutter. 

Ankit Mittal, co-founder of Sheru, a software company that offers energy storage and management solutions, said that making battery storage sites more flexible can help the industry ramp up quickly.   

Mittal said battery storage sites should be more accessible to the national energy grid, so they can provide electricity to whichever regions need the extra boost of energy most. Currently, battery storage sites in India only power up more local sites.   

To encourage further growth of the battery sector, the Indian government announced last year a $452 million effort to support an additional four gigawatts of battery storage by 2031. But the government also provides subsidies for coal plants, making the electricity generated there a cheaper bet for some utility companies. 

Future government policy could level the playing field. The country is set to announce a new national budget later in July that industry leaders hope will contain incentives for clean energy storage. 

Akshat Singhal, co-founder of the Bengaluru-based battery tech startup Log 9 Materials, thinks that better government support can help the country meet growing energy demands “the right way,” with clean energy. 

“One significant policy change can kickstart the entire ecosystem,” he said. 
…

new york — As U.S. health officials investigate a fatal outbreak of listeria food poisoning, they’re advising people who are pregnant, elderly or have compromised immune systems to avoid eating sliced deli meat unless it’s recooked at home to be steaming hot.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t mandate a food recall as of early Saturday, because it remains unclear what specific products have been contaminated with the bacteria now blamed for two deaths and 28 hospitalizations across 12 states. This means the contaminated food may still be in circulation, and consumers should consider their personal risk level when consuming deli meats.

Federal health officials warned Friday that the number of illnesses is likely an undercount, because people who recover at home aren’t likely to be tested. For the same reason, the outbreak may have spread wider than the states where listeria infections have been reported, mostly in the Midwest and along the U.S. eastern coast.

The largest number known to get sick — seven — were in New York, according to the CDC. The people who died were from Illinois and New Jersey.

What investigators have learned

Of the people investigators have been able to interview, “89% reported eating meats sliced at a deli, most commonly deli-sliced turkey, liverwurst and ham. Meats were sliced at a variety of supermarket and grocery store delis,” the CDC said.

And samples collected from victims from May 29 to July 5 show the bacteria is closely related genetically.

“This information suggests that meats sliced at the deli are a likely source of this outbreak. However, at this time CDC doesn’t have enough information to say which deli meats are the source of this outbreak,” the agency said in a statement published on its website Friday.

What to expect if you’re infected

Listeria infections typically cause fever, muscle aches and tiredness and may cause stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions. Symptoms can occur quickly or to up to 10 weeks after eating contaminated food.

It can be diagnosed by testing bodily fluids, usually blood, and sometimes urine or spinal fluid, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Listeria infections are especially dangerous for people older than 65 and those with weakened immune systems, according to the CDC. Victims of this outbreak ranged in age from 32 to 94, with a median age of 75.

For pregnant people, listeria can increase the risk of miscarriages. One of the victims of the current outbreak was pregnant, but did not have a miscarriage, officials said.

Infections confined to the gut — intestinal listeriosis — can often be treated without antibiotics according to the CDC. For example, people might need extra fluids while experiencing diarrhea.

But when the infection spreads beyond the gut — invasive listeriosis — it’s extremely dangerous and is often treated with antibiotics to mitigate the risk of blood infections and brain inflammation, according to the Mayo Clinic.

What about the meat in your fridge

So far there’s no sign that people are getting sick from prepackaged deli meats. And for at-risk people who already have deli slices in their refrigerator, they can be sanitized by being recooked.

“Refrigeration does not kill Listeria, but reheating before eating will kill any germs that may be on these meats,” the CDC says.
…

After the Apollo program ended, the US took a long hiatus from lunar exploration. What happened during this time, and what has NASA been doing? This documentary by the Voice of America’s Russian service focuses on the details of the NASA’s Artemis program and plans to further explore the Moon and Mars.
…

Washington — Russia and China are edging ever closer to unleashing space-based weapons, a decision that could have far-reaching implications for America’s ability to defend itself, U.S. military and intelligence agencies warn.

Adding to the concern, they say, is what appears to be a growing willingness by both countries to set aside long-running suspicions and animosity in order to gain an edge over the United States.

“I would highlight … the increasing amount in intent to use counterspace capabilities,” said Lieutenant General Jeff Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“Both Russia and China view the use of space early on, even ahead of conflict, as important capabilities to deter or to compel behaviors,” Kruse told the annual Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday. “We just need to be ready.”

Concerns about the safety of space surged earlier this year when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner called for the declassification of “all information” related to what was described as a new Russian anti-satellite capability involving nuclear weapons.

More recently, Turner has warned that the U.S. is “sleepwalking” into a disaster, saying that Russia is on the verge of being able to detonate a nuclear weapon in space, which would impose high costs on the U.S. military and economy.

The White House has responded repeatedly that U.S. officials have been aware of the Russian plans, and that Moscow has not yet deployed a space-based nuclear capability.

It is a stance that Kruse reaffirmed Wednesday, with added caution.

“We have been tracking for almost a decade Russia’s intent to design the ability to put a nuclear weapon in space,” he said. “They have progressed down to a point where we think they’re getting close.”

The Russians “don’t intend to slow down, and until there’s repercussions, will not slow down,” he said.

Russian and Chinese officials have yet to respond to VOA’s requests for reaction to the latest U.S. accusations, but both countries have repeatedly denied U.S. criticisms of their space policies.

In May, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov dismissed U.S. concerns about Moscow trying to put nuclear weapons in space as “fake news.”

But the Chinese Embassy in Washington, while admitting there are some “difficulties” when it comes to China-U.S. relations in space, rejected any suggestion Beijing is acting belligerently in space.

“China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space, opposes weaponizing space or an arms race in space and works actively toward the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind in space,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email.

“The U.S. has been weaving a narrative about the so-called threat posed by China in outer space in an attempt to justify its own military buildup to seek space hegemony,” Liu said. “It is just another illustration of how the U.S. clings on to the Cold War mentality and deflects responsibility.”

Despite Beijing’s public posture, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Kruse suggested Wednesday that China’s rapid expansion into the space domain is just as worrisome.

“They’re in multiple orbits that they did not used to be before,” he told the audience in Aspen, Colorado, warning that Beijing has already invested heavily in directed energy weapons, electronic warfare capabilities and anti-satellite technology.

“China is the one country that more so even than the United States has a space doctrine, a space strategy, and they train and exercise the use of space and counterspace capabilities in a way that we just don’t see elsewhere,” he said.

The general in charge of U.S. Space Command described the Chinese threat in even starker terms.

“China is building a kill web, if you will, in space,” said General Stephen Whiting, speaking alongside Kruse at the Aspen conference. 

“In the last six years, they’ve tripled the number of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites they have on orbit — hundreds and hundreds of satellites, again, purpose built and designed to find, fix, track target and, yes, potentially engage U.S. and allied forces across the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

Whiting also raised concerns about the lack of clear military communication with China about space.

“We want to have a way to talk to them about space safety as they put more satellites on orbit,” he said, “so that we can operate effectively and don’t have any miscommunication or unintended actions that cause a misunderstanding.”
…

Blantyre, Malawi     — Malawi has declared the end of the country’s worst cholera outbreak, which began in March 2022 and killed nearly 2,000 people.

In a statement Monday, the Ministry of Health said the country had registered no cases or deaths from cholera in 26 of Malawi’s 29 health districts in the past four weeks. Some health experts, however, said the outbreak could resurface if the country failed to address sanitation problems that caused it.

Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera launched a national campaign to end the cholera outbreak in February 2023. The “Tithetse Kolera” or “Let’s End Cholera” campaign came three months after he declared the disease to be a public health emergency in Malawi.

The campaign aimed to interrupt cholera transmission in all districts and reduce the fatality rate from 3.2% to below 1%, which the World Health Organization considers a controlled cholera outbreak.

Dr. Wilfred Chalamira Nkhoma,  co-chairperson for the presidential task force on COVID-19 and cholera in Malawi, told VOA the disease had now been defeated largely because of the campaign.

“By WHO definition, a country stands to end the transmission of cholera when they have gone at least four weeks without reporting a laboratory confirmed case of cholera,” he said. “So that is the case with Malawi right now. We haven’t had a confirmed case since 6th of June.”

Successful steps

Nkhoma attributed the development to several interventions Malawi conducted over the past two years. He said they involved educating people about transmission, prevention and control of cholera; increasing surveillance; and properly managing cholera cases.

“The key one — and that must remain the key one — is to increase access to safe water and also improve adequate sanitation,” he said. “The Ministry of Water and Sanitation was taking the lead in this, but they were supported very well by nongovernmental organizations that are working in the water and sanitation sector.”

Nkhoma said another measure was the oral cholera vaccination campaign, which began in December 2022.

“We were able as a country to access some doses from WHO,” he said. “We were able to administer not less than about  6 million doses of cholera vaccine focusing first and foremost in priority areas.”

The Ministry of Health said in its Monday statement that Malawi had registered 56,376 cases of cholera, with 1,772 deaths since March 2022.

Maziko Matemba, a national community health ambassador in Malawi, told VOA that Malawi seemed to have managed the cholera outbreak at the treatment and case-management levels, but added that sanitation problems remained a challenge.

“Because at the moment, if you go to villages, if you go to public places, people are not doing the sanitation issues properly,” Matemba said. “Even if you check in public toilets, even if you check how people are preparing food, you will find that we still have challenges as a country to contain disease like cholera.” 

Nkhoma said the government would continue its effort to educate people about how cholera is transmitted, prevented and controlled to try to avoid further outbreaks.
…

LONDON — The world’s second vaccine against malaria was launched on Monday as Ivory Coast began a routine vaccine program using shots developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India. 

The introduction of the World Health Organization (WHO)-approved R21 vaccine comes six months after the first malaria vaccine, called RTS,S and developed by British drugmaker GSK, began being administered in a routine program in Cameroon. 

Some 15 African countries plan to introduce one of the two malaria vaccines this year with support from the Gavi global vaccine alliance. 

Ivory Coast has received a total of 656,600 doses of the Oxford and Serum shot, which will initially vaccinate 250,000 children aged between 0 and 23 months across the West African country. The vaccine has also been approved by Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. 

The rollout of a second vaccine is the latest milestone in the global fight against malaria and should help address a problem that emerged well before either of the two shots was launched: demand for them is likely to far outstrip supply for several years. 

Experts say having safe and effective malaria vaccines is important to meet demand. The shot is meant to work alongside existing tools — such as bed nets — to combat malaria, which in Africa kills nearly half a million children under the age of five each year. 

The Serum Institute of India, which manufactures the vaccine, has produced 25 million doses for the initial rollout of the shot and “is committed to scaling up to 100 million doses annually,” the company said on Monday about the launch in Ivory Coast. 

Serum said it is offering the vaccine for less than $4 per dose, in keeping with its aim to deliver low-cost vaccines at scale. 

Results from a large trial in February showed the vaccine prevented around three-quarters of symptomatic malaria cases in young children the first year after they got the shots. 

Experts told Reuters at that time that comparing the two malaria vaccines head-to-head was difficult because of the many variables involved in the trials, but overall their performance was similar — a conclusion endorsed by WHO.
…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Scientists have confirmed a cave on the moon, not far from where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed 55 years ago, and suspect there are hundreds more that could house future astronauts.

An Italian-led team reported Monday that there’s evidence for a sizable cave accessible from the deepest known pit on the moon. It’s located at the Sea of Tranquility, just 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Apollo 11’s landing site.

The pit, like the more than 200 others discovered up there, was created by the collapse of a lava tube.

Researchers analyzed radar measurements by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and compared the results with lava tubes on Earth. Their findings appeared in the journal Nature Astronomy. 
…

…

Geneva — Global childhood vaccination levels have stalled, leaving millions more children un- or under-vaccinated than before the pandemic, the U.N. said Monday, warning of dangerous coverage gaps enabling outbreaks of diseases like measles.

In 2023, 84% of children, or 108 million, received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP), with the third dose serving as a key marker for global immunization coverage, according to data published by the U.N. health and children’s agencies.

That was the same percentage as a year earlier, meaning that modest progress seen in 2022 after the steep drop during the COVID-19 crisis has “stalled,” the organizations warned. The rate was 86% in 2019 before the pandemic.

“The latest trends demonstrate that many countries continue to miss far too many children,” UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a joint statement.

In fact, 2.7 million additional children remained un- or under-vaccinated last year compared to the pre-pandemic levels in 2019, the organizations found.

‘Off track’

“We are off track,” World Health Organization vaccine chief Kate O’Brien told reporters. “Global immunization coverage has yet to fully recover from the historic backsliding that we saw during the course of the pandemic.”

Not only has progress stalled, but the number of so-called zero-dose children, who have not received a single jab, rose to 14.5 million last year from 13.9 million in 2022 and from 12.8 million in 2019, according to the data published Monday.

“This puts the lives of the most vulnerable children at risk,” O’Brien warned.

Even more concerning is that more than half of the world’s unvaccinated children live in 31 countries with fragile, conflict-affected settings, where they are especially vulnerable to contracting preventable diseases, due to lacking access to security, nutrition and health services.

Children in such countries are also far more likely to miss out on the necessary follow-up jabs.

A full 6.5 million children worldwide did not complete their third dose of the DTP vaccine, which is necessary to achieve disease protection in infancy and early childhood, Monday’s datasets showed. 

‘Canary in the coal mine’

The WHO and UNICEF voiced additional concern over lagging vaccination against measles — one of the world’s most infectious diseases — amid an exploding number of outbreaks around the world.

“Measles outbreaks are the canary in the coal mine, exposing and exploiting gaps in immunization and hitting the most vulnerable first,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the statement.

In 2023, only 83% of children worldwide received their first dose of the measles vaccine through routine health services — the same level as in 2022 but down from 86% before the pandemic.

And only 74% received their second necessary dose, while 95% coverage is needed to prevent outbreaks, the organizations pointed out.

“This is still too low to prevent outbreaks and achieve elimination goals,” Ephrem Lemango, UNICEF immunization chief, told reporters.

He pointed out that more than 300,000 measles cases were confirmed in 2023 — nearly three times as many as a year earlier.

And a full 103 countries have suffered outbreaks in the past five years, with low vaccination coverage of 80% or lower seen as a major factor.

By contrast, 91 countries with strong measles vaccine coverage experienced no outbreaks.

“Alarmingly, nearly three in four infants live in places at the greatest risk of measles outbreaks,” Lemango said, pointing out that 10 crisis-wracked countries, including Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan, account for more than half of children not vaccinated against measles.

On a more positive note, strong increases were seen in vaccination against the cervical cancer-causing HPV virus.

But that vaccine is still only reaching 56% of adolescent girls in high-income countries and 23% in lower-income countries — far below the 90% target.
…

The Kenyan government is using a new mobile application to educate girls about menstrual health. Through the Oky Kenya app, users can access information on hygiene and other topics. The goal is to dispel myths and misconceptions about menstruation and protect girls against teenage pregnancies. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi.
…

NEW YORK — The nearly complete fossilized remains of a 161-million-year-old stegosaurus discovered in Colorado in 2022 will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York next week, auction house officials said.

The dinosaur that Sotheby’s calls Apex stands 3.3 meters tall and measures 8.2 meters nose to tail, according to Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture.

The stegosaurus, with its distinctive pointy dorsal plates, is one of the world’s most recognizable dinosaurs.

Apex, which Hatton called “a coloring book dinosaur,” was discovered in May 2022 on private land near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The excavation was completed in October 2023, Sotheby’s said.

Though experts believe stegosauruses used their fearsome tail spikes to fight, this specimen shows no signs of combat, Sotheby’s said. The fossil does show evidence of arthritis, suggesting that Apex lived to an advanced age.

Hatton said Apex was found “with the tail curled up underneath the body, which is a common death pose for animals.”

The dinosaur will be auctioned on July 17 as part of Sotheby’s “Geek Week” series.

Sotheby’s is estimating that it will sell for $4 million to $6 million, but that’s just an educated guess.

“This is an incredibly rare animal,” Hatton said. “A stegosaurus of this caliber has never sold at auction before, so we will find out what it is actually worth.”
…

PARIS — At least 25 cases of a dangerous new strain of mpox spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo have been detected in the eastern city of Goma, mostly in camps housing people fleeing a surrounding conflict, health authorities said Wednesday.

Congo has seen 20,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths from mpox, mainly among children, since the start of 2023. Over 11,000 cases, including 443 deaths, have been reported so far this year.

Authorities recently approved the use of vaccines to tackle the upsurge, but none are currently available outside of clinical trials in the country.

The head of the national response team against the mpox epidemic, Cris Kacita, said in an interview that most of the new reported cases were in displaced people camps.

He said cases were infected with a new strain of the virus that is spreading in South Kivu province. Goma is the capital and largest city of the neighboring North Kivu province.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and scientists raised the alarm last month about the mpox situation in Congo, including the spread of a new strain of mpox spreading in South Kivu.

Mpox has been endemic in Congo for decades but a new variant of the clade I of the virus emerged last year. It is a viral infection that spreads through close contact, causing flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. Most cases are mild, but it can kill.

A different, less severe form of mpox – clade IIb – spread globally in 2022, largely through sexual contact among men who have sex with men. This prompted the WHO to declare a public health emergency that has now ended, although there are still cases and the agency has said mpox remains a public health threat.

“The national biomedical research institute in Goma has sequenced the virus and this proves that the virus has been circulating for a long time in the city of Goma,” Kacita said.

“The risk here is the promiscuity in the camps and the speed with which the epidemic is spreading,” he warned.

Hundreds of thousands of people who fled conflict in Congo’s insurgent-hit east are staying in overcrowded camps in and around Goma.

The number of displaced has increased since a rebel group known as the M23 launched a major offensive in 2022, prompting national and regional military responses that have struggled to stem the militia’s advance. 
…