SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space transportation company, on Monday named its first private passenger as Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa, the founder and chief executive of online fashion retailer Zozo.

A former drummer in a punk band, billionaire Maezawa will take a trip around the moon planned for 2023 aboard its forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket spaceship, taking the race to commercialize space travel to new heights.

The first person to travel to the moon since the United States’ Apollo missions ended in 1972, Maezawa’s identity was revealed at an event on Monday evening at the company’s headquarters and rocket factory in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne.

Maezawa, who is most famous outside Japan for his record-breaking $110 million purchase of an untitled 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, said he would invite six to eight artists to join him on the lunar orbit mission.

The billionaire chief executive of electric car maker Tesla, Musk revealed more details of the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, the super heavy-lift launch vehicle that he promises will shuttle passengers to the moon and eventually fly humans and cargo to Mars. The BFR could be conducting its first orbital flights in about two to three years, he said.

Musk had previously said he wanted the rocket to be ready for an unpiloted trip to Mars in 2022, with a crewed flight in 2024, though his ambitious production targets have been known to slip.

“Its not 100 percent certain we can bring this to flight,” Musk said of the lunar mission.

The amount Maezawa is paying for the trip was not disclosed, however, Musk said the businessman outlaid a significant deposit and will have a material impact on the cost of developing the BFR.

The 42-year-old Maezawa is one of Japan’s most colorful executives and is a regular fixture in the country’s gossipy weeklies with his collection of foreign and Japanese art, fast cars and celebrity girlfriend.

Maezawa made his fortune by founding the wildly popular shopping site Zozotown. His company Zozo, officially called Start Today Co Ltd, also offers a made-to-measure service using a polka dot bodysuit, the Zozosuit.

With SpaceX, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic battling it out to launch private-sector spacecraft, Maezawa will join a growing list of celebrities and the ultra-rich who have secured seats on flights offered on the under-development vessels.

Those who have signed up to fly on Virgin Galactic sub-orbital missions include actor Leonardo DiCaprio and pop star Justin Bieber. A 90-minute flight costs $250,000.

Short sightseeing trips to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket are likely to cost around $200,000 to $300,000, at least to start, Reuters reported in July.

SpaceX has already upended the space industry with its relatively low-cost reusable Falcon 9 rockets. The company has completed more than 50 successful Falcon launches and snagged billions of dollars’ worth of contracts, including deals with NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense.

SpaceX in February transfixed a global audience with the successful test launch of its Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world.
…

A school-based survey shows nearly 1 in 11 U.S. students have used marijuana in electronic cigarettes, heightening health concerns about the new popularity of vaping among teens.

E-cigarettes typically contain nicotine, but many of the battery-powered devices can vaporize other substances, including marijuana. Results published Monday mean 2.1 million middle and high school students have used them to get high.

Vaping is generally considered less dangerous than smoking, because burning tobacco or marijuana generates chemicals that are harmful to lungs. But there is little research on e-cigarettes’ long-term effects, including whether they help smokers quit. 

The rise in teenagers using e-cigarettes has alarmed health officials who worry kids will get addicted to nicotine, a stimulant, and be more likely to try cigarettes. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration gave the five largest e-cigarette makers 60 days to produce plans to stop underage use of their products.

Nearly 9 percent of students surveyed in 2016 said they used an e-cigarette device with marijuana, according to Monday’s report in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. That included one-third of those who ever used e-cigarettes.

The number is worrying “because cannabis use among youth can adversely affect learning and memory and may impair later academic achievement and education,” said lead researcher Katrina Trivers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Students who said they lived with a tobacco user were more likely than others to report vaping marijuana.

It’s unclear whether marijuana vaping is increasing among teens or holding steady. The devices have grown into a multi-billion industry, but they are relatively new.

In states where marijuana is legal, shoppers can buy cartridges of liquid containing THC, the chemical in marijuana that gets people high, that work with a number of devices. Juul, by far the most popular e-cigarette device, does not offer marijuana pods, but users can re-fill cartridges with cannabis oil. 

It was the first time a question about marijuana vaping was asked on this particular survey, which uses a nationally representative sample of students in public and private schools. More than 20,000 students took the survey in 2016.

A different survey from the University of Michigan in December found similar results when it asked for the first time about marijuana vaping. In that study, 8 percent of 10th graders said they vaped marijuana in the past year.

“The health risks of vaping reside not only in the vaping devices, but in the social environment that comes with it,” said University of Michigan researcher Richard Miech. Kids who vape are more likely to become known as drug users and make friends with drug users, he said, adding that “hanging out with drug users is a substantial risk factor for future drug use.”
…

The various species that make up the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom are not the only forms of life on our planet. There is another unique category of life: they are the vast and often strange species that make up the kingdom of fungi. Scientists say there are millions of different fungal species – from mushrooms to molds and yeast. Scientists and policymakers have called for more research, saying we ignore these vital life forms at our peril. Faith Lapidus reports.
…

NASA chiefs going back 30 years have come together to mark the space agency’s 60th anniversary.

Five former NASA administrators joined current boss Jim Bridenstine in Orlando on Monday. It was the largest gathering ever of NASA heads and included every administrator since 1989. The conference was arranged by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The longest-serving administrator, Daniel Goldin of the 1990s, told Bridenstine there’s more to NASA than human spaceflight and that the science and technology programs can help draw more public support.

Richard Truly of the post-Challenger shuttle era agreed, but noted humans need to explore.

Bridenstine, meanwhile, ran down NASA’s latest plans for sending astronauts back to the moon.

Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin was present for the panel discussion.

NASA began operations on Oct. 1, 1958.
…

Zimbabwe police Sunday clashed with vendors who were resisting being removed from streets as part of the country’s efforts to fight the cholera outbreak, which has claimed more than two dozen lives in the past two weeks.

Vendors were alerting each other of armed riot police and municipality officials coming to confiscate their wares Sunday in Harare. As soon as police officials left, the vendors would resume their business.

One of them is 34-year-old Maria Mange, a mother who three children who says unless she gets employed, she will remain selling vegetables and fruits in Harare’s CBD.

“I am refusing to leave the streets on the basis that we cause the spread of cholera,” she said. “Our wares are cleaned or boiled before being consumed. It is dirty water which causes cholera, their failure to collect refuse, plus flowing sewage in the streets and blocked sewer pipes. Why concentrate on vendors and not criminals?”

Another vendor is Ronald Takura who says he has to find a way to make a livliehood.

“No, vendors are not causing the cholera. You are disturbing [our] search for money in our country,” he said. “I do not have a job and I do not have work to do. So do not send us out. I do not understand what is happening in this city. E.D. Mnangagwa, we supported, we do not see what he is doing for us.”

He adds in Shona language, Zimbabweans voted for President Emmerson Mnangagwa in the July 30th elections, but he is not supporting the vendors.

But Zimbabwe’s minister of health, Obediah Moyo, says there is no going back.

“The issue of food vending is another issue, we all agreed that has to stop, especially in the area of epicenter [of the epidemic], that the police are helping us to stop the vending of food,” he said.

Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak has since spread to several parts of the country from its epicenter in Harare’s densely populated suburbs.

International organizations such as UNICEF, WHO, and MSF have since moved in with assistance. But critics say the long-term solution is improving water supply, sanitation and regular waste collection by Zimbabwean authorities.

A cholera outbreak is the second since a 2008-09 epidemic claimed almost 5,000 lives.
…

A boat made from recycled plastic, now sailing on London’s river Thames, is a creative way to make an environmental problem part of the solution. Faiza Elmasry tells more about the significance of the Pet Project and its mission. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.]]
…

The Queensland state government in Australia is to fund a new program to help combat killer heatwaves and outbreaks of disease caused by climate change. Authorities are even discussing imposing tobacco-style taxes against carbon polluters. The initiative comes as the United Nation chief warned that if the world does not take serious action by 2020, it risks the fallout from “runaway climate change.”

The plan to tackle climate-related disease and deaths from heatwaves is part of the Queensland government’s efforts to cut the state’s carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

The strategy urges bureaucrats and executives to consider health impacts when assessing mining and energy projects.  It also encourages the government not to subsidize “activities harmful to health and climate stability”.

It identifies heat stress among children and the elderly as the main concern for the future. Heatwaves are Australia’s biggest natural hazard, killing more people than droughts, floods and bush fires put together.  

Other climate-driven health fears are “food and water insecurity, malnutrition, worsening [and] cardiovascular and respiratory” illnesses.

Fiona Armstrong, the head of the Climate and Health Alliance, which helped draw up the plan, said wild conditions can kill.

“You only need to look at the example of thunderstorm asthma in Melbourne a couple of years ago to see how these kinds of events, even though they might be predicted, can really take the sector and the community by surprise,” Armstrong said.

Thunderstorm asthma can be triggered when storms play havoc with pollen, causing potentially fatal respiratory problems.

The Queensland plan also identifies the increased risk of mental illness among those affected by a worsening drought that has gripped much of eastern Australia, including much of Queensland and the entire state of New South Wales.

Queensland farmer Sid Plant said federal authorities are not doing enough.

“Politicians do not seem to want to recognize that climate change is affecting Australia’s farmers. We are feeling the pain as early as anybody in the world.  We are not living in the same climate that we were 20 years ago or 50 years ago,” said Plant.

Forecasters say southeastern Australia can expect more unusually warm and dry conditions in the coming months.

Some Australians doubt man’s influence on the climate, insisting that a shifting climate is part of a natural cycle.  However, that remains a minority view.

 
…

While flu outbreaks, Ebola and HIV typically generate the biggest headlines, scientists say tuberculosis remains the No. 1 infectious disease killer globally, affecting about one quarter of the world’s population. The U.N. General Assembly hopes to draw more attention to the problem by hosting its first-ever, high-level meeting on tuberculosis. The meeting will be at the end of September to bolster global efforts to end the disease and help those affected. VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
…

The seas are angry this month.

While the remnants of Hurricane Florence soak the Carolinas and Typhoon Mangkhut pounds the Philippines, three more tropical cyclones are spinning in the Western Hemisphere, and one is petering out over Southeast Asia.

Experts say some of this extreme tropical weather is consistent with climate change. But some isn’t. And some is unclear.

It’s unusual to have so many storms happening at once. But not unheard of.

“While it is very busy, this has happened a number of times in the past,” said meteorologist Joel Cline at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Mid-September is the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. If there are going to be storms in both hemispheres, Cline said, now is the most likely time.

Stronger storms, and a grain of salt

Scientists are not necessarily expecting more hurricanes with climate change, however.

“A lot of studies actually (show) fewer storms overall,” said NOAA climate scientist Tom Knutson.

“But one thing they also tend to simulate is slightly stronger storms” and a larger proportion of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, Knutson said. Florence made landfall as a Category 1 storm but started the week as a Category 4.

Knutson and other experts caution that any conclusions linking climate and hurricanes need to be taken with a grain of salt.

“Our period of record is too short to be very confident in these sorts of things,” said University of Miami atmospheric scientist Brian McNoldy.

While reliable temperature records go back more than a century in much of the world, comprehensive data on hurricanes only starts with satellites in the 1980s.

​Extreme rainfall

Scientists are fairly sure that climate change is making extreme rainfall more common. Global warming has raised ocean temperatures, leading to more water evaporating into the atmosphere, and warmer air holds more water.

Florence is expected to dump up to 101 centimeters (40 inches) of rain in some spots, leading to what the National Weather Service calls life-threatening flooding.

One group of researchers has estimated that half of the rain falling in the hurricane’s wettest areas is because of human-caused climate change.

Knutson agrees in principle but can’t vouch for the magnitude.

“We do not yet claim that we have detected this increase in hurricane rainfall rate,” he said.

He points to earlier studies that blamed climate change for 15 to 20 percent of the devastating rainfall Hurricane Harvey poured on Texas last year.

However, these studies looked at all kinds of rainfall, not just hurricanes, Knutson notes.

“We think that hurricanes are probably behaving like the other types of processes, but we have the best data for extreme precipitation in general,” he explained.

The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has “medium confidence” in the link between climate change and rainfall extremes.

As Florence trudges across the Carolinas, one recent study suggests that hurricanes are moving slower, giving them more time to do their damage.

But that may be natural variation more than climate change.

“I think we’re still early in the game on that one,” Knutson said.

​Rising sea levels

The area where scientists are most confident is sea level rise. Climate change is responsible for three-quarters of the increase in ocean levels, according to the IPCC report.

“Once you have human-caused sea level rise, then all other things being equal, whatever storms you have will create that much higher storm surge,” Knutson said.

That means more erosion and more damage farther on shore.

Whether this hurricane season as a whole will be one for the record books remains to be seen. While the seas are angry at the moment, that may soon change.

An El Niño warming pattern appears to be developing in the Pacific. That tends to squash hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

“It appears that perhaps next week will be much more quiet in both basins,” said NOAA’s Joel Cline. “So it does ebb and flow.”
…

Medical workers have lots of experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The current one in North Kivu province is the country’s 10th. Fortunately, they have new tools to fight the deadly virus. A new vaccine has shown it can protect people who’ve come into contact with Ebola victims, and more people have learned techniques to keep the virus from spreading. 

But, new problems emerge and old problems persist with every outbreak. Some people still refuse to believe Ebola exists and have hidden infected family members. Traditional burial practices put people at risk. And the location of the current outbreak is a conflict zone with about 100 active armed groups, creating security risks for health workers.

As of Sept. 12, 92 people have died from Ebola in the North Kivu outbreak, according to the World Health Organization.

Peter Salama, the WHO’s deputy director general in charge of emergencies, says North Kivu’s location poses a huge challenge. The province borders Uganda and Rwanda, and thousands of people cross the border for business or personal reasons each day. 

“We hear that some of the cross-border sites such as Kasindi see up to 10- to 20,000 people crossing in either direction every day,” he says. “So it’s an enormous, as you can imagine, exercise to screen that level of population movement across the border.”

“Fortunately, we’ve had no confirmed cases in surrounding countries,” he adds. He believes that is a sign that surveillance methods at the border, which include temperature checks, are working.

He also says the lessons from the 2014-15 West Africa Ebola outbreak, which killed 11,000 people, have been used to good effect during the three separate outbreaks in Congo this year. 

“What we’re seeing is certainly a paradigm shift in the way we are confronting Ebola outbreaks,” he said. “In the past, you know, we had very little to offer communities other than to isolate sick people and to give information to communities and to (recommend) hygiene and handwashing and of course to trace very carefully the contacts.”

“Now, we have a much more optimistic message that I think is giving people a lot of hope, which is to say that we can protect your family members, your caregivers, your health care workers, your neighbors with vaccines so they don’t have to become infected.”

“And if you are unfortunate enough to contract Ebola, you have the option of coming to an Ebola treatment unit and getting more than just rehydration and supportive treatment, but actually the kind of sophisticated medications that you would benefit from in a Western country.”
…

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says it is increasing Ebola prevention efforts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The agency says community resistance to efforts to contain Ebola is growing and must be fought to stop the spread of the fatal disease.

Since the disease outbreak was declared on August 1 in Congo’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces, UNICEF has been working with communities to inform them about how the virus spreads and what measures to take to protect themselves from being infected.

The U.N. agency is working with community and religious leaders in the city of Beni, where health workers are facing hostility and resistance. UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac said the spread of false rumors and fear about Ebola are endangering efforts to contain the virus.

“We are working with anthropologists, particularly in this Beni neighborhood, who ensure that the response is sensitive to cultural beliefs and practices, particularly around caring for sick and diseased individuals, and addressing population concerns about secure and dignified burials,” he said.

Boulierac said UNICEF is expanding its community outreach program to support thousands of people at risk in the city of Butembo. Two new Ebola cases recently were confirmed in this important commercial center with nearly one million inhabitants.

He said UNICEF is deploying a team of 11 specialists in community communication, education and psycho-social assistance. The agency also will provide water, sanitation and hygiene to help contain the disease and avoid further spread of the epidemic.

In its latest assessment, the World Health Organization counted 197 confirmed and probable cases, including 92 deaths.

The outbreak in the DRC is the 10th since Ebola was first identified in 1976.
…

The United Nations says it is hopeful Zimbabwe will soon contain an outbreak of cholera that has killed more than two dozen people. Efforts are complicated as authorities are fighting a drug-resistant bacterium said to be fueling the spread of the waterborne disease.

Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health Friday said the number of cholera-related deaths has climbed to 28, and more than 3,700 cases have been reported across Zimbabwe, with the country’s capital, Harare, remaining the epicenter of the problem.  

Amina Mohammed, the deputy chief of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said patients are not responding to the drugs typically used to combat the disease.  She said doctors are now using second and third-line drugs, which she said UNICEF is importing.

She said the outbreak can be contained if people follow basic hygiene practices at home.

“This is an outbreak, at the beginning it is not easy to bring everyone together. But I think we have all rallied behind and are improving. I think we are stabilizing. I am happy about that. It could be better but we are happy that there is coordination by the ministry of health, together with the WHO, ourselves, MSF is doing a great job managing these cases,” said Mohammed referring to the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders, the latter known for its French acronym MSF.

UNICEF, the WHO and MSF are some of the organizations that took action after Zimbabwe’s health minister declared a state of emergency Monday.

On Thursday, the University of Zimbabwe postponed a graduation ceremony that President Emmerson Mnangagwa was supposed to attend, after police banned all public gatherings in light of the cholera outbreak.

But Jacob Mafume, spokesman of the main opposition party MDC, said the ban was only meant to stop its planned “inauguration” of party leader Nelson Chamisa Saturday as the “people’s president.”

“The government is using its failure to provide water, it is taking advantage of its failures to restrict the freedoms of the people. They are running scared of our president Nelson Chamisa since his victory, to quickly take over from ZANU-PF inefficiency so that people can be healed from medieval diseases,” said Mafume.

Mnangagwa’s government has refused to comment on what it called “cheap politics” by the opposition, which has refused to accept results from the July 30 elections.

It said it is concentrating on containing the cholera outbreak which has since spread from Harare to other parts of the country.

Critics blame the government for failing to address issues of poor water supply, blocked sewers, and irregular trash collection, factors which are said to be making a cholera outbreak worse.

 
…

The Ebola virus has struck again in the Democratic Republic of Congo — it’s the DRC’s 10th outbreak since Ebola was first identified in 1976. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports scientists have made significant medical gains in the past few years, but the country faces huge challenges in getting this outbreak under control.
…

A group of scientists unveiled the first results Thursday of an ambitious effort to map the genes of tens of thousands of animal species, a project they said could help save animals from extinction down the line.

The scientists are working with the Genome 10,000 consortium on the Vertebrate Genomes Project, which is seeking to map the genomes of all 66,000 species of mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish on Earth. Genome 10,000 has members at more than 50 institutions around the globe, and the Vertebrate Genomes Project last year.

The consortium Thursday released the first 15 such maps, ranging from the Canada lynx to the kakapo, a flightless parrot native to New Zealand.

Future conservation

The genome is the entire set of genetic material that is present in an organism. The release of the first sets is “a statement to the world that what we want to accomplish is indeed feasible,” said Harris Lewin, a professor of evolution at University of California, Davis, who is working on the project.

“The time has come, but of course it’s only the beginning,” Lewin said.

The work will help inform future conservation of jeopardized species, scientists working on the project said. The first 14 species to be mapped also include the duck-billed platypus, two bat species and the zebra finch. The zebra finch was the one species for which both sexes were mapped, bringing the total to 15.

Sequencing the genome of tens of thousands of animals could easily take 10 years, said Sadye Paez, program director for the project. But giving scientists access to this kind of information could help save rare species because it would give conservationists and biologists a new set of tools, she said.

Paez described the project as an effort to “essentially communicate a library of life.”

Three sequencing hubs

Tanya Lama, a doctoral candidate in environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, coordinated the effort to sequence the lynx genome. The wild cat is the subject of debate about its conservation status in the United States, and better understanding of genetics can better protect its future, Lama said.

“It’s going to help us plan for the future, help us generate tools for monitoring population health, and help us inform conservation strategy,” she said.

The project has three “genome sequencing hubs,” including Rockefeller University in New York, the Sanger Institute outside Cambridge, England, and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, organizers said.

The work is intriguing because it could inform future conservation efforts of jeopardized species, said Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity who is not involved in the project. More information about animals’ genetics could lead to better understanding of how animals resist disease or cope with changes in the environment, she said.

“I think what’s interesting to me from a conservation aspect is just what we might be able to discern about the genetic diversity within a species,” Matteson said.

The project has similarities with the Earth BioGenome Project, which seeks to catalog the genomes for 1.5 million species. Lewin chairs that project’s working group. The Vertebrate Genomes Project will contribute to that effort.
…

California Gov. Jerry Brown started his global climate summit in San Francisco by saying that President Donald Trump will likely be remembered as a liar and fool when it comes to the environment.

The Democratic Brown and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a press conference Thursday on the first full day of the summit that is partly a rebuke of the Trump administration.

Trump announced last year that he was withdrawing from the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord.

His administration is also seeking to boost methane emissions and roll back California’s strict vehicle emissions standards.

Summit organizers say they are unaware of any U.S. federal officials attending.
…

The United States will fall well short of its 2025 greenhouse gas reduction target unless major additional steps are taken, according to a new report.

While U.S. states, cities and companies have promised to step up their efforts to fight climate change as the Trump administration pulls back, the report finds their actions will not be enough to meet the emissions reduction pledge the United States made in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

But the report outlines steps that can get the United States “within striking distance of the Paris pledge.”

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy is releasing the study, entitled “Fulfilling America’s Pledge,” to coincide with a major conference on global action to tackle climate change taking place in San Francisco.

Under the Paris agreement, the United States promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2025.

U.S. emissions were down 12 percent in 2016, the latest data available.

Economic forces are helping push emissions down, the study notes, regardless of President Donald Trump’s intention to pull the United States out of the agreement and his administration’s efforts to roll back climate regulations. Coal-fired power plants are closing faster than ever, despite Trump’s support for the industry, and renewable energy continues to expand rapidly.

However, many states, cities and businesses remain committed to the Paris agreement. If this “coalition of the willing” were a country, the report says, it would be the world’s third-largest economy.

Their actions currently put U.S. emissions on track to drop by 17 percent by 2025. However, that falls far short of the Paris pledge.

The report lists 10 “high-impact, near-term, and readily available” strategies to accelerate progress. They include speeding up the transition from coal to renewable energy; increasing electric vehicle use; improving building efficiency; and stopping leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

These steps would bring U.S. emission reductions to 21 percent.

If that “coalition of the willing” takes bigger steps — “within realistic legal and political limits” — the report says reductions could reach 24 percent.

The Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this week is a venue to announce new actions. The state of California just passed a bill committing to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045. Other announcements are expected.

 
…

New data show a significant increase in the incidence of global cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, estimates a rise in new cases of cancer to more than 18 million, including 9.6 million deaths this year. 

The report that covers 36 types of cancer in185 countries, finds one in five men and one in six women worldwide develop cancer during their lifetime and more men than women die of the disease. It says nearly half of the new cases and more than half of cancer deaths this year occurred in Asia, in part because nearly 60 percent of the global population lives there.

The data show lung and breast cancers, followed by colorectal, prostate, and stomach cancers, are responsible for the highest numbers of new cases globally.  It cites lung cancer as the leading cause of death, accounting for 1.8 million deaths in 2018. 

International Agency for Research on Cancer head of Surveillance Freddie Bray says by 2040, the number of new cancer cases is projected to rise to 29.3 million and the number of deaths to 16.3 million.

“The biggest increases in the cancer burden, a doubling of the cancer burden to 2040, is going to occur in countries at the lowest levels of socio-economic development,” Bray said. “Some in Sub-Saharan Africa, some in South America, some in southern Asia.  But there the countries faced with this increasing cancer burden are presently ill-equipped to deal with this pending increase.”  

Etienne Krug is director of the World Health Organization’s Department of Non-Communicable Diseases.  He says many of the main cancer risks killing people can be prevented by cutting down on tobacco and alcohol consumption, exercising more and eating better.

“And we also could do a lot by increasing immunization against some cancers like cervical cancer and liver cancers, for example,” Krug said. “But for those who have cancer, cancer should not be a death sentence anymore.”  

Krug said the survival rates of people stricken with cancer could be increased by strengthening health services, improving early diagnosis, and providing access to proper treatment.  He added palliative care should be given to terminally ill patients to ease their suffering.   
…

A U.S. pharmaceutical executive is defending his price boost of a key antibiotic by 400 percent to almost $2,400 a bottle as a “moral requirement,” a claim that drew an immediate rebuke from the country’s drug regulatory chief.

Nostrum Pharmaceuticals president Nirmal Mulye told The Financial Times he had a “moral requirement to sell the product at the highest price,” pushing the price of the antibiotic mixture called nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392 a bottle. The World Health Organization calls the drug an “essential” medicine for lower urinary tract infections.

Mulye told the newspaper, “I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can. This is a capitalist economy and if you can’t make money you can’t stay in business.”

He compared his decision to increase the price to that of an art dealer selling “a painting for half a billion dollars” and said he was in “this business to make money.”

The Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, rejected Mulye’s justification for the price hike, saying, “There’s no moral imperative to price gouge and take advantage of patients.”

He said the FDA “will continue to promote competition so speculators and those with no regard to public health consequences can’t take advantage of patients who need medicine.”

The dispute over the antibiotic’s price comes in the midst of periodic complaints by President Donald Trump that drug costs are too high in the United States.

In May, Trump unveiled a plan to try to increase competition among drug makers in an effort to lower drug prices.

“The drug lobby is making an absolute fortune at the expense of American patients,” Trump said.
…

American teens’ use of electronic cigarettes has hit “epidemic proportions,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a statement released Wednesday.

In what it called the “largest coordinated enforcement effort in FDA history,” the agency issued written warnings and fines to 1,300 retailers for their role in selling the devices to children.

According to the data cited by the FDA, last year more than 2 million middle school and high school students used the devices, which deliver nicotine in an inhalable form.

In a speech at FDA headquarters, Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said, “The disturbing and accelerating trajectory of use we’re seeing in youth and the resulting path to addiction must end.”

Until now, the FDA had eyed e-cigarettes as a powerful tool to help adults break their habit of using conventional tobacco products. But research has found little evidence of such products’ effectiveness.

Gottlieb admitted that the agency had neglected to take into account how attractive the flavored products would be to youths. 

The commissioner said the FDA would continue to study e-cigarettes as a less harmful alternative for adult smokers, but “that work can’t come at the expense of kids.”

The FDA said it was giving the makers of Juul, Vuse, MarkTen XL, Blu and Logic, the five top-selling brands, 60 days to present the agency with a viable plan to prevent vaping among children. If they fail, it could order the products off the market. 

The five brands account for more than 97 percent of U.S. sales, according to the FDA.

Critics have long argued that the manufacturers of e-cigarettes are deliberately targeting children by offering their products in sugary flavors.

Gottlieb slammed the e-cigarette makers for approaching the problem of underage use as “a public relations challenge.”

“I’m here to tell them today that this prior approach is over,” he said.
…

The United Nations says the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe is a “very dire situation” because there are now cases outside the country’s capital, where the government has declared a state of emergency.

Zimbabwe’s health minister, Obadiah Moyo, is calling on international aid agencies to chip in, following 20 deaths and more than 2,000 cases related to waterborne diseases such as salmonella, typhoid and cholera.

Sirak Gebrehiwot, United Nations spokesperson in Zimbabwe, says U.N. agencies have since moved in to try and stabilize the situation.

“This cholera situation is very dire situation. The hot spot is Harare but we are getting reports of confirmed and unconfirmed cases in other parts of the country, like Shamva, Masvingo and Buhera,” said Gebrehiwot. “The U.N. family we are providing all the support we could; positioning, repositioning essential drugs, at the same time the issue is on strengthening the surveillance system.”

Health minister Moyo on Tuesday said his government wants to address the issue of poor water supply, blocked sewers, and irregular trash collection, the factors he said were making a cholera outbreak in the capital worse.

Dr. Norman Matara of Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights said his organization has volunteered resources to avoid unnecessary deaths from the cholera outbreak.

But he said the group wants President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government to quickly improve the water treatment system.

“Cholera is a disease which is quite ancient, easily preventable. So we just have to provide safe cleaning water, have proper sanitation facilities. You won’t have cholera,” said Matara. “But we have been seeing all year round; broken down sewer [pipes], sewers all over the places, even the piped water, you would see dirt water coming out of the taps. We were breeding cholera all along, we knew we were sitting on a time bomb; soon we were going to have cholera but nothing was done.”

Officials are trying to fix broken sewer pipes in Budiriro, one of the most affected parts of Harare.

A 2008 cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe lasted more than a year and killed about 5,000 people. It only stopped after international groups like United Nations agencies and USAID donated drugs and water treatment chemicals.
…

California has experienced record heat waves and catastrophic fires this year and in previous years, leading climate experts to say it is likely to get worse. A recent state report blames global climate change, and California Governor Jerry Brown is preparing to host an international summit later this week (September 12-14) to search for solutions.
…

California has experienced record heat waves and catastrophic fires in recent years, and climate experts say it is likely to get worse. 

A report released Aug. 27 by the state of California, the fourth in a series of assessments, puts the blame squarely on climate change.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is hosting an international summit, beginning Wednesday, in San Francisco to search for solutions.

The worst fires in California’s history came this year and last, with the 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire scorching 186,000 hectares. Parts of northern California are still burning. The largest of the fires, in Shasta County, has burned more than 20,000 hectares and is only 5 percent contained.

Climate research

The California Climate Change Assessment summarizes current climate research and finds a litany of problems caused by greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, which is emitted by the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

If nothing or little is done, the reports say to expect temperature rises of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.6 to 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100; a two-thirds decline in water supplies from the mountain snow pack by 2050; a nearly 80 percent increase in the area scorched by fires by the end of the century; and up to two-thirds of Southern California beaches eroding in the same time frame.

From flooding to a strained electrical grid and premature deaths and illnesses, the list is extensive.

“I think we’ve reached the point where the impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” said Michael Mann, who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

Mann was not involved in the study, but said he thinks its finding are, if anything, conservative.

“We are literally seeing them play out in real time in the form of record heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires,” he said.

The Trump administration, however, has pledged to overturn emissions curbs and has promised to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, an accord of nearly 200 countries that requires national targets for emission cuts but which lacks enforcement powers. 

President Donald Trump said the pact is ineffective and kills jobs. Climate experts say something must be done to slow the climate shifts that are underway. 

“A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, so there’s the potential for greater rainfall events, worse flooding,” Mann said. “A warmer atmosphere also dries out the soils, causing drought.”

He added, “You’re moving the probability curve, and at the tail of the curve are the extreme weather events.”

Health effects of climate change

Epidemiologists are tracking health effects of the changes, from more pollutants emitted by fires to warming in the cities, said epidemiologist Rupa Basu of the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. Basu was a contributing author to California’s climate assessment.

“There’s a larger population living in urban areas, and more importantly, a larger vulnerable population living in urban areas,” said Basu, which she said become “urban heat islands” as temperatures rise. The report says that many rural communities, and Native Americans and other minorities, are disproportionately affected.

Researchers are seeing more emergencies and deaths among the very young, elderly and poor. Analysts compare hospital and emergency room visits, infant birth weights, death and illness rates to temperature and relative humidity, researcher Xiangmei Wu said.

On a global level, climate change can increase the ferocity of tropical storms because of changes to the jet stream that determine weather patterns, although hurricanes are not an issue in California. 

Mann, of the Earth System Science Center, said one of most destructive storms in U.S. history, Hurricane Harvey on the Gulf Coast, released huge amounts of rainfall as it stalled in its path over Houston in 2017. He said, “You’re moving that probability curve over” on the graph of weather patterns, “and at the tail of the curve are the extreme warm events.” 

Extreme weather events

Dan Cayan, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a coordinating lead author of the California report, said climate change exaggerates natural cycles such as El Nino, the periodic warming of equatorial oceans that leads to storms in the Pacific. He said more extreme weather events may well be on their way.

“State and local governments and other players are taking this seriously. And I think that trend will grow as climate change symptoms continue to bubble up,” Cayan said, adding that he is cautiously optimistic that the world can mitigate the worst effects of the changes.

Gov. Brown, who is hosting the three-day summit that ends Friday, has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in his state to 40 percent below 1990 levels. 

Monday, Brown signed a bill requiring California to obtain all of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2045.

Brown is a key figure in a coalition of local and regional governments that have committed to achieving the Paris accord’s limiting of global warming in this century to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, whether or not the United States remains in the agreement.

The California summit will look at ways to build consensus and avoid worst-case scenarios.

Protesters who have gathered in San Francisco, however, say it is not enough. 

“There have been many climate summits with a lot of rhetoric but not enough commitment,” activist May Boeve told The Associated Press. She was one of thousands who marched through San Francisco last Saturday, calling for a transition to renewable energy sources and protections for workers and minority groups as the world braces for dramatic changes to its weather.
…

World hunger rose in 2017 for a third consecutive year, fueled by conflict and climate change, the United Nations warned on Tuesday, jeopardizing a global goal to end the scourge by 2030.

Hunger appears to be increasing in almost all of Africa and in South America, with 821 million people – one in nine – going hungry in 2017, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018 report.

Meanwhile, 672 million adults — more than one in eight — are now obese, up from 600 million in 2014.

“Without increased efforts, there is a risk of falling far short of achieving the SDG target of hunger eradication by 2030,” the report said, referring to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by member nations in 2015.

It was the third year in a row that global hunger levels have increased, following a decade of declines.

The report’s editor Cindy Holleman said increasing variation in temperature; intense, erratic rainfall and changing seasons were all affecting the availability and quality of food.

“That’s why we are saying we need to act now,” said Holleman, senior economist for food security and nutrition at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Because we’re concerned it’s not going to get better, that it’s only going to get worse,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Last year, almost 124 million people across 51 countries faced crisis levels of hunger, driven by conflicts and climate disasters, the U.N. said.

Many nations struggling with prolonged conflicts, including Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Afghanistan, also suffered from one or more climate shocks, such as drought and floods, the report said.

On Monday, the charity Save the Children warned 600,000 children in war zones could die from extreme hunger by the end of this year as funding shortfalls kick in and warring parties block supplies from getting to the people who need them.

The U.N. said South America’s deteriorating hunger situation might be due to the low prices of the region’s main export commodities – particularly crude oil.

A lack of food had caused an estimated 2.3 million people to flee Venezuela as of June, the U.N. has said.

Uncertain or insufficient access to food also contributes to obesity because those with limited financial resources may opt for cheaper, energy-dense processed foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar, the report added.

Being deprived of food could also lead to psychological and metabolic changes, said Holleman.

“The emotions and anxieties associated with food deprivation could then lead to disorders and bingeing when you do have food,” she said, adding that experiencing this in fetal and early childhood increases the risk of obesity later in life.

Paul Winters, associate vice-president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said reducing hunger required targeted approaches that went to the roots of chronic poverty.

“That requires having data on where they are, what their limitations are… and making sure we actually do investments that are transformative,” he said. “One of the big concerns is some (donor) countries are shifting much more to humanitarian aid which is important but doesn’t build resilience and address the underlying cause.”
…

An effort to create a safe haven for whales in the South Atlantic was defeated Tuesday at the meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Brazil.

The proposal, which was introduced by Brazil in 2001, received support from 39 countries but was opposed by 25, denying it the three-quarters’ majority it needed to pass.

Environmental organizations and conservationists had argued that the sanctuary would not only keep the mammoth mammals safe from hunting, but also protect them from getting entangled in fishing gear or being struck by ships.

But pro-whaling nations, led by Japan, argued there was no need for the sanctuary because no countries were conducting commercial whale hunting in the South Atlantic.

Brazilian Environmental Minister Edson Duarte vowed to push to get the proposal passed at future meetings of the IWC.

“We will work in other meetings of this commission this year to ensure that the sanctuary will finally be created,” Duarte said.

Pro-whaling nations, including Japan, Iceland and Norway, are pushing for resumption of sustainable hunting of whales and are unlikely to allow for the creation of a sanctuary unless their demand is met.

Japan, which has pushed for an amendment to the ban for years, accuses the IWC of siding with anti-whaling nations rather than trying to reach a compromise between conservationists and whalers.

The issue has fractured the IWC for decades and there appears to be no room for compromise on either side.

The conference ends Sept. 14.
…