Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra’s government is planning to create an ocean reserve in the first quarter to protect feeding and breeding grounds for humpback whales and other marine species, the environment minister said Monday.

The reserve would span more than 400 square miles (1,040 square km) and overlap with four offshore oil blocks, according to a government document on the proposal.

Environment Minister Fabiola Munoz said oil drilling and fishing would still be allowed in the protected area, but that extra care would be taken to ensure they do not threaten marine ecosystems, with resources allocated for government oversight.

“The goal of creating this reserve isn’t to ban economic activity. It’s to create the conditions so that species can reproduce in the time of year they need,” Munoz said in a news conference with foreign media.

Munoz said she expects the proposed reserve to be created via a presidential decree in the first quarter of 2019, after information meetings are held with stakeholders this year.

The proposed area includes feeding and breeding grounds for turtles, humpback whales, seals, seahorses and commercial fish species, according to the document.

The companies that have exploration or drilling rights inside the borders of the proposed reserve include Savia Peru — a joint venture of Ecopetrol and Korea National OilCorp — BPZ Exploracion & Produccion, Karoon Gas Australia Ltd. and China National Petroleum Corporation.
…

The United States is disputing a newspaper report that it bullied and threatened nations in an effort to water down a World Health Assembly resolution supporting breastfeeding.

A State Department official said, “Reports suggesting the United States threatened a partner nation related to a World Health Assembly resolution are false.”

Health and Human Services spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley also described as “patently false” attempts to portray the U.S. position as anti-breastfeeding.

A New York Times report Monday said the U.S. delegation at the assembly in Geneva this spring embraced “the interest of infant formula manufacturers” and “upended the deliberations.” 

The resolution had been expected to be approved “quickly and easily,” the newspaper said. Instead, the U.S. delegation “sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.”

A State Department official said the U.S. believed “the resolution as originally drafted called on states to erect hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children.”

The official said the United States “recognizes that breastfeeding and provision of breast milk is best for all babies,” but also recognizes that “not all women are able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons.”

The official said, “Women should have access to full and accurate information about breastfeeding,” as well as “full information about safe alternatives when breastfeeding is not possible.”

Oakley said, “The issues being debated were not about whether one supports breastfeeding.”

“Many women are not able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons, these women should not be stigmatized; they should be equally supported with information and access to alternatives for the health of themselves and their babies,” she said.

The Times said Ecuador was slated to introduce the World Health Assembly breastfeeding resolution, but after the U.S. threatened to “unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid,” it “quickly acquiesced.”

The newspaper said more than a dozen participants from different countries at the assembly confirmed the “showdown over the issue.” Many of them, however, asked to remain anonymous because they fear U.S. retaliation.

Health advocates had trouble finding another sponsor who did not fear U.S. “retaliation.”

The Times said that in the end, the Russian delegation stepped in as the resolution’s sponsor. It said, “The Americans did not threaten them.”

Patti Rundall, policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, told the newspaper, “What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health.”

The State Department official said the United States works “to identify common cause when possible and does not shy away from expressing its disagreement when necessary.”  

Cindy Saine and Barry Newhouse contributed to this report.
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A recent study demonstrates that India can grow more nutritious food and decrease water use simply by switching the cereals farmers produce.

Currently, 7.3 billion people live on Earth, and the world population is expected to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050. Technological innovations have helped keep up with population growth in the past, but new research shows we might not need fancy tech for nutritional purposes.

Lead researcher Kyle Frankel Davis from Columbia University told VOA, “A lot of my research interests stem from trying to better align food security and environmental goals. And the Green Revolution is a good example of how we haven’t been able to do that historically.”

The Green Revolution is the name given to the development of high-yielding rice and wheat in the 1960s. These crops dramatically boosted food supplies in India and elsewhere; however, they required large amounts of water and fertilizer. With water supplies being strained and fertilizer pollution problems growing in many parts of the world, experts are encouraging farmers to consider less needy crops.

Davis and his co-authors wanted to test whether a shift from rice and wheat to maize, sorghum or millet could lead to better nutritional balance and less water use.

Working district by district, they used computer models to replace rice and wheat with other cereals that were grown in the district, but on a smaller scale. That ensured there was local agricultural knowledge about the alternative grain, and that the shift would be feasible.

The authors went through this process twice. One model chose grains that would increase the balance of nutritional content among calories, protein, iron and zinc, and the second model reduced irrigation demands. In both cases, replacing rice with another grain like sorghum, millet or maize led to better water efficiency and more nutritious output. Maize, in particular, performed generally well as a nutritious alterative, but was even better at reducing water use.

‘Win-win situations’

The researchers’ “small changes lead to big impacts,” according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Kritee Kritee, who studies climate-smart agriculture. She added, “This study really brings attention to [alternative grains] and encourages both Indian scientists and international partners to do more research on the ground.”

“I think I was a bit surprised with the magnitude of potential water savings that could occur,” Davis acknowledged. “We estimated that water demand could be reduced by about one-third, which is a really substantial volume.

“I was also surprised that there are these win-win solutions sitting there,” said Davis. “But it doesn’t seem like they’ve been adopted historically and that has raised a lot of interesting questions as to why that hasn’t been the case.”

Subsidies

One potential explanation could be the governmental subsidies that are placed on some grains and not others. Davis thinks these state-level subsidies might explain the reliance on wheat and rice over other alternatives.

Currently, most grains are grown in Punjab and Haryana. The computer models indicated that shifting cereals would create less regional dependence, which could protect against local crop failure, although the models did not take into account soil fertility. That is a major reason those two districts are considered bread baskets.

Kritee agrees that while governmental policies are important, they aren’t the only drivers of what crops farmers choose to cultivate.

“India has 100 million small farms less than two to five acres and people making less than $2 a day. Behavior is not driven just by government prices. Behavior is driven by small-scale farmers managing their livelihood, and government-supported prices are only one way you can try to tweak that behavior.”

This study, published in Science Advances, is part of a larger research program to address multiple aspects of agriculture in India. The researchers are interested in observing how climate change, land use, and other factors affect farming practices, with the aim of increasing yield without damaging the environment.

Davis hopes to translate these research findings into policy, saying, “In developing these solutions for a specific place, it’s also vital that researchers work closely with government officials and local experts to really tailor the solutions and the research questions to what’s important to the people in that place of interest.”
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Bradford Smith, a NASA astronomer who acted as planetary tour guide to the public with his interpretations of stunning images beamed back from Voyager missions, has died.

Smith’s wife, Diane McGregor, said he died Tuesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of complications from myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disorder. He was 86.

Smith led the NASA team that interpreted pictures taken by Voyager space probes as they passed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and then presented the images to the public. He was a retired professor of planetary sciences and astronomy at the University of Arizona and research astronomer at the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

At NASA press conferences on Voyager discoveries following their launch in 1977, Smith was a star, and known for a certain dry wit. At a press conference showing a multicolored, pockmarked moon of Jupiter called Io, Smith quipped, “I’ve seen better looking pizzas than this.”

A video of the conference ran on national broadcast news and his quote was on front pages around the world, said Ellen Hale, a former Associated Press communications director and friend of Smith’s.

A 1981 People magazine profile called Smith “the nation’s tour guide” who showed the public active volcanoes on Io, violent hurricanes on Jupiter, thousands of complex rings around Saturn and other space oddities that constituted “a very bizarre world,” as Smith put it, “that goes beyond the imagination of science fiction writers.”

Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco who worked with Smith at NASA called him a “visionary” who pushed for changes in optics on Voyager cameras and the hiring of scientists with expertise in geology and planetary rings.

“Brad was one of few who had the foresight to recognize the satellites and, later, the rings of the outer planets would be as fascinating as the planets themselves, and the need for a high-resolution imaging capability to address both,” Porco recalled in tribute to Smith on Facebook.

Smith is survived by McGregor, his wife of 34 years, three children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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Researchers from half a dozen states in West Africa have joined together in a battle against what one expert calls a root crop “Ebola” — a viral disease that could wreck the region’s staple food and condemn millions to hunger.

Their enemy: cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), a virus that strikes cassava, also called manioc, which in some of the region’s countries is consumed by as many as 80 percent of the population.

The root-rotting disease was first discovered in Tanzania eight decades ago and is steadily moving westward.

“In outbreaks in central Africa, it has wiped out between 90 and 100 percent of cassava production — it’s now heading towards West Africa,” Justin Pita, in charge of the research program, told AFP.

“It is a very big threat. It has to be taken very seriously.”

In Uganda, 3,000 people died of hunger in the 1990s after the dreaded disease showed up, striking small farmers in particular.

“You can call it the Ebola of cassava,” said Pita.

The West African Virus Epidemiology (WAVE) project, a multi-million-dollar scheme funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to shield the region from the advancing peril.

Headquartered at Bingerville, on the edges of the Ivorian economic capital Abidjan, it gathers six countries from West Africa — Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Togo — as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Much is already known about CBSD — the virus is generally believed to be propagated by an insect called the silverleaf whitefly, and also through cuttings taken from infected plants.

But there remain gaps in knowledge about West Africa’s specific vulnerabilities to the disease.

They include understanding the susceptibility of local strains of cassava to the virus, and identifying points in the cassava trade that can help a localized outbreak of CBSD swell into an epidemic.

The scheme will also look at initiatives to help boost yield — a key challenge in a region with surging population growth.

“The current average yield from cassava [in West Africa] is 10 to 12 tonnes per hectare [four to 4.8 tonnes per acre], but it has the potential to reach 40 tonnes a hectare,” said Odile Attanasso, Benin’s minister of higher education and scientific research.

“In Asia, they have yields of 22 tonnes per hectare.”

‘Attieke is our husband’

The WAVE project hopes to go beyond the lab and test fields, though.

It also wants to harness the clout of community leaders and chiefs to spread CBSD awareness and promote better farming practices, such as confining and destroying crops in infested areas and banning transport of manioc cuttings.

“We kings and traditional chiefs are the interface between the population and the government,” said Amon Tanoe, the ceremonial monarch of the coastal Grand-Bassam region in Ivory Coast.

Ivory Coast is a huge consumer of cassava — the starchy root is typically pulped and fermented and served in a side dish called attieke.

In Affery, a big cassava-growing region about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of the economic capital Abidjan, makers of attieke said they were deeply worried about the threat of CBSD.

“Attieke is our husband,” said Nathalie Monet Apo, head of the association of attieke producers, emphasizing how the cassava dish is intertwined with Ivorian life.

“If the disease shows up, it would be dramatic for our families and our community.”

“They have to find a cure for this disease — it’s thanks to growing cassava that I am able to provide an education for my four children,” said Blandine Yapo Sopi, eying a mound of harvested manioc that she hoped would bring in 450,000 CFA francs (nearly 700 euros, around $800).
…

Dressed in heavy cotton, a helmet and respirator, Jessica Ball worked the night shift monitoring “fissure 8,” which has been spewing fountains of lava as high as a 15-story building from a slope on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.

The lava poured into a channel oozing toward the Pacific Ocean several miles away. In the eerie orange night scape in the abandoned community of Leilani Estates, it looked like it was flowing toward the scientist, but that was an optical illusion, Ball said.

“The volcano is doing what it wants to. … We’re reminded what it’s like to deal with the force of nature,” said Ball, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Scientists have been in the field measuring the eruptions 24 hours a day, seven days a week since Kilauea first exploded more than two months ago.

They are a mix of USGS staff, University of Hawaii researchers and trained volunteers working six-to-eight-hour shifts in teams of two to five.

They avoid synthetics because they melt in the intense heat and wear gloves to protect their hands from sharp volcanic rock and glass. Helmets protect against falling lava stones, and respirators ward off sulfur gases.

This is not a job for the faint hearted. Geologists have died studying active volcanoes. David Alexander Johnston, a USGS volcanologist was killed by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. In 1991,

American volcanologist Harry Glicken and his French colleagues Katia and Maurice Krafft were killed while conducting avalanche research on Mount

Unzen in Japan.

Ball, a graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, located in upstate New York near the Canadian border, compared Kilauea’s eruptions to Niagara Falls.

“It gives you the same feeling of power and force,” she said.

Worth the risks

Kilauea, which has been erupting almost continuously since 1983, is one of the world’s most closely monitored volcanoes, largely from the now-abandoned Hawaiian Volcano Observatory at the summit. But the latest eruption is one of Kilauea’s biggest and could prove to be a bonanza for scientists.

Ball and the USGS teams are studying how the magma – molten rock from the earth’s crust – tracks through a network of tubes under the volcano in what is known as the “Lower East Rift Zone,” before ripping open ground fissures and spouting fountains of lava.

They are trying to discover what warning signs may exist for future eruptions to better protect the Big Island’s communities, she said.

Fissure 8 is one of 22 around Kilauea that have destroyed over 1,000 structures and forced 2,000 people to evacuate. They are what make this volcanic eruption a rare event, Ball said.

“They’re common for Kilauea on a geologic time scale, but in a human time scale it’s sort of a career event,” she said.

Meanwhile, the summit is erupting almost every day with steam or ash, said Janet Snyder, spokeswoman for the County of Hawaii, where Kilauea is located.

Scientists had thought the steam explosions resulted from lava at the summit dropping down the volcano’s throat into groundwater. This was based on Kilauea’s 1924 eruption, to which the current one is most often compared.

But the explosions this time have released lots of sulfur dioxide gas, which means magma is involved, said Michael Poland, scientist-in-charge at Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, one of many volcanologists seconded to Kilauea.

“So we have already made a conceptual leap, leading us to believe it was different from what we had understood,” he said.

Poland and other scientists pulled equipment and archives out of the abandoned observatory at the volcano summit after hundreds of small eruption-induced quakes damaged the structure, and have decamped to the University of Hawaii in Hilo on the Big Island.

The archives included photos, seismic records and samples, some 100 or more years old, Poland said. “These materials are invaluable to someone who says, ‘I have this new idea, and I want to test it using past data.'”

Now the second longest Kilauea eruption on record, surpassed only by one in 1955, this eruption offers far better research opportunities than previous events, Ball said.

“We’ve got much better instruments and we’ve got longer to collect the data,” she said.
…

The Trump administration said Saturday it’s freezing payments under an “Obamacare” program that protects insurers with sicker patients from financial losses, a move expected to add to premium increases next year.

At stake are billions in payments to insurers with sicker customers.

In a weekend announcement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the administration is acting because of conflicting court ruling in lawsuits filed by some smaller insurers who question whether they are being fairly treated under the program.

Risk adjustment

The so-called risk adjustment program takes payments from insurers with healthier customers and redistributes that money to companies with sicker enrollees. Payments for 2017 are $10.4 billion. No taxpayer subsidies are involved.

The idea behind the program is to remove the financial incentive for insurers to cherry pick healthier customers. The government uses a similar approach with Medicare private insurance plans and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Major insurer groups said Saturday the administration’s action interferes with a program that’s working well.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members are a mainstay of Affordable Care Act coverage said it was “extremely disappointed” with the administration’s action.

The Trump administration’s move “will significantly increase 2019 premiums for millions of individuals and small business owners and could result in far fewer health plan choices,” association president Scott Serota said in a statement. “It will undermine Americans’ access to affordable coverage, particularly those who need medical care the most.”

Serota noted that the payments are required by law, and said he believes the administration has the legal authority to continue making them despite the court cases. He warned of turmoil as insurers finalize their rates for 2019.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main health insurance industry trade group, said in a statement that it is “very discouraged” by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze payments.

“Costs for taxpayers will rise as the federal government spends more on premium subsidies,” the group said.

Conflicting rulings

Rumors that the Trump administration would freeze payments were circulating late last week. But the Saturday announcement via email was unusual for such a major step.

The administration argued in its announcement that its hands were tied by conflicting court rulings in New Mexico and Massachusetts.

Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma said the Trump administration was disappointed by a New Mexico court ruling that questioned the workings of the risk program for insurers.

The administration “has asked the court to reconsider its ruling, and hopes for a prompt resolution that allows (the government) to prevent more adverse impacts on Americans who receive their insurance in the individual and small group markets,” she said.

More than 10 million people currently buy individual health insurance plans through HealthCare.gov and state insurance marketplaces. The vast majority of those customers receive taxpayer subsidies under the Obama-era health law and would be shielded from premium increases next year.

The brunt of higher prices would fall on solid middle-class consumers who are not eligible for the income-based subsidies. Many of those are self-employed people and small business owners, generally seen as a Republican constituency.

The latest “Obamacare” flare-up does not affect most people with employer coverage.
…

Nano technology researchers at the University of Cambridge are developing an intelligent toilet that might change the nature of medicine. It automatically analyzes a user’s urine to capture valuable medical data. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
…

Since the 1800s, scientists have marveled at how spiders can take flight using their webbing. Charles Darwin remarked on the behavior when tiny spiders landed on the HMS Beagle, trailing lines of silk. He thought the arachnids might be using heat-generated updrafts to take to the sky, but new research shows a totally different cause may be at play.

Erica Morley and Daniel Robert from the University of Bristol in England were interested in exploring a second explanation for the spiders’ ability. They thought spiders might sense and use electrostatic fields in the air.

“There have been several studies looking at how air movement and wind can get spiders airborne, but the electrostatic hypothesis was never tested,” Morley told VOA.

Some observers suggested electrostatic fields might be the reason the multiple draglines some spiders use to float don’t get tangled with each other. Biologist Kimberley Sheldon from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, who was not involved in the new research, pointed out that “though these spiders will have five or six draglines, those strands of silk do not get entangled. So we’ve known for a while that electrostatics probably [are] at least interacting with the spider, with the silk lines themselves, to keep them from getting tangled.”

Morley and Robert created a box with a grounded metal plate on the bottom and a plate on the top that they could pass an electrical current through. The scientists placed spiders in the box and turned on the voltage, watching as the creatures reacted to the electric field.

Reaction to current

When the electric field was on, the spiders lifted their abdomens into the air and started tiptoeing by raising up on the very ends of their legs. Morley told VOA that spiders only tiptoe right before they release silk draglines to fly away, in a process called ballooning.

And when the spiders did balloon and rise into the air, turning off the electric current caused them to drop.

Sheldon compared it to taking a balloon and rubbing it against your clothing. “If you hold the balloon [near your head], your hair stands on end. That’s kind of what’s happening with the spider silk.”

Clearly the spiders were able to sense the local electrostatic field and respond appropriately by releasing silk, but Morley and Robert wanted to know how.

“As a sensory biologist, I was keen to understand what sensory system they might use to detect electric fields,” said Morley. “We know that they have very sensitive hairs that are displaced by air movements or even sound. So I thought that it’s possible that they might be using these same hairs to detect electric fields.”

This was exactly what she observed. The small hairs along the spiders’ legs react not only to physical experiences like a breeze but also to the electric field. In nature, it makes sense for spiders to sense both the electrostatic field around them as well as wind conditions. Spiders probably use both when taking off and navigating the skies.

Mathematician Longhua Zhao from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland has made computer models of how spiders balloon. She told VOA, “I think that both the electrical field and the fluid mechanics [of air flow] are important. They definitely play very important roles. However, we don’t know at this point which is the dominant factor.”

Lead researcher Morley pointed out that spiders aren’t the only invertebrates to balloon. “Caterpillars and spider mites, which are arachnids but not spiders, balloon as well.” Morley hopes to see others follow up her research to see if these other animals respond in a way similar to the spiders.

The study is published in Current Biology.
…

An international team of scientists have announced a breakthrough aimed at saving the northern white rhino from extinction. The first-ever hybrid rhino embryo has been successfully created at a lab for biotechnology research in Italy. 

Conservationists now plan to use the technology by replicating the procedure with genes from a northern white rhino.  

The breakthrough was announced Wednesday by the Dvur Kralove Zoo and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research.

The development thrilled wildlife conservationists all over the world, especially in Kenya’s Olpajeta conservancy, which provided a sanctuary for 10 years for the last male northern white rhino.

“Clearly it’s good news, it’s a step in the process to eventually being able to create a purebred northern white rhino calf through IVF [in vitro fertilization],” said Olpajeta CEO Richard Vigne. 

“Once we can create an embryo, that doesn’t mean we are yet able to put the embryo into a surrogate mother to create purebred northern white rhinos on the ground, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

WATCH: Scientists Work to Create Northern White Rhino Embryos

​Rhino horn black market

In recent years, rhino numbers have dropped dramatically, mainly due to poachers killing the animals to satisfy the black market for rhino horn. 

Adapting a reproduction technique used in horses, scientists used a southern white rhino egg and northern white rhino sperm to develop an embryo that they say has a strong chance of surviving to term.

For fertilization, preserved semen from deceased northern white rhino males was used.

Last male died in March

The world’s last male northern white rhino, named Sudan, died in March of this year at age 45. Only two females still survive. Both also live in Olpajeta — Sudan’s daughter, Najin, and granddaughter, Fatu.

The scientists’ next step is to harvest eggs from Fatu and Najin. Once they have the eggs, they can begin the process of creating northern white rhino embryos for implantation. Female southern white rhinos will act as surrogate mothers.  

Vigne predicts it will be another year before any implantations take place.  After that, Vigne hopes Najin and Fatu will soon have company at Olpajeta.

“Keeping them in good health, plus we will eventually provide surrogate southern white rhino females into which northern white rhino embryos can be implanted to produce calves on the ground,” Vigne said. “So we will provide the opportunity for the creation of a northern white rhino herd in Africa in due course.”

Semen available from four males

Available semen comes from only four males, including Sudan. To create a self-sustaining population of northern white rhinos with the necessary genetic diversity, scientists will combine stem cell research with other assisted reproduction techniques.

There have been previous attempts by conservation scientists to save the rhino species. In May, a southern white rhino in the U.S. named Victoria became pregnant through artificial insemination. Scientists are now waiting to see if the rhino will carry her baby to term.
…

Weak infrastructure and a national shortage have made water costly all over India, but Sushila Devi paid a higher price than most. It took the deaths of her husband and son to force authorities to supply it to the slum she calls home.

“They died because of the water problem, nothing else,” said Devi, 40, as she recalled how a brawl over a water tanker carrying clean drinking water in March killed her two relatives and finally prompted the government to drill a tubewell.

“Now things are better. But earlier … the water used to be rusty, we could not even wash our hands or feet with that kind of water,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Delhi.

India is “suffering from the worst water crisis in its history”, threatening hundreds of millions of lives and jeopardising economic growth, a government think-tank report said in June.

From the northern Himalayas to the sandy, palm-fringed beaches in the south, 600 million people – nearly half India’s population – face acute water shortage, with close to 200,000 dying each year from polluted water.

Residents like Devi queue daily with pipes, jerry cans and buckets in hand for water from tankers – a common lifeline for those without a safe, reliable municipal supply – often involving elbowing, pushing and punching.

On the rare occasions water does flow from taps, it is often dirty, leading to disease, infection, disability and even death, experts say.

“The water was like poison,” said Devi, who still relies on the tanker for drinking water, outside her one-room shanty in the chronically water-stressed Wazirpur area of the capital Delhi.

“It is better now, but still it is not completely drinkable. It is alright for bathing and washing the dishes.”

Water pollution is a major challenge, the report said, with nearly 70 percent of India’s water contaminated, impacting three in four Indians and contributing to 20 percent of the country’s disease burden.

Yet only one-third of its wastewater is currently treated, meaning raw sewage flows into rivers, lakes and ponds – and eventually gets into the groundwater.

“Our surface water is contaminated, our groundwater is contaminated. See, everywhere water is being contaminated because we are not managing our solid waste properly,” said the report’s author Avinash Mishra.

Loss of livelihood

Meanwhile, unchecked extraction by farmers and wealthy residents has caused groundwater levels to plunge to record lows, says the report.

It predicts that 21 major cities, including New Delhi and India’s IT hub of Bengaluru, will run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting 100 million people.

The head of WaterAid India VK Madhavan said the country’s groundwater was now heavily contaminated.

“We are grappling with issues, with areas that have arsenic contamination, fluoride contamination, with salinity, with nitrates,” he said, listing chemicals that have been linked to cancer.

Arsenic and fluoride occur naturally in the groundwater, but become more concentrated as the water becomes scarcer, while nitrates come from fertilisers, pesticides and other industrial waste that has seeped into the supply.

The level of chemicals in the water was so high, he said, that bacterial contamination – the source of water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and typhoid – “is in the second order of problems”.

“Poor quality of water – that is loss of livelihood. You fall ill because you don’t have access to safe drinking water, because your water is contaminated.”

“The burden of not having access to safe drinking water, that burden is greatest on the poor and the price is paid by them.”

Frothy lakes and rivers

Crippling water problems could shave 6 percent off India’s gross domestic product, according to the report by the government think-tank, Niti Aayog.

“This 6 percent of GDP is very much dependent on water. Our industry, our food security, everything will be at stake,” said Mishra.

“It is a finite resource. It is not infinite. One day it can (become) extinct,” he said, warning that by 2030 India’s water supply will be half of the demand.

To tackle this crisis, which is predicted to get worse, the government has urged states – responsible for supplying clean water to residents – to prioritise treating waste water to bridge the supply and demand gap and to save lives.

Currently, only 70 percent of India’s states treat less than half of their wastewater.

Every year, Bengaluru and New Delhi make global headlines as their heavily polluted water bodies emit clouds of white toxic froth due to a mix of industrial effluents and domestic garbage dumped into them.

In Bengaluru – once known as the “city of lakes” and now doomed to go dry – the Bellandur Lake bursts into flames often, sending plumes of black smoke into sky.

The Yamuna river that flows through New Delhi can be seen covered under a thick, detergent-like foam on some days.

On other days, faeces, chemicals and ashes from human cremations float on top, forcing passers-by to cover their mouths and noses against the stench.

That does not stop 10-year-old Gauri, who lives in a nearby slum, from jumping in every day.

With no access to water, it is the only way to cool herself down during India’s scorching summers, when temperatures soar to 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit).

“There usually is not enough water for us to take a shower, so we come here,” said Gauri, who only gave her first name, as she and her brother splashed around in the filthy river.

“It makes us itchy and sick, but only for some time. We are happy to have this, everyone can use it.”

 
…

Uganda’s government has called the country’s doctors unprofessional, selfish, unpatriotic and enemies of the people, after they called for a sit-down strike in 2017 demanding better pay and improved working conditions. Halima Athumani spent a night at an Ugandan hospital and shows us the challenges doctors face.
…

When Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, died in March, hopes for a revival of the sub-species were crushed. But as Sadie Witkowski explains, the magnificent creatures might not go the way of the dodo.
…

Tropical Storm Beryl is strengthening over the tropical Atlantic and could become a hurricane by Friday or Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Thursday.

Beryl is about 1,295 miles (2,080 km) east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea and contains maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (85 km/h), the NHC said in its latest advisory.

“The center of Beryl will remain east of the Lesser Antilles through Sunday,” the Miami-based weather forecaster added.
…

A woman traveling from Iraq to a Detroit-area airport was found to be carrying seeds infested with an invasive beetle.

 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says in a release Thursday that agriculture specialists discovered the Khapra beetles November 23 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus. They were in a bag of seeds the woman planned to sow in her garden.

 

The Khapra beetle is considered one of the world’s most destructive pests for stored grains, cereals and seeds.

 

The Associated Press sent an email Thursday to border officials asking if the woman was fined or charged.

 

Khapra beetles were found in January at Washington Dulles International Airport in rice brought from Saudi Arabia and in February at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in cow peas brought from Nigeria.

 
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Scientists have developed a way to harvest water from dry desert air and the only power the device needs is sunlight. It could be useful in an increasingly water-stressed world. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Orthopedic surgery can be tricky. So, researchers at Northwestern University are engineering new materials to make 3D printed bones that are a perfect match, ready for grafts. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Six more people have died in Montreal due to a heat wave, bringing to 12 the city’s total death toll from the extreme weather conditions that have gripped central and eastern Canada, health officials said on Wednesday.

Montreal previously raised the city’s response level to “intervention” from “alert” after a spike in heat-related calls to the government’s health information line and for ambulances. 

David Kaiser, a physician at Montreal’s Public Health Department, said most of the victims lived alone and none had access to air conditioning.

Separately, five people died in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, which health officials said could be linked to heat.

Canadian Weather issued a heat warning for southern Quebec, which includes Montreal. The advisory was expected to be in place until Thursday. Heat warnings were also issued for much of Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Montreal reached a high of 34 degrees Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, a peak that is expected to continue on Thursday, before cooling to 24 degrees Celsius on Friday.

According to Canadian Weather’s advisory, humidex values in southern Quebec will reach near 40 on Wednesday, but conditions will grow “even more uncomfortable” on Thursday, when humidex values reach 43. Humidex, or the humidity index, expresses how temperatures feel when incorporating the effect of humidity.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Montreal’s emergency services reported over 1,200 calls per day related to the heat, which represents 30 percent more than its busiest days.

Montrealers were urged not to dial 911 for non-urgent ailments, as the influx of calls causes delays in interventions for urgent matters. 
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Scientists say they’re several steps closer to perfecting a method for saving the northern white rhino from extinction. 

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, researchers said Wednesday that they had succeeded in creating embryos using frozen northern white rhino sperm and eggs from a southern white rhino.

It’s the first time such hybrid embryos have been created, and the scientists from Europe and the United States hope it will provide a pathway to saving the northern white rhino subspecies, of which only two females remain.

They plan to harvest the females’ egg cells soon and produce “pure” northern white rhinos to be borne by a southern white surrogate in three years. They’re also working on a second method that would see sperm and eggs produced from preserved cells of northern white rhinos.
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Skygazers will have a celestial treat this month, when the longest total lunar eclipse of this century will grace the night sky on the evening of July 27. 

NASA says the lunar eclipse will last for 1 hour and 43 minutes with total viability in Eastern Africa and Central Asia. Residents in other parts of Africa and Asia as well those in Europe, Australia and South America will be able to see a partial lunar eclipse.

Skywatchers in North America will not be able to see the rare event and will have to wait until 2020 to experience a total lunar eclipse. 

During a lunar eclipse, the moon appears to be red because it lines up perfectly with the Earth and sun such that the Earth’s shadow totally blocks the sun’s light. The moon loses the brightness normally caused by the reflection of the sun’s light and takes on an eerie, reddish glow, giving the lunar eclipse moon the nickname of blood moon.

Scientists say the reason this lunar eclipse is especially long is because the moon is passing almost directly through the central part of Earth’s shadow. To compare, it falls just 4 minutes shy of the longest possible time a lunar eclipse could last. 

Earlier this year, a lunar eclipse occurred in January at the same time as a super moon, which takes place when a full moon is at its closet orbital point to Earth, appearing brighter and larger than usual. That event delighted moon watchers by being both a blood moon and super moon at the same time.

For those who aren’t able to see the lunar eclipse this month, July has another treat in store for skygazers.

At the end of the month, Mars makes a close approach to Earth, reaching the point in its orbit when it is closet to our planet. Mars will appear about 10 times brighter than usual, with peak brightness occurring on July 31.

Everyone in the world will have the possibility to see this celestial phenomena, providing the skies are clear.
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A measles outbreak is growing in Brazil after cases were imported from neighboring Venezuela where health services have collapsed.

More than 460 cases of the disease have been confirmed in two Brazilian border states, the Health Ministry said Monday. There are also concerns that the outbreak has reached an isolated tribe that lives in the Amazon that has little resistance to such diseases.

The cases in Brazil come after the World Health Organization declared the Americas measles-free in 2016. But outbreaks can still occur even after a country is declared free because cases can be imported. That’s just what has happened in Brazil, where the disease slipped across the border with people fleeing economic and political collapse in neighboring Venezuela.

Measles spreads through the air and is highly contagious. While there is no specific treatment for the disease, the vaccine is very effective. Symptoms of measles include fever, runny nose, cough, sore throat and a rash that spreads over the body.

Last year, measles started spreading in Venezuela, where there have been more than 2,000 cases.

Oil-rich Venezuela was once wealthy, and the health system there was a model for the region. But mismanagement and a fall in oil prices have led to widespread shortages of everything from food to medicine. Doctors have fled and health services have collapsed.

Hardships in general in Venezuela have sent more than 1 million people fleeing to neighboring countries, sometimes bringing disease with them.

To combat the outbreak, authorities in Brazil are offering measles vaccinations to foreigners registering with the federal police and are also increasing efforts to ensure Brazilians are vaccinated. Brazilians should be vaccinated against measles as a matter of routine, but authorities have recently held special campaigns in Roraima and Amazonas to vaccinate those who slipped through the system.

Beyond the usual concerns of containing the extremely contagious disease, Survival International said an outbreak could devastate the isolated Yanomami tribe, which lives on both sides of the Brazil-Venezuela border, deep in the Amazon. So far, 23 Yanomami with measles symptoms have sought medical treatment in Brazil, the indigenous rights organization said, and one of those cases has been confirmed. Many more could be sick in Venezuela, where Survival International said it is harder to get information.

 
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About 100 dementia sufferers in Britain will take part in government-backed trials using virtual reality to help recall lost memories, the firm behind the technology said on Tuesday.

Virtual reality (VR) headsets allow people with dementia to watch films that take them to popular seaside resorts, a 1940s candy store or a 1950s street party, to recall thoughts and emotions and help them re-engage with relatives and caregivers.

“If people remember more of their past, remember more of themselves, it just helps with overall mental wellbeing,” Arfa Rehman, co-founder of Virtue, which created the software, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is testing the new form of reminiscence therapy – where films are played on a smartphone in an inexpensive virtual reality headset – in several hospitals and care homes across the country, she said.

Dementia is caused when the brain is damaged by strokes or diseases such as Alzheimer’s. People with dementia can suffer from memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language.

There are 850,000 people with dementia in Britain, with that number estimated to rise to 1 million by 2025, according to the Alzehimer’s Society, a charity.

Researchers have found that reminiscence therapy improves cognitive functions and reduces depressive symptoms in people with dementia and that it is more effective with those in care homes than those living independently.

Looking at, listening to and discussing objects, images and music from the past triggers memories, which participants enjoy.

“Several of us working on the project had a very positive experience with family and friends using VR,” said the NHS’s Michael Hurt, a dementia expert, who will be helping to implement the pilot in Walsall, a town in central England.

“All of the pilot areas are very keen to see if this software improves wellbeing, mood and sleep and if it reduces anxiety and agitation, as well as the potential to reduce some of the pain experienced in dementia.”

Trials over the next six months aim to find out the potential benefits of more regular use of the technology, said Rehman of Virtue, a social impact-focused business, which has won numerous awards since it was set up last year.

Britain is seen as a global leader in the innovative social enterprise sector, with about 70,000 ethical businesses employing nearly 1 million people, according to Social Enterprise UK, which represents the growing sector.

“We’ve seen our app have amazing impact so far,” Rehman said in emailed comments on Tuesday. “We hope that this collaboration encourages other organizations to embrace immersive technology.”

Marston Court, in the university city of Oxford, is typical of most British care homes in that 70 percent of residents have dementia or severe memory problems, for which there is no cure.

“This is absolutely brilliant,” said Terry Carter, 91, who has lived for two years at Marston Court, where residents have been watching dozens of short films for several months.

Diane Davidson, the home’s care leader, said the immersive experience of using virtual reality goggles has been positive for dementia sufferers because it cuts out distractions.

“A lot of people with dementia can’t focus on things like watching TV or reading a book for a long time. With this, because it’s right there in front of their eyes, it clicks them into the moment,” she said.

“When you’ve got the goggles on, you are in your own little world.”

 
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Bees are having a much harder time finding food in the region known as America’s last honeybee refuge, a new federal study found.

The country’s hot spot for commercial beekeeping is the Northern Great Plains of the Dakotas and neighboring areas, where more 1 million colonies spend their summer feasting on pollen and nectar from nearby wildflowers and other plants.

But from 2006 to 2016, more than half the conservation land within a mile of bee colonies was converted into agriculture, usually row crops such as soybeans and corn, said the study’s lead author Clint Otto of the U.S. Geological Survey. Those crops hold no food for bees.

For more than a decade, bees and other pollinators in America have been dwindling in numbers because of a variety of problems, including poor nutrition, pesticides, parasites and disease. And outside experts said this study highlights another problem that affects the health of bees.

This area — which Otto called “America’s last honeybee refuge” — lost about 629 square miles (1,630 square kilometers) of prime bee habitat, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And bees that have a hard time finding food are less likely to survive the winter, Otto said. They may not be hungry, he said, but they aren’t healthy either.

John Miller, in his 49th year as a North Dakota commercial beekeeper, said the Dakotas and Minnesota were once the last best place for bees.

“Now they are the least worst,” he said.

Miller, whose business was started in 1894 by his great-grandfather, has watched the average colony honey production drop from 120 pounds per hive 30 years ago to about 50 pounds now. But the price has gone up five-fold, and beekeepers like Miller are getting paid to truck their bees to California to pollinate crops there, mostly almonds.

The federal government pays farmers to keep some land wild and that benefits bees that feast on grasslands, flowers and weeds, Otto said. But the conservation program has a cap on how much land it will pay for — and during the ethanol boom, farmers found they could make more money in corn and soybeans.

“Commercial beekeepers are scrambling to try to find places to take their bees when they are not in a crop requiring pollination,” U.S. Department of Agriculture bee researcher Diana Cox-Foster, who was not part of the study, said in an email.

“The conservation lands of the Northern Great Plains were a go-to spot,” she wrote. 

More than one-third of America’s commercial colonies spend summer in the Northern Great Plains. The area east of the Dakotas is too developed, and the weather to the west is too dry, Otto said.

Bees are crucial pollinators for more than 90 percent of the nation’s flowering crops, including apples, nuts, avocados, broccoli, peaches, blueberries and cherries.

“Without honeybees,” Otto said, “our dinner plate looks a lot less colorful.”
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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is sending back incredible close-ups of the dwarf planet Ceres.

The spacecraft has been circling Ceres since 2015. In June, it reached its lowest orbit yet, skimming the surface from just 22 miles (35 kilometers) up.

The latest pictures released Monday offer unprecedented views of a huge impact crater known for its bright salty deposits. Landslides are clearly visible on the rim.

Chief engineer Marc Rayman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says the results are better than hoped.

Before arriving at Ceres, Dawn explored the asteroid Vesta. Both are in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Launched in 2007 with an ion engine, Dawn is nearing the end of its extended mission. NASA expects the spacecraft to last just another few months.
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