World-renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, who sought to understand a range of cosmic topics from the beginning of the universe to the intricacies of black holes, died Wednesday at the age of 76.

A family spokesman said he died peacefully at his home in the city of Cambridge where he worked for decades as the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said in a statement.

He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 21, a disease that eventually confined him to a wheelchair and took away this ability to speak, leaving Hawking to communicate through a voice synthesizer.

Doctors predicted he would only live a few years, but he instead thrived, focusing on his work that included seeking to bridge the gap between Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that describes the motion of large objects and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics dealing with subatomic particles.

“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all,” Hawking said.

His 1988 book “A Brief History of Time” became an international bestseller and brought him widespread fame.

One of his most famous accomplishments came in his research on black holes, showing that small amounts of radiation could escape their gravitational pull. The phenomenon is now commonly known as Hawking radiation.

A sign of his popularity came in October when Cambridge put Hawking’s 1966 thesis online for the first time, and demand for the document was so high the university’s website crashed.

Hawking was also a proponent of human space travel to the Moon and Mars, an endeavor he said would help unite humanity in the shared purpose of spreading beyond Earth.

Hawking said making the first moves into space would “elevate humanity” because it would have to involve many countries.

“We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth,” he said last year. “If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before.”
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Malawi continues to register new cases of cholera in an outbreak that has now reached half of the country’s 28 districts. However, the government and communities trade blame over containment efforts.

 

According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health 23 people have died from cholera since the first case was recorded in November.

 

The number of infected people has now ballooned to 739 from 157 in January.

 

Ministry spokesperson Joshua Malango told VOA that a major cause of the rising number of cases is because of people’s beliefs in superstitions.

 

“Some [people] are still believing that having cholera is not to do with hygiene, it’s to do with witchcraft or some traditional beliefs,” he said. ” So, instead of rushing to the hospital, they rush to seek traditional medicine which cannot help.”

 

Malango says, for example, one patient died last Thursday in the capital, Lilongwe, because he refused to go to the hospital for medical help.

 

Malango also says churches that prohibit their sick members from getting medical help have contributed to the death toll.

 

He says authorities recently rescued and took to the hospital some cholera patients who were being prayed for at a church in Salima district, central Malawi.

 

“They are members of Zion Church who resorted to go to churches for prayers and the like. So, three of them died and using police force we managed to rescue seven [cholera patients] who were at the church,” he said.

Cholera causes severe diarrhea and can kill within hours if not treated.

 

It spreads via contaminated food and water.

Levi Zacheyu Mwazalunga is head of the Zion Church in Blantyre, which does not allow its members to get medical help when sick.

 

He told VOA it is wrong to say that his church members died of cholera because they did not go to the hospital.

 

He says we believe that whether one goes to the hospital or not, they will die. It is what God told Adam when He created the earth that everyone will die regardless of age or circumstances.

 

He read out several verses in the Bible where sick people were healed because of prayers.

But health rights campaigners have a different view.

 

Maziko Matemba is the Executive Director for Health and Rights Education Program.

 

He says the rising cholera cases confirm the government’s failure to sensitize communities on measures to prevent and contain the disease.

“The issue is how far has the ministry of health identified the gap which is there right now,” Matemba said. ” Because if the condition is still coming out, this means that there is somewhere which the government could have done [ better] in terms of sending messages to do with hygiene.”

Joshua Malango defends the government’s efforts to contain the cholera outbreak.

 

“If you look at the figures which we are getting on a daily basis comparing with previous months or weeks, it looks like we are making some slides because as of yesterday we had only one new cholera case in Salima. Lilongwe has no new cholera cases,” he said.

 

He also says the government has just immunized about 100, 000 people during the first round of cholera vaccinations that took place in the northern districts of Karonga and Rumphi.

 
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A supervolcano eruption about 74,000 years ago on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra caused a large-scale environmental calamity that may have decimated Stone Age human populations in parts of the world. But some populations, it seems, endured it unscathed.

Scientists on Monday said excavations at two nearby archeological sites on South Africa’s southern coast turned up microscopic shards of volcanic glass from the Mount Toba eruption, which occurred about 5,500 miles (9,000 km) away.

While some research indicates the eruption may have triggered a decades-long “volcanic winter” that damaged ecosystems and deprived people of food resources, the scientists found evidence that the hunter-gatherers at these sites continued to thrive.

The shards were found at a rock shelter located on a promontory called Pinnacle Point near the town of Mossel Bay where people lived, cooked food and slept, and at an open-air site 6 miles (10 km) away where people fashioned tools of stone, bone and wood.

The rock shelter was inhabited from 90,000 to 50,000 years ago. The researchers found no signs of abandonment at the time of the eruption, but rather evidence of business as usual.

“It is very possible that populations elsewhere suffered badly,” said paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean of Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins and Nelson Mandela University’s Center for Coastal Palaeoscience in South Africa.

The researchers said the seaside location may have provided a refuge, with marine food sources like shellfish less sensitive than inland plants and animals to an eruption’s environmental effects.

Mount Toba belched immense amounts of volcanic particles into the atmosphere to spread worldwide, dimming sunlight and potentially killing many plants. It was the most powerful eruption in the past 2 million years and the strongest since our species first appeared in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago.

Scientists are divided over the eruption’s impact. Some think it may have caused a human population collapse that became a near-extinction event. Others believe its effects were less severe.

“On a regular basis through time, humans faced dire threats from natural disasters. As hunter-gatherers endowed with advanced cognition and a proclivity to cooperate, we were able to make it through this disaster, and we were very resilient,” said Marean, who led the study published in the journal Nature.

“But this may not be the case now with our reliance on our highly complicated technological system. In my opinion, a volcano like this could annihilate civilization as we know it. Are we ready?”
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Trim your hair, your beard, your blood pressure? Black men reduced one of their biggest medical risks through a novel project that shows the power of familiar faces and trusted places to improve health.

The project had pharmacists work with dozens of Los Angeles barbershops to test and treat clients. The results, reported Monday at a cardiology conference, have doctors planning to expand the project to more cities nationwide.

“There’s open communication in a barbershop. There’s a relationship, a trust,” said Eric Muhammad, owner of A New You Barbershop, one of the barbers who participated. “We have a lot more influence than just the doctor walking in the door.”  

Black men have high rates of high blood pressure — a top reading over 130 or a bottom one over 80 — and the problems it can cause, such as strokes and heart attacks. Only half of Americans with high pressure have it under control; many don’t even know they have the condition.

Churches, beauty salons and other community spots have been used to reach groups that often lack access to doctors, to promote cancer screenings and other services. Dr. Ronald Victor, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, wanted to reach black men.

“Barbershops are a uniquely popular meeting place for African-American men,” and many have gone every other week to the same barber for many years, he said. “It almost has a social club feel to it, a delightful, friendly environment” that makes it ideal for improving health.

Victor did a study in 17 Dallas barbershops a few years ago. In that one, barbers tested patrons and referred them to doctors. Improvements were modest.

In the new study, “we added a pharmacist into the mix” so medicines could be prescribed on the spot, he said.

‘A home run’

The new work involved 303 men and 52 barbershops. One group of customers just got pamphlets and blood pressure tips while they were getting haircuts. Another group met with pharmacists in the barbershops and could get treatment if their blood pressure was high.

At the start of the study, their top pressure number averaged 154. After six months, it fell by 9 points for customers just given advice and by 27 points for those who saw pharmacists.

Nearly two-thirds of the men who saw pharmacists lowered their pressure to under 130 over 80 — the threshold for high blood pressure under new guidelines adopted last fall. Only 12 percent of the men who just got advice dropped to that level.

“This is a home run … high-touch medicine,” said one independent expert, Eileen Handberg, a heart researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Most drug trials only dream about such good results, yet they were achieved in a regular community setting, she said.

Nineteen of Muhammad’s customers finished the program, and “all their blood pressures were down, every single one of them,” he said.

Marc Sims, a 43-year-old records clerk at a law firm, is one. He didn’t know he had high pressure — 175 over 125 — and the pharmacist said he was at risk of having a stroke.

“It woke me up,” said Sims, who has a young son. “All I could think about was me having a stroke and not being here for him. It was time to get my health right.”

Medicines lowered his pressure to 125 over 95.

Healthier lifestyles

Treatment doesn’t always mean medicines; healthier lifestyles can do a lot. Poor diets, lack of exercise and other bad habits cause most high blood pressure.

The National Institutes of Health paid for the study. Results were discussed at an American College of Cardiology conference in Orlando and published by the New England Journal of Medicine. 

The cost of doing this isn’t really known. Victor now aims to do a study of 3,000 men in many cities around the country that will include a look at that. He also hopes to tackle high cholesterol with a similar approach.

The results show that “you don’t need cardiologists” to improve things, said Dr. Willie Lawrence, an American Heart Association spokesman and blood pressure specialist in Kansas City, Missouri. “We can partner with others in the community and get this epidemic under control.”
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A brain implant to decode complex speech signals could soon be a reality, giving people who’ve lost the ability to speak the power to be heard again. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Space scientists say the satellites and other spacecraft orbiting the Earth, including the International Space Station, are in increasing danger of collision with pieces of junk. Engineers are working hard to solve the problem of removing the trash that threatens functioning satellites worth millions of dollars. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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A San Francisco fertility clinic says thousands of frozen eggs and embryos may have been damaged after a liquid nitrogen failure in a storage tank.

Dr. Carl Herbert, president of Pacific Fertility Clinic, told the Washington Post on Sunday that officials have informed some 400 patients of the failure that occurred March 4.

Herbert says the clinic’s staff thawed a few eggs and found they remain viable. He says they have not checked any of the embryos.

A call to the clinic from The Associated Press seeking further details was not immediately returned Sunday.

It’s the second such failure at a U.S. clinic in a matter of days. Last week, an Ohio hospital said more than 2,000 frozen eggs and embryos may have been damaged due to a refrigerator malfunction.
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One of the South Pacific’s most vocal climate change campaigners is urging Australia to abandon plans for a giant Indian-owned coal mine in Queensland.

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is from the Marshall Islands, a poet and daughter of the Micronesian nation’s first female president, who says the proposed Adani mine and the emissions from the coal it would produce would make Pacific Islands more vulnerable to rising sea levels.  

The Adani project in northern Australia would supply Indian power plants with enough coal to generate electricity for up to 100 million people. If it goes ahead, it would be one of the world’s biggest coal mines, producing 60 million tons per year.  

Its supporters say it would inject billions of dollars into the Australian economy and create thousands of jobs. Australia is a major exporter of coal, which generates most of its domestic electricity.

But environmental campaigners say the mine, owned by the Indian company, Adani, would be disastrous for low-lying islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It is an argument championed by Jetnil-Kijiner, a celebrated activist from the Marshall Islands, an archipelago near the Equator with a population of about 75,000 people.  

She says the effects of rising sea levels caused by climate change are already being felt in the Pacific with crops, homes and even cemeteries being washed away.

The environmental activist believes the proposed coal mine in Queensland would put more pressure on vulnerable communities.

“I guess, for me, I definitely think that the Adani coal mine needs to be stopped because if that goes through, then that will affect all of the Pacific countries. I mean the reality is I have already seem one island go under, right, and we are experiencing tidal floodings that are happening as many as four times a year that are destroying people’s homes. People are already leaving, so things are urgent, things are dire.  I think it is incredibly important that we do not open any more coals mines.  It does make a huge difference,” she said.

It was Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s address at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2014 that brought wider attention to her activism and poetry. She spoke of the environmental peril faced by the Marshall Islands and other Pacific nations.  

Her speech was written as a promise to her daughter that the world would take action on climate change.  

Four years later, her campaign is continuing.

The Australian government has championed the Adani mine.  Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan has told anti-coal campaigners that without fossil fuels “hundreds of millions of people” around the world would fall into poverty. Canavan said the global resources industry had “never been more crucial than it is now.”

 
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Individuals have a right to die with dignity, India’s Supreme Court upheld on Friday in a landmark verdict that permits the removal of life-support systems for the terminally ill or those in incurable comas.

Passive euthanasia, as it is called, will apply only to a terminally ill person with no hope of recovery, a panel of five judges said. Active euthanasia, by administering a lethal injection, continues to be illegal in India.

In active euthanasia, a specific overt act is performed to end the patient’s life whereas in passive euthanasia, something is not done that would be necessary to preserve a patient’s life, the panel noted.

“It is due to this difference that most of the countries across the world have legalized passive euthanasia either by legislation or by judicial interpretation with certain conditions and safeguards.”

Even though passive euthanasia has been legal since 2011 in India, the government is yet to pass the law. Meantime, a non-government organization approached the top court with a plea to also legalize the right to a living will.

“At that time the Supreme Court said they will look at this whole passive euthanasia thing again, which they have, and they have upheld their own judgement,” said activist and author Pinki Virani.

Virani’s plea to the top court in 2009 for passive euthanasia of Indian nurse Aruna Shanbaug, who had survived in a coma for more than 40 years after she was sexually assaulted, caught the nation’s attention.

Two years later, the court passed a law permitting passive euthanasia. The issue is not considered politically contentious in India.

Dignity in death

When the sanctity of life was destroyed, said a panel of five judges headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, “Should we not allow them to cross the door and meet death with dignity? For some, even their death could be a moment of celebration.”

The court also permitted individuals to decide against artificial life support, should the need arise, by creating a “living will.”

The decision makes it legal for the terminally ill to decide against using life support systems to continue living, and frees the doctors and families of those who slip into incurable comas to halt such measures, in the patients’ best interest.

“This is an important, historic decision, which clears the air,” said Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan.

“Everybody will breathe a sigh of relief, because people were earlier apprehensive that if they withdrew life support, they could be prosecuted for culpable homicide,” he added.

Bhushan had filed a petition to the Supreme Court on behalf of a registered society, Common Cause, seeking recognition of the right to establish a living will.

“The court has held that an individual has a full right to decide that he should not take any kind of medical treatment or that he should not be kept alive by artificial life support systems,” Bhushan added.

The 538-page judgment places management of terminally ill patients at the center stage.

“It has been highlighted that determination of the seemly criteria will keep the element of misuse by the family members or the treating physician or, for that matter, any interested person at bay and also remove the confusion,” the panel notes.

Dr. Naresh Trehan, head of Medanta Heart Institute near New Delhi said the living will “opens itself to abuse. That’s where the sanctity of the process will be important.”

A competent committee would comprise doctors, lawyers, social activists and the local administration of the hospital, Trehan said.

 
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So far, 114 children in the U.S. have died from influenza or a flu-related illness, and the flu season is not yet over.

Most of those children had not been vaccinated against the virus, Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.

In her testimony Thursday before a House of Representatives subcommittee, Schuchat said that although this year’s vaccine effectiveness was relatively low — the CDC’s preliminary survey shows it is 36 percent effective overall — its effectiveness in children is much higher, at 59 percent.

When asked why, Schuchat acknowledged that infectious disease specialists don’t know, but she offered two theories.

“One is, children’s immune response is often better than adults, particularly better than older adults. A second is your response to an influenza vaccine may differ when it’s the first time you’ve been exposed to influenza or the vaccine,” she said.

Flu vaccine’s benefits

The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months old and older get a flu vaccine every year, although only about 60 percent of children in the U.S. get that vaccine. Children are more likely to get the virus and spread it, and Schuchat said having more children vaccinated is in the public interest.

“We know that flu vaccines can prevent disease and reduce severity, and we know that they can also prevent spread,” she said.

Getting the flu vaccine doesn’t mean someone won’t be hospitalized or even die from the flu, but the vaccine makes it much less likely.

One study found that, for healthy children, the flu vaccine reduced the risk of dying by almost two-thirds. For those children whose medical condition put them at greater risk, the vaccine cut their risk of death in half.

Peak flu has passed

Although the peak of the flu season has passed in the U.S., Schuchat said, “There’s still a lot of flu out there.”

This year’s flu season started a month earlier than most, and the predominant strain, H2N2, an A strain, is more virulent than the B strains that are also circulating. Another difference from regular flu seasons is that the virus circulated through the entire continental U.S. at the same time.

The virus peaked in early February, but the season has several more weeks to go.

Schuchat told the subcommittee that the B strains are more common right now than they were a few weeks ago, which may actually be good news because the CDC found that the vaccine is 42 percent effective against influenza B viruses.

She told the subcommittee, “Some vaccine is better than no vaccine protection.”
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Bones found in 1940 on a western Pacific Ocean island were quite likely to be remains from famed aviator Amelia Earhart, a new analysis concludes.

The study and other evidence “point toward her rather strongly,” University of Tennessee anthropologist Richard Jantz said Thursday. 

Earhart disappeared during an attempted flight around the world in 1937, and the search for an answer to what happened to her and her navigator has captivated the public for decades.

Jantz’s analysis is the latest chapter in a back-and-forth that has played out about the remains, which were found in 1940 on Nikumaroro Island but are now lost.

All that survive are seven measurements, from the skull and bones of the arm and leg. Those measurements led a scientist in 1941 to conclude the bones belong to a man. In 1998, however, Jantz and another scientist reinterpreted them as coming from a woman of European ancestry, and about Earhart’s height. But in 2015, still other researchers concluded the original assessment as a man was correct. 

Now Jantz weighs in with another analysis of the measurements, published in January in the journal Forensic Anthropology. 

For comparison, Jantz used an inseam length and waist circumference from a pair of Earhart’s trousers. He also drew on a photo of her holding an oil can to estimate the lengths of two arm bones.  

Analysis showed “the bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer,” he wrote in the journal article. It’s highly unlikely that a random person would resemble the bones as closely as Earhart, he wrote.

In a phone interview, Jantz noted that some artifacts found on the island also support the possibility that the bones came from Earhart. 

“I think we have pretty good evidence that it’s her,” he said.
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California wildlife biologists have caught two rare Sierra Nevada red foxes in three weeks, a feat they say is a “huge” step to understanding the animal listed as threatened in the state in 1980.

A nearly 9-pound (4-kilogram) female walked into a trap this week near Manzanita Lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park. A 10-pound (4-kilogram) male was captured Feb. 13 just outside the park, the Sacramento Bee reported Thursday.

Scientists in 2018 intensified their study of the animal, but had not been able to capture a red fox until now.

“This is huge,” said Jennifer Carlson, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Biologists took blood samples and put tracking collars on the animals before returning them to the wild.

Electronic tracking will allow biologists to know more about the size of the elusive red fox’s home range and hopefully learn more about den sites and reproductive rates.

“We know so little about this animal, and we have never found a den — ever,” Carlson said.

Carlson estimated there are around 20 individuals in the Lassen group, likely too few to sustain a population under ideal conditions.

The Sierra Nevada red fox once roamed widely in the upper mountain sub-alpine zones of California’s Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges, but its abundance and distribution has declined dramatically in the last century. In addition to the Lassen population, a group exists at Mt. Bachelor in central Oregon, experts say.

The Sierra Nevada red fox requires a specific high-elevation habitat that has been shrinking. Another threat to its future is in-breeding, Carlson said.

Scientists are collecting fox scat and hair samples to build a database that will help them understand the animals’ genetics and how the individual Lassen foxes are related.
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The U.N. environment program is taking aim at corporations and governments that threaten and intimidate environmental defenders and foul the planet for financial gain. A panel of environmental activists meeting in Geneva explored the actions needed to ensure a safe, healthy environment.

A film that began a panel discussion is narrated by Kenyan environmental activist Phyllis Omido. She succeeded in closing down a lead smelting plant in a slum near Mombasa, which she said spewed poisonous fumes into the air, killing and harming local residents, including her child.

While that battle was won, the fight is far from over. U.N. Environment’s head of communication for environmental governance, Niamh Brannigan, says threats against environmental defenders continue.

“We have been receiving messages over the last two days to say that another environmental defender has been shot dead in the Philippines. Ricardo Mayumi of the Ifugao Peasant Movement. He has been leading the opposition to the Mini Hydro Dam in Santa Clara of the Santa Clara Power Corporation and we believe that he has been shot dead,” said Brannigan.

Between 2002 and 2013, the United Nations reports 908 people in 35 countries have been killed defending the environment and land.

U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore says all human rights depend on the environment. Yet, she says people continue to pollute the Earth’s resources for short-term economic gain, endangering the lives and livelihoods of future generations.

“The polluter must pay, so we say. But in practice it is those who have contributed the least who are paying the most… We know what to do — defend the environment and defend those who defend it… and hold those who violate the law accountable,” she said.

Bianca Jagger is president and chief executive of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. She calls for those who assassinate environmental defenders of indigenous peoples and their communities to be brought to justice. But she acknowledges that is difficult because governments often join forces with companies that exploit indigenous rights.

“So, we need to make a call to all those multi-nationals or national companies that are involved in dams, mining and other exploitation of the land, who want to take the land away from indigenous people and their ancestral land from indigenous people that we need to put an end to that,” she said.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment John Knox was instrumental in pushing forward the Environmental Rights Initiative that seeks to promote, protect and respect human and environmental rights. He says it is absolutely crucial that more be done to protect environmental defenders.

“Four people on average a week are killed around the world for trying to protect the environment,” said Knox. “If we cannot protect the people who are trying to protect the environment for the rest of us, everything else we are doing will be ineffective. So, it is absolutely vital that we do that.”

Knox says the right to a healthy environment has been adopted by more than 100 countries. In an ironic twist, he notes one place where it has not been adopted is at the United Nations. He says it is time for this world body to recognize that everyone should be able to enjoy his or her human right to a safe and healthy environment.

 

 
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Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 phone has a darn-good camera.

But other top-end phones also have darn-good cameras. Technology in smartphones has improved to the point that it’s really hard to tell the difference.

The S9 outperforms its rivals in many test shots. The evening sky is darker, for instance, with less distortion. But usually there’s little obvious difference beyond color variation, which is subject to personal tastes.

The most distinctive feature in Samsung’s new camera is super-slow-mo video. People appear frozen as they jump. It’s a gimmick, but potentially fun.

The phone comes out March 16 with a U.S. starting price of $720 through Samsung and T-Mobile and nearly $800 through the other major U.S. carriers.
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An observatory telescope in Arizona used to discover the distant Pluto nearly 90 years ago will reopen for business on Saturday after a year of extensive restoration work.

Nearly every part of Lowell Observatory’s Pluto Discovery Telescope and accompanying dome near Flagstaff has been refurbished, from the trio of lenses to historic wooden shutters that open up to the stars, the Arizona Daily Sun reported.

“It’s a beautiful telescope,” said Ralph Nye, part of the restoration team. “This is the way it should look.”

The team removed, cleaned and reused everything down to the nuts, bolts and screws – almost nothing needed to be replaced, said Peter Rosenthal, who also worked on the telescope.

The observatory said the nearly 90-year-old telescope is working as well and is looking even better than it did when Clyde Tombaugh used the instrument to pick out distant Pluto 88 years ago.

Known as an astrographic camera, the telescope’s three lenses focus light onto a single glass photographic plate.

Each image requires an exposure time of almost an hour, which would have been a chilly experience for Tombaugh on winter nights because the dome’s shutters have to be open to the sky, Rosenthal said.

As a young observatory assistant, Tombaugh took the exposures and then scrutinized the glass negatives using a Zeiss blink comparator. On Feb. 18, 1930, he pinpointed Pluto.

Nye said the repairs came in on time and met the project’s $155,000 budget with a few bucks to spare.
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With the rising cost of healthcare in the U.S., and the growing demand for services by those who can least afford them, two doctors in Clarkston, Georgia, made a commitment to do something about it. Founded five years ago, the non-profit Clarkston Community Health Center wanted to make a difference – by providing free treatments and services for lower-income residents in the city of Clarkston and its surrounding communities. Saleh Damiger from VOA’s Kurdish Service filed this report.
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The fight to keep tiny pollutants from reaching the dinner plate might start in the laundry room.

Innovators are coming up with tools to keep tiny pieces of thread that are discharged with washing machine effluent from reaching marine life. Such “microfibers” are too small to be caught in conventional filters, so they eventually pass through sewage plants, wash out to waterways, and can be eaten or absorbed by marine animals, some later served up as seafood.

So far there are at least four products, with names such as Guppyfriend and Cora Ball, aimed at curbing microfibers.

The developers are taking the war on pollution to a microscopic level after the fight against microbeads — tiny plastic beads found in some beauty products that were banned nationally in 2015.

“Blaming industry or government won’t solve the problems,” said Alexander Nolte, co-founder of Guppyfriend, a polyamide washing bag designed to prevent tiny threads from escaping. “Buy less and better; wash less and better.”

How harmful are they?

The issue has become an increasing focus of environmental scientists seeking to find out just how harmful microfibers are to coastal ecosystems, oceans and marine life and whether they affect human health. One study from 2011, led by Australian ecotoxicologist Mark Browne, found that microfibers made up 85 percent of man-caused shoreline debris.

Exactly how much microfiber pollution exists in the environment is a subject of research and debate. The United Nations has identified microfiber pollution as a key outgrowth of the 300 million tons of plastic produced annually. And a 2016 study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that more than a gram of microfibers is released every time synthetic jackets are washed and that as much as 40 percent of those microfibers eventually enter waterways. 

While there’s no question microfibers are escaping into the environment, it’s unclear how harmful they are, said Chelsea Rochman, an ecology professor at the University of Toronto who plans a study at the end of the year.

One of the questions, she said, is whether the problem is the fibers themselves or dyes in them, and whether natural microfibers such as wool and cotton are less harmful than plastic microfibers.

The microfiber trappers take various forms.

Guppyfriend, the laundry bag, is sold by clothing company Patagonia for $29.75. Cora Ball retails at $29.99 and is a multicolored ball designed to bounce around the washing machine, trapping microfibers in appendages that resemble coral. Lint LUV-R costs $140 or more and is a filter that attaches to a laundry water discharge hose.

New items

While the U.S. Census has found more than 85 percent of U.S. households have a washing machine, the items are new to the market and not familiar to most consumers. About 50,000 households use the Guppyfriend bag, Nolte said, and it might be the best known of the bunch.

Exactly how much these nascent products can help reduce microfiber pollution is not yet known, experts say, and it’s important to find out which products best succeed in reducing emissions of microfibers, Rochman said.

The inventor of the Cora Ball is the nonprofit environmental group Rozalia Project, headquartered in Granville, Vermont. Its co-founder says it had its product independently studied and found it can cut the amount of microfibers released through the wash by more than 25 percent. An independent review by a German research institute found that Guppyfriend caused textiles to shed 75 to 86 percent fewer fibers. 

“This is a consumer solution for people to be part of by throwing it in their washing machine,” said Rachael Miller, co-founder of Rozalia Project. 

The products serve to bring attention to a form of pollution unknown to most people, said Kirsten Kapp, a biology professor at Central Wyoming College, who has studied microfiber pollution on the Snake River in the Pacific Northwest.

“We are learning more and more every day about the risk that microfibers and microplastics have in our aquatic habitats and wildlife species,” Kapp said. “I think it’s something people should be aware of.”
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Wealthy cities are responsible for a huge share of greenhouse-gas emissions when calculations include goods they consume from developing countries, researchers said on Tuesday, challenging traditional estimates that put blame on manufacturing nations.

Looking at emissions based on consumption, affluent cities, mostly in North America and Europe, emit 60 percent more greenhouse gases than they do using traditional calculations, researchers said at a United Nations-backed climate summit.

Calculating emissions of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming, traditionally looks at where goods such as cellular phones or plastic cups are produced, they said.

But consumption-based emissions presents a fuller picture by attributing emissions to the consumers rather than the manufacturers, said Mark Watts, head of C40, an alliance of more than 90 global cities.

The newer method of calculation puts the responsibility on richer consumers and “increases the scope of things that policy makers in cities can address to reduce emissions,” Watts said.

Cities account for an estimated 75 percent of carbon emissions, according to U.N. figures used at the summit.

Big cities, big problem

The estimate by C40 comes amid concern that national governments are not on track to meet the pledges they made in 2015 in Paris to reduce greenhouse gases and curb climate change.

Traditional calculations put manufacturing countries such as China and India amid the lead emitters of greenhouse gases.

Using consumption-based calculations, emissions in 15 affluent cities were three times more than they were with traditional figuring, the researchers said.

Using consumption-based emissions is “revolutionary” although still “on the periphery,” said Debra Roberts, a co-chairwoman on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“But … these are ideas whose time is probably almost imminent,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the Edmonton summit.

The researchers used trade and household data from 79 cities that are members of C40.

Some 750 climate scientists and city planners from 80 countries are gathered in the western Canadian city to help chart a global roadmap for cities to battle climate change.
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The Trump administration Tuesday launched a new effort under the direction of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to overcome years of problems with electronic medical records and make them easier for patients to use.

 

Medicare will play a key role, eventually enabling nearly 60 million beneficiaries to securely access claims data and share that information with their doctors.

 

Electronic medical records were ushered in with great fanfare but it’s generally acknowledged they’ve fallen short. Different systems don’t communicate. Patient portals can be clunky to navigate. Some hospitals still provide records on compact discs that newer computers can’t read.

 

The government has already spent about $30 billion to subsidize the adoption of digital records by hospitals and doctors. It’s unclear how much difference the Trump effort will make. No timetables were announced Tuesday.

 

The government-wide MyHealthEData initiative will be overseen by the White House Office of American Innovation, which is headed by Kushner. His stewardship of a broad portfolio of domestic and foreign policy duties has recently been called into question due to his inability to obtain a permanent security clearance.

 

Medicare administrator Seema Verma said her agency is working on a program called Blue Button 2.0, with the goal of providing beneficiaries with secure access to their claims data, shareable with their doctors. Software developers are already working on apps, using mock patient data.

 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is also reviewing its requirements for insurers, so that government policy will encourage the companies to provide patients with access to their records.

 

“It’s our data, it’s our personal health information, and we should control it,” Verma said, making her announcement at a health care tech conference in Las Vegas.

 

The longstanding bipartisan goal of paying for health care value — not sheer volume of services — will not be achieved until patients are able to use their data to make informed decisions about their treatment, Verma added.

Independent experts said the administration has identified a key problem in the health care system.

 

“This is a good first step, but several key challenges need to be addressed,” said Ben Moscovitch, a health care technology expert with the Pew Charitable Trusts.

 

For example, the claims data that Medicare wants to put in the hands of patients sometimes lacks key clinical details, said Moscovitch. If the patient had a hip replacement, claims data may not indicate what model of artificial hip the surgeon used.

 

“Claims data alone are insufficient,” said Moscovitch. “They are incomplete, and they lack key data.”

The administration could address that by adding needed information to the claims data, he explained.
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Emergency rooms saw a big jump in overdoses from opioids last year — the latest evidence the nation’s drug crisis is getting worse.

A government report released Tuesday shows overdoses from opioids increased 30 percent late last summer, compared to the same three-month period in 2016. The biggest jumps were in the Midwest and in cities, but increases occurred nationwide.

The report did not differentiate between prescription pain pills, heroin, fentanyl and other opioids.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently started using a new system to track ER overdoses and found the rate of opioid overdoses rose from 14 to 18 per 100,000 ER visits over a year.

Almost all those overdoses were not fatal. Opioids were involved in two-thirds of all overdose deaths in 2016.
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A note written by Albert Einstein to an Italian woman scientist who had declined to meet him sold at auction Tuesday along with a batch of other letters left by the renowned physicist.

“To the scientific researcher, at whose feet I slept and sat for two full days, as a friendly souvenir,” reads the note in his native German, signed and dated October 1921, which fetched $6,100 at Winner’s Auctions & Exhibitions in Jerusalem.

The auction house said Einstein, then 42 and soon to win the Nobel Prize, wrote the letter to Elisabetta Piccini, a chemistry student half his age who lived one floor above his sister, Maja, in Florence.

During a visit to the city, “Einstein was very interested in meeting her. However, Elisabetta was introverted and too shy to meet with such a famous person,” Winner’s said on its website.

Also sold Tuesday for $103,000 was a 1928 note in which the auction house said Einstein outlined ideas for his “Third Stage of the Theory of Relativity.” A 1946 English-language letter of encouragement that he penned to an American World War II veteran who aspired to be a scientist also fetched $6,100.

Last October, Winner’s sold another Einstein letter, a 1922 meditation on happiness that he wrote upon learning he had won the Nobel, for $1.3 million.
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In a square in central Barcelona, families with young children perch at picnic tables as traffic thunders past and high-rise blocks loom above them.

But the concrete mecca that is Placa de les Glories Catalanes is about to undergo a major facelift that will create a new green public space for Spain’s second-largest city.

Starting this month, two underground tunnels will be built, funnelling traffic away from the square, Marta Pigem Jubany, a spokeswoman for Barcelona City Hall, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Subsequently a new park will be constructed, including a lawn and children’s play area, an outdoor market, exotic gardens, water features and a performing arts space.

In the city best known among tourists for its Las Ramblas shopping street, the regenerated zone will also feature a tree-lined avenue called the Rambla dels Encants (Boulevard of Charms).

It is not the only new park planned for Barcelona. In the north of the city, a 7.6 million-euro ($9.4 million) project begins in May to transform the grounds of a dilapidated early 20th century estate, known as Finca Ravetllat-Pla, into another green space.

Further afield, Madrid’s environment ministry embarked on a multi-million-euro project last year to expand the city’s parks, and cover walls and roofs with more greenery.

Meanwhile Italian architecture firm Stefano Boeri Architetti has had plans approved for France’s first vertical forest on the outskirts of Paris, featuring a 54-meter-high (177 feet) wooden tower block decked in trees, shrubs and plants.

Access to nature

Cities are increasingly looking for ways to provide more greenery, as migration to urban areas rises and a growing body of scientific evidence indicates that being close to nature is good for people.

Vegetation also sucks up planet-warming carbon dioxide, and is key to efforts to combat climate change.

Some 750 climate scientists and urban planners are gathered in Canada this week at a U.N.-hosted conference to discuss how to help cities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to extreme weather and rising seas.

The proportion of the global population living in urban areas has risen from half in 2000 to 55 percent now, and is predicted to reach two-thirds by 2050.

“Access to nature provides an array of health and well-being benefits, from the psychological and physical to the social,” said Kevin J. Gaston, a professor of biodiversity and conservation at Britain’s University of Exeter.

“Particularly in westernized societies, we are becoming aware of a whole array of quite chronic health consequences associated with city living – for instance, obesity, mental illness, diabetes,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Making more room for nature in cities brings multiple advantages for residents and the environment, said Marcus Collier, an assistant professor of botany at Trinity College Dublin.

A green roof, for example, not only makes the landscape look more attractive, but also provides insulation, cutting back on energy usage, said Collier, who leads a Europe-wide research project called Connecting Nature.

Green spaces can help combat rising heat levels, provide a buffer against flooding and intercept dust, toxins and noise, according to the Connecting Nature website.

But some benefits are harder to quantify, such as a fall in hospital stays and lower blood pressure, Collier noted.

Sharing solutions

The 11.4 million-euro project, which began last year and runs until 2022, is developing “nature-based solutions”, such as street trees, parks, and green roofs and walls, across 11 European cities.

There are plans to replicate the project, funded by the European Commission, in China, Brazil, South Korea and the Caucasus.

European cities present a unique challenge because they are dense, and often in need of more residential housing – meaning urban planners who want to prioritize nature must compete for space.

The prevalence of old buildings in European cities can also cause complications, because green projects have to be retrofitted to them, noted Collier.

As many of those projects are relatively untested, finding finance for them and devising metrics to assess their performance are additional challenges, he said.

Partnerships with local authorities, industry and non-governmental groups are essential for the Connecting Nature project in Europe, but could be more difficult to achieve in other places, Collier said.

“Collaboration is very much the cornerstone of the European project, but in China community participation is not as common,” he added.

Green gentrification

Few would disagree that greenery makes cities prettier and more liveable, yet experts warn its deeper effects may take some time to show.

“Nature can’t be a 100 percent cure for all ills…. No one is claiming that you take someone for a walk in the park and tomorrow they will be thinner, or less stressed,” said Gaston.

“A lot of what we’re talking about here are benefits that play out over life spans rather than ones that are maximized by tomorrow,” he added.

Short, frequent experiences are probably more significant than total immersion in nature, meaning cities should look for ways of incorporating green space into their layout, he noted.

“We have to get very creative about it and take opportunities when bits of land do become available to think about the longer-term benefits they might provide rather than just putting a new building in their place,” he said.

Experts also warn that providing more nature in cities can raise rents, pricing out some residents.

“There’s always a threat of social displacement – especially in any kind of neighborhood that is already experiencing gentrification pressures,” said Daniel Aldana Cohen, an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

One solution is to roll out small green projects across a city, rather than focus on high-profile, flashier initiatives in just a few neighborhoods, he said.

Providing rail and bus links to green spaces outside a city is another way to help people access nature in a low-carbon way, he added.

“You see this in Japan, which has great rail linkages and has made a real effort to have a green belt with accessible mountains,” he said.

 
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The U.N.’s new envoy for climate action, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said Monday that President Donald Trump can become “a great leader” if he changes his mind about global warming and keeps the United States in the Paris climate agreement.

 

The billionaire media mogul expressed hope that Trump will listen to his advisers, look at the data on climate change, and support the 2015 Paris accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Bloomberg spoke during a ceremony at which U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gave him the new title of U.N. special envoy for climate action, handing him the job of spurring international action to help curb global warming.

 

A longtime activist for clean energy and a green economy, Bloomberg was appointed U.N. special envoy on cities and climate change by then U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon in January 2014. Since then, he has been traveling around the United States and the world campaigning for a reduction in carbon emissions.

 

Guterres announced that Bloomberg will help support a U.N. Climate Summit that he is planning at U.N. headquarters in 2019 to mobilize more ambitious action and start implementing the Paris climate agreement now.

 

Countries agreed in the Paris accord to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and do their best to keep it below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with pre-industrial times. But the agreement starts after 2020 — and at U.N. climate talks in November over 170 countries stressed the importance of implementing ambitious climate actions before 2020.

 

Trump announced last June that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris agreement, fulfilling a campaign pledge to quit the world’s chief effort to slow planetary warming.

 

He framed his decision as “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty” and argued that the agreement had disadvantaged the U.S. “to the exclusive benefit of other countries,” leaving American businesses and taxpayers to absorb the cost.

 

Under terms of the agreement, the U.S. cannot officially pull out until 2020.

 

Bloomberg has urged world leaders not to follow Trump, and has pledged to save the Paris agreement.

 

Last October, for example, his foundation donated $64 million to a Sierra Club program seeking to phase out coal-fired power plants and reduce planet-warming carbon emissions.

 

Bloomberg said Monday that his foundation is interested “in spending a lot of money in helping us understand that climate change is real and it’s measurable.”

 

As examples, he said that for the first time the North Pole in the middle of the winter had temperatures above melting, oceans over the last 20 or so years have risen, and there are more frequent and powerful storms. In addition, Bloomberg said, there are floods where there used to be droughts — and droughts where there used to be floods.

 

He said the solution is for people everywhere to get together and change the way they live, “and we have to be a little smarter about how we generate energy.”

 

Guterres said last July that Bloomberg is convinced the United States will reach the Paris goals — despite Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris agreement.

 

Bloomberg expressed hope that Trump will change his mind.

 

“And if that’s the case, that shows a great leader who when facts change, and they recognize something different, they’re not bound to what they did before, they’re willing to change,” Bloomberg said. “And I think it’s fair to say this president does change his views — generally it’s one day to the next, but over a longer period of time.”

 

Guterres also stressed the evidence of global warming.

 

He said temperatures in the atmosphere and at sea level are rising faster than expected, glaciers are receding more quickly, and the Arctic ice cap is “shrinking much more quickly and dramatically than in the past — so climate change is running faster than we are.”

 

But the U.N. chief said there are two pieces of “very good news,” the secretary-general said: “Today, the cheapest energy is green energy” and the “green economy” is the economy of the future. And there is “enormous capacity” to mobilize civil society, the business community and cities.

 

Guterres pointed to the work Bloomberg has done in all those areas, saying: “I am very confident that this battle will be won, because the realities of today’s economy are such that the wise decision is the green decision.”
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Battery-powered drones have mostly replaced manned aircraft in a range of tasks, from scientific measurements to aerial photography, with one persistent disadvantage – the limit of their power source. A startup company in San Francisco says their airship can do a lot of those tasks while staying in the air much longer. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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