The state Department of Fish and Game has released the lowest forecasts for Southeast Alaska king salmon since record keeping began in the 1970s.

King salmon numbers have been dwindling for years, but researchers don’t have a lot of answers as to why, KTOO Public Media in Juneau reported Tuesday.

Federal fisheries biologist Jim Murphy said there is concern that the 2013 “blob” of warm water played a role because it wreaked havoc on salmon feeding in the open ocean. But Murphy said king salmon numbers started decreasing long before 2013.

Other theories point to more predators in the ocean, but Murphy said he hasn’t seen any king salmon in predators’ stomachs in his 15 years.

“It does really point to our lack of understanding in the underlying ecology,” Murphy said. “I think it’s good to kind of put some resources into understanding. It’s probably not going to bring fish back but it helps to be able to sort out very difficult decisions that are made.”

Proposals to offset the low forecasts are expected to be discussed at the next state Board of Fisheries meeting in Sitka.

At least 30 proposals have been made and more could emerge during the meeting.

Fish and Game managers recommended listing king salmon as a fish stock of concern, which could trigger stronger restrictions.

Dale Kelley, executive director of the Alaska Trollers Association, said “fishermen are extremely concerned about the effects of conservation management on their businesses, our long-term survival depends on the health of these stocks.”
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Wearable technology is finding its way into many workouts. The thinking is that constantly monitoring their body can help people get the most out of their time at the gym. That’s the idea behind Orange theory, the newest U.S. fitness fad. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Mathilde Krim, a prominent AIDS researcher who galvanized worldwide support in the early fight against the deadly disease, has died. She was 91.

Krim was founding chairman of The Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR. The nonprofit says she died at her home in King’s Point, New York, on Monday.

amfAR Chief Executive Officer Kevin Robert Frost says in a statement “so many people alive today literally owe their lives” to her.

Krim was a geneticist with experience in cancer research when AIDS first surfaced in the early 1980s. Over the next several decades, she mobilized a vast army of celebrities and others to help raise money and to lessen the disease’s stigma.

In 2000, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S.
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Federal ocean managers say it might be time to move the East Coast population of the world’s largest turtle from the United States’ list of endangered animals.

An arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has received a petition from a fishing group asking that the Northwest Atlantic Ocean’s leatherback sea turtles be listed as “threatened,” but not endangered, under the Endangered Species Act. The giant reptiles, which can weigh 2,000 pounds, would remain protected under federal law, but their status would be moved down a notch.

NOAA officials have said the agency has reviewed the petition from New Jersey-based Blue Water Fishermen’s Association and found “substantial scientific and commercial information” that the move might be warranted. The agency now has about eight months to make a decision about the status of the turtles.

Leatherbacks live all over the world’s oceans and have been listed as endangered by the U.S. since 1970. Deciding whether the listing should be changed will require determining the stability of the population, said Jennifer Schultz, a fisheries biologist with NOAA Fisheries.

“We’ll look at scientific papers, we look at the best available scientific and commercial data,” she said. “And then we’ll say, `What does the status look like? How are they doing?”‘

The fishing group that requested the change wants the Northwestern Atlantic’s leatherback population to be considered a distinct segment of the population. That segment would include all of the leatherbacks that nest on beaches in the eastern U.S. states. But NOAA Fisheries is going to look at the status of the turtles worldwide, said Angela Somma, chief of endangered species division with NOAA Fisheries.

Blue Water Fishermen’s Association requested the change of listing in part to spur new research into the status of the leatherback population, said Ernie Panacek, a past president of the organization. Data about species such as sea turtles and marine mammals play a role in crafting fishing regulations, and fishermen fear the government is using outdated data about leatherbacks, he said.

“I get a little frustrated in the fact that they are making regulations without scientific data in front of them,” he said. “The more turtles there are, the more interactions you are bound to have with them.”

The leatherback sea turtle has been the subject of intense interest from conservation groups over the years. It’s listing as endangered by the U.S. predates the modern Endangered Species Act that was enacted in 1973. The Costa Rica-based Leatherback Trust, an international nonprofit group, describes them as “ancient creatures celebrated in creation myths belonging to diverse cultures around the world.”

International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the leatherback sea turtle as “vulnerable,” which is one notch above “endangered” on the IUCN’s scale. It’s one of the largest reptiles on Earth, feeding mostly on jellyfish, which has left them at risk to plastic in the ocean, which can kill them if they ingest it. They are also notable for being the deepest diving and most migratory of all sea turtles, and for their lack of a bony shell.

NOAA is collecting information and comments on the subject until February 5.
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A report by the U.N. children’s fund finds babies born in war-torn Yemen are dying at an alarmingly high rate because of the collapsing health system, lack of food and clean water. 

The U.N. children’s fund reports more than three million children have been born in Yemen since the country’s civil war escalated in March 2015.  The agency’s report, called “Born into War”, describes the violent, hopeless situation of displacement, disease, poverty and hunger into which these children are born.

UNICEF says most of the estimated 3,000 babies born every day are delivered outside a health center, with no skilled birth attendant present.  It reports 40 percent of the births are premature and 30 percent suffer from low birth weight.  Most worrying of all, it notes, is 25 percent of the newborns die within their first month because of infections and a variety of deprivations.

UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac says undernutrition plays a big role in those deaths.  He says around 1.8 million children are acutely malnourished and about 400,000 are severely, acutely malnourished.

“A child who is suffering from severe acute malnutrition is nine times more likely to die than a child who is correctly nourished,” said Boulierac. “So, these children are in danger.” 

The report finds at least 5,000 children have been killed or maimed in the violence.  That means an average of five children have lost their lives or been injured every day since the Saudi-led coalition began bombing Houthi rebels in support of the Yemeni government nearly three years ago.  

UNICEF says more than 11 million children, nearly every child in Yemen, needs humanitarian assistance to survive.  And, those who do survive, it says, are likely to carry the physical and psychological scars of the brutal conflict for the rest of their lives.  

 
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The World Health Organization has added all of Sao Paulo state to its list of areas at risk for yellow fever.

That puts the megacity of Sao Paulo on the list and means that the organization is recommending that all international visitors to the state be vaccinated.

Tuesday’s announcement comes as an outbreak is gathering steam in Brazil ahead of Carnival, a major draw for foreign tourists. The WHO says 11 human cases have been confirmed through last week and hundreds more found in monkeys.

Much of Brazil is considered at risk for yellow fever, but the coast was largely considered safe. Last year, however, Brazil saw an unusually large outbreak of the disease, including in areas not previously at risk. In response, Brazil rushed to vaccinate millions of people.
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A city in central Japan used its emergency loudspeaker system in an attempt to recall four packages of blowfish meat after discovering a fifth one contained the potentially deadly liver.

No one has died. The fish, known as fugu, is an expensive winter delicacy but requires a license to prepare because of the dangers of mishandling. The fugu’s liver is mostly toxic and banned.

Regional health officials said Tuesday a supermarket in Gamagori sold five packages of assorted blowfish meat on Monday. The inclusion of the liver in the package could have contaminated the other meat with the fugu poison.

Health authorities found that the store had been selling the liver of the particular kind of blowfish, called “yorito fugu,” or blunthead puffer, for years because it’s nearly non-toxic, health ministry official Yohei Ohashi said. No health problems have been reported from past consumption of the liver sold at the store, he said.

The illegal sales surfaced Monday when a buyer of one package took it to a health center. With four other packages sold but unaccounted for, city officials alerted residents via the emergency loudspeakers normally used for earthquakes and other disasters. Two packages have since been returned.

The health ministry ordered the store to recall all the blowfish packages and suspend their sale, but the store told officials that it will no longer sell blowfish, Ohashi said.
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Fighting in Ukraine that erupted in 2014 escalated the spread of HIV throughout the country as millions of infected people were uprooted by violence, a study published Monday found.

Conflict-affected areas such as Donetsk and Luhansk, two large cities in the east of Ukraine, were the main exporters of the HIV virus to other parts of the country such as Kyiv and Odessa, the report found.

Ukraine has among the highest HIV rates in Europe, with an estimated 220,000 infected in a country of about 45 million.

An international team of scientists led by Oxford University and Public Health England analyzed viral migration patterns and found a correlation between the war-related movement of 1.7 million people and the spread of HIV.

“The war changed a lot of things in Ukraine and the HIV epidemic is one of them,” said lead author Tetyana Vasylyeva of Oxford University’s Zoology department.

“When we conducted our analysis, we were able to show that the viral spread from the East to the rest of the country had been intensified after the war.”

The HIV epidemic has shifted from being associated with drug injections in the 1990s to most new infections now being spread by sexual transmission, Vasylyeva told Reuters.

Half of HIV-infected people in Ukraine are unaware of their infection status and around 40 percent of newly diagnosed people are in the later stages of the disease, she added.

Almost 37 million people worldwide have the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

Since the first cases of HIV were reported more than 35 years ago, 35 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses, according to the United Nations AIDS program (UNAIDS), which is seeking to end the public health threat by 2030, in line with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

A Russia-backed insurgency erupted in Ukraine’s industrialized east in 2014 and the bloodshed has continued despite a cease-fire deal brokered by Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis.

Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO that it supports the rebels with troops and weapons.

The health study also found an alarmingly high resistance, compared to the rest of Europe, to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) a common treatment for HIV, said senior author and medical virologist, Gkikas Magiorkinis.

“It’s a worrying development and the policymakers should be alerted because it’s going to be very, very difficult to use it [PrEP] in the near future in Ukraine,” Magiorkinis told Reuters.

Ukraine must scale-up interventions to prevent further transmissions of HIV, and seek international support to prevent a new public health tragedy, he said.
…

When heavy monsoon rains triggered unprecedented flooding last August in the area around western Nepal’s Babai and West Rapti rivers, the swollen waters crossed the border into India within a few hours.

But swift warnings from Nepali authorities to the downriver Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh allowed officials there to move people to safety, Indian officials say.

Without that advice from Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, “there would have been no possibility for the Indian authorities to ensure timely evacuation of the people, which [would have] otherwise led to huge loss of lives,” said Anand Sharma of the Indian Meteorological Department.

As climate change increases the risk of flooding, glacial lake outbursts and cyclones, as well as droughts and heat waves, experts say that sharing information across borders is crucial to save lives and ensure economic stability in Asia’s Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region.

The region, which stretches from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east, includes over 1.3 billion people in eight countries.

They are connected by 10 river basins, including the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong and Yangtse, and some of the world’s largest mountain ranges, the Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Himalayas, which are home to over 54,000 glaciers covering more than 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles).

But the cooperation seen between India and Nepal remains too rare in the region, regional officials say.

Although countries face similar climate-related risks, political disagreements between countries, and a lack of legal arrangements for sharing information, are increasing the region’s vulnerability to natural disasters, they say.

Risks growing

David Molden, the director general of the Kathmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), warned in an interview that HKH countries will suffer increasingly severe impacts from climate change-related disasters, particularly floods, cyclones, droughts and land erosion, if they do not cooperate in sharing information and early warnings.

But in a bid to boost the region’s climate resilience, political leaders, government policymakers and scientists from the region agreed at a conference in Nepal in December to work harder to boost collaboration to tackle common disaster risks.

Such cooperation would likely focus on everything from improving joint management of river basins to better monitoring of glacial melting and glacial lakes prone to outburst floods, Molden said.

Lyonpo Yeshey Dorji, Bhutan’s Minister for Agriculture and Forest, said he was confident that political leaders of the region would “join hands with scientists and policymakers to boost intra-regional collaboration in data sharing, knowledge and technology transfer for enhancing the region’s ability to withstand fallouts of climate change.”

Dorji added that countries needed to better understand the advantages that would be gained by exchanging data, local knowledge and technology.

Yusuf Zafar, chair of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, agreed that cooperation between countries was urgently needed.

“Plugging the gap … is vital to help people strengthen climate resilience, particularly those 210 million people in mountain areas,” he said.

Cross-border flood warnings

In the case of India and Nepal, the Indian Meteorological Department, together with India’s National Disaster Management Authority, monitors rainfall during the rainy season in Nepal and receives real-time flood information from its Nepali counterparts.

Communities in downriver flood-prone areas in India are able to contact hydrology stations in Nepal for information on potential flooding in that country’s upstream areas, officials said.

Asit Biswas, a scientist and visiting professor at Singapore-based Lee Kuan Yew School for Public Policy, told Reuters more evidence from science was needed to persuade politicians of the urgent need to invest in national and regional programs for resilience, focused on everything from food security to protection of water supplies.

“The goal of a climate-resilient HKH region is unlikely to be achieved as long as regional political leaders’ attention is not drawn to the exacerbating climate vulnerability of the HKH region,” Biswas said.

In some regions, cooperation is already improving. India, for example, used not to convey flood warnings to Bangladesh because of difficult political relations between the two countries, the experts said.

This made Bangladesh more vulnerable to flooding in the Ganges-Brahamaputra River that flows from India into Bangladesh, they said.

But Golam Rasul, a Bangladeshi development economist at ICIMOD, said that India now shares early flood warnings with its smaller neighbor, thanks to normalization of relations between the two countries.

When five Indian rivers that flow into Bangladesh flooded as a result of monsoon rains last August, Indian authorities alerted their Bangladeshi counterparts, enabling them to evacuate vulnerable residents alongside the rivers, he said.
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For Type 1 diabetics their disease requires them to constantly monitor their blood sugar. Now some of them are creating some home-made tech to help monitor their status. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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More than 12 million boxes of French baby milk products are being recalled from 83 countries for suspected salmonella contamination.

The recall includes Lactalis’ Picot, Milumel and Taranis brands.

The head of the French dairy Lactalis on Sunday confirmed that its products are being recalled from countries across Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia after salmonella was discovered at one of its plants last month. The United States, Britain and Australia were not affected.

Emmanuel Besnier told weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that his family company, one of the world’s biggest dairies, would pay damages to “every family which has suffered a prejudice.”

The paper said 35 babies were diagnosed with salmonella in France, one in Spain and a possible case in Greece.

Salmonella can cause severe diarrhea, stomach cramps, vomiting and severe dehydration. It can be life-threatening, especially in young children.

Lactalis officials have said they believe the contamination was caused by renovation work at their Celia factory in Craon, in northwest France.

France’s agriculture minister said products from the factory will be banned indefinitely during the investigation.

 
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Researchers say climate change is responsible for the vast majority of green sea turtles in the northern Great Barrier Reef off Australia being female.  

Scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the temperature at which turtle eggs incubate determines the sex of hatchlings, and warn that warmer conditions are creating a dangerous gender imbalance.  

Almost the entire green turtle population in parts of the northern Great Barrier Reef in Australia is now female.  A study of about 200,000 animals in the reef’s northern waters found them to be overwhelmingly female.  The research was published in the journal Current Biology.  There are concerns that the future of the endangered reptile is increasingly precarious.  

In the southern Barrier Reef, where conditions are cooler, about two-thirds are female. Researchers say that while they hope for some milder years to produce more males, they expect temperatures to continue to rise.

One possible solution to the gender imbalance is to put up tents over beaches where turtles nest to give them shade.

Colin Limpus, Queensland chief scientist, says that cloud seeding is another option.

“There is consideration being given to having artificial rain.  It is being considered primarily for how we can get the turtles nesting successfully; at the same time it is going to cool the sand and should shift the sex ratio towards an increase in males,” Limpus said.

The green turtle is one of the largest sea turtles and the only herbivore among the different species.  They are named for the greenish color of their cartilage and fat, not their shells.

They are classified as endangered, and are threatened by habitat loss, over-harvesting of their eggs, and the hunting of adults.

The Great Barrier Reef stretches for 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeast coast.  It is home to a spectacular range of wildlife, including more than 130 species of sharks, 500 types of worms and 1,600 varieties of fish.

The reef faces a range of threats from the run-off of pesticides and soil from farms, and warmer ocean temperatures that have caused the mass bleaching of the coral in the past two years.
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To his toolbox of Botox, fillers and plastic surgery, cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Murad Alam has added a new, low-cost, noninvasive anti-aging treatment: facial yoga.

Dermatologists measured improvements in the appearance of the faces of a small group of middle-age women after they did half an hour of daily face-toning exercises for eight weeks, followed by alternate-day exercises for another 12 weeks.

The results surprised lead author Alam, vice chair and professor of dermatology at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“In fact, the results were stronger than I expected,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s really a win-win for patients.”

Participants included 27 women between 40 and 65, though only 16 completed the full course. It began with two 90-minute muscle-resistant facial exercise-training sessions led by co-author Gary Sikorski of Happy Face Yoga in Providence, Rhode Island.

Participants learned to perform cheek pushups and eye-bag removers, among other exercises. Then they practiced at home.

Improvements noted

Dermatologists looking at unmarked before-and-after photos saw improvements in upper cheek and lower cheek fullness, and they estimated the average age of women who stuck with the program as significantly younger at the end than at the start.

The average estimated age dropped almost three years, from nearly 51 years to 48 years.

Participants also rated themselves as more satisfied with the appearance of their faces at the study’s end, Alam and colleagues reported in JAMA Dermatology.

“Now there is some evidence that facial exercises may improve facial appearance and reduce some visible signs of aging,” Alam said. “Assuming the findings are confirmed in a larger study, individuals now have a low-cost, non-toxic way of looking younger or augmenting other cosmetic or anti-aging treatments they may be seeking.”

The exercises enlarge and strengthen facial muscles to firm and tone the face, giving it a younger appearance, he said.

Happy Face sells instructional worksheets — promising smoother skin, firmed cheeks and raised eyelids — for $19.95. DVDs cost $24.95.

Some skepticism

But not all dermatologists are rushing to promote the videos or the exercises.

Dr. John Chi, a plastic surgeon and professor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, said the study raises more questions than it answers.

“The jury is still out on whether or not facial yoga is effective in reversing the signs of aging,” he said in an email.

Chi, who was not involved with the study, said he would recommend facial yoga to patients who found it relaxing and enjoyable but not for the purpose of facial rejuvenation.

“While the premise of facial exercises to improve the facial appearance or reverse signs of aging is an appealing one, there is little evidence to suggest that there is any benefit in this regard,” he said.

Chi said facial yoga had not been rigorously examined in peer-reviewed scientific studies. Asked whether procedures such as face-lifts, Botox and fillers had been rigorously examined in peer-reviewed studies, he replied: “Great question. Attempts to do so have been made in the scientific literature with variable levels of scientific rigor.”

Alam agrees that his study raises additional research questions, such as whether the exercises would work for men and how much time people need to commit to doing the exercises for them to be optimally effective. He would like to see a larger study.
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Only 1 in 3 U.S. children are active every day. And less than 5 percent of U.S. adults exercise at least 30 minutes every day. But that is not stopping these fitness entrepreneurs from showing off their wares. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The president will undergo several hours of testing Friday at Walter Reed military hospital in Maryland

President Donald Trump will be the patient, not the commander in chief offering comfort, when he visits the Walter Reed military hospital on Friday.

Trump is headed to the medical facility in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington, for his first medical check-up as president. But what has been a fairly routine exam for previous officeholders has taken on outsized importance in the age of Trump, given the tone of some of his tweets, comments attributed to some of his close advisers and Trump’s recent slurring of words on national TV.

Some questions and answers about Trump’s physical:

What questions will the exam answer?

The exam, lasting several hours, will measure things like Trump’s blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, heart rate and weight.

Conclusions about his mental acuity aren’t expected. The White House said Trump will not undergo a psychiatric exam. Officials did not address a different type of screening: assessments of cognitive status that examine neurologic functions including memory. Cognitive assessments aren’t routine in standard physicals, although they recently became covered in Medicare’s annual wellness visits for seniors.

Is the exam mandatory?

No, but modern presidents typically undergo them regularly and release a doctor’s report declaring they are “fit for duty.”

What’s known about Trump’s health?

Two months before the November 2016 election, Trump released a five-paragraph letter from his longtime physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, who concluded that Trump “is in excellent physical health.” A year earlier, Bornstein said in a December 2015 letter: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

The 2016 letter put Trump’s blood pressure and cholesterol measurements in the healthy range, though he uses a cholesterol-lowering statin medication. His EKG, chest X-ray, echocardiogram and blood sugar were normal. The 6-foot-3 Trump weighed 236 pounds, and his body mass index, or BMI, of 29.5 put him in the category of being overweight for his height.

Trump takes Crestor for his cholesterol, a low-dose aspirin for heart attack prevention, Propecia to treat male-pattern baldness and antibiotics for rosacea. The doctor’s 2016 letter stated that Trump’s testosterone level, 441.6, was in the normal range, as were his PSA reading for prostate abnormalities and tests of his liver and thyroid.

Trump was 70 when he took office on Jan. 20, 2017, making him the oldest person ever elected to the nation’s highest office.

What about his lifestyle?

He leads a largely sedentary lifestyle compared to his most recent predecessors, and has said he gets most of his exercise playing golf.

The American Heart Association says the best types of exercise increase the heart rate and make a person breath heavily, but that activities like golf don’t provide as much cardiovascular benefit since they don’t require much extra effort. The association suggests players walk the golf course instead of renting a golf cart. Trump drives a cart from hole to hole.

President Barack Obama played basketball, lifted weights, worked out on an elliptical machine or treadmill and played golf. George W. Bush traded running for mountain biking to preserve his knees. He also cleared brush from his central Texas ranch during the 100-degree summers. Bill Clinton was a runner who installed a jogging track at the White House. He also played golf, and indulged in Big Macs.

Trump likes fast food, too, along with well-done steaks, chocolate cake and double scoops of vanilla ice cream. He reportedly downs 12 Diet Cokes a day.

What medical information will the White House release?

How much of Trump’s health information the public gets to see is up to the president, but Sanders said she expects the White House to release the same kind of details past presidents have made public. Trump’s doctor will release a brief statement Friday after the exam, and then join her at Tuesday’s briefing to offer a more detailed readout and answer questions.

Obama’s three medical reports included sections on vital statistics; physical exam by system, such as eyes, pulmonary and gastrointestinal; lab results; his past medical and surgical history; his social history; and medications, among others.

Who will examine Trump?

Trump’s official doctor is Ronny L. Jackson, a Navy rear admiral who was the emergency medicine doctor for a shock trauma platoon in Taqaddum, Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to his Navy bio. Jackson also provided care for Obama. Jackson became a White House physician in 2006. He has overseen health care for the Cabinet and senior staff, served as physician supervisor for the Camp David presidential retreat and led the White House Medical Unit.

Jackson will examine the president and line up specialists to conduct other parts of the exam. The White House has released no information about the other doctors who will examine Trump.

Has Trump ever been to Walter Reed Hospital?

Trump has visited twice as president to cheer wounded service members. He awarded Purple Hearts during visits in April and December.
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The Canada lynx, a wild cat found in just a handful of mostly western U.S. states as well as Canada, no longer needs federal protection from extinction in the Lower 48 states, U.S. wildlife officials said Thursday, sparking an outcry from conservationists.

The finding is one step in a process that will see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally propose removing the Canada lynx from the federal endangered and threatened species list. There is no timeline for when such a plan would be floated, agency spokeswoman Jennifer Strickland told Reuters in an email.

Conservationists said it was mystifying how the Trump administration determined the lynx has recovered and should be delisted, since the Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t know how many of the wild cats there are where they are protected in the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere.

Conservationists say stripping protections from Canada lynx, listed in 2000 in the Lower 48 states, would lead to its demise where it is found in parts of Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Montana and Washington. The lynx is not considered imperiled where it is found in Alaska or Canada.

“This spells disaster for lynx,” Michael Garrity, head of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said by telephone.

The Montana-based Alliance is one of several conservation groups that have sued to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to broaden restrictions on activities such as logging, mining and snowmobiling where they take place on public lands and are likely to harm lynx.

The reclusive wild feline, about twice the size of a domestic house cat, is known for its solitary nature and its disproportionately long legs and large paws that make it well-adapted to hunt in deep mountain snows for its preferred prey, the snowshoe hare.

Although climate change, including decreased mountain snowpack, is “an important factor” affecting Canada lynx, they are not at risk of extinction from climate change in the foreseeable future, U.S. wildlife managers said in a statement.

The agency’s Strickland conceded that the number of Canada lynx in the Lower 48 was unknown but said efforts by federal land managers and others to lessen destruction or modification of lynx habitat have reduced threats.

“We believe these measures have adequately protected the species to the point where it no longer needs protection,” she said in an email.
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New York City is making a move against the fossil fuel industry on two fronts.

Democratic Mayor Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday the city is suing five big oil companies for global warming and divesting $5 billion in oil investments from the city’s pension funds.

“We’re bringing the fight against climate change straight to the fossil fuel companies that knew about its effects and intentionally misled the public to protect their profits,” de Blasio alleged Wednesday. “As climate change continues to worsen, it’s up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient.”

The mayor compared the oil companies to cigarette manufacturers, who knowingly made and marketed a product they knew was deadly.

Three of the five companies the city is suing — Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell — said the lawsuit has no merit and that the courtroom is not the place to fight global warming. 

BP and ConocoPhillips declined to comment.

Mayor de Blasio and City Comptroller Scott Stringer also announced plans to sell off $5 billion in fossil fuel investments from the city’s $189 billion pension fund for employees — the largest such divestment of any U.S. city.

“Safeguarding the retirement of our city’s police officers, teachers and firefighters is our top priority and we believe that their financial future is linked to the sustainability of the planet,” Stringer said.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced similar plans for the state pension funds last month.

Several other U.S. and European cities, universities and global funds have also sold off their oil company interests. 
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The Zambian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization are beginning a cholera vaccination campaign January 10 to help stop an outbreak of this deadly disease. Latest official figures put the number of cases at 2,672, including 63 deaths.

Two rounds of immunizations are planned. At each stage, about one million people will be vaccinated against cholera. Most of those who will receive these shots live in or around the Zambian capital, Lusaka, since nearly all of the cases of this fatal disease are centered there.

World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier says the WHO has helped the government plan the campaign and has trained about 500 health and community workers how to administer the vaccine.

He agrees vaccination is an important measure in preventing the onset and spread of cholera. But he says access to clean water, proper sanitation and good hygiene are fundamental to stopping outbreaks entirely.

He tells VOA the government is taking measures to remedy this situation.

“First of all, it has deployed the military to clean up parts of the city where sanitation has been poor. It has also closed a market where sanitation was poor. It has banned street vending and also public gatherings and was delaying the start of the new school semester,” he said.

Cholera, an acute diarrheal disease, can kill within hours if left untreated. People become severely dehydrated and must have their lost fluids replaced quickly if they are to survive.

Lindmeier says it is critical for people to have access to treatment centers where they can easily be helped through oral rehydration or, in the more serious cases, through intravenous fluids.
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The United Kingdom is now banning the manufacturing of tiny plastic microbeads used in products such as cosmetics, toothpaste and shower gels because they could hurt marine animals. The move comes as some other countries have banned microbeads, including the United States. It is estimated that more than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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Human antibodies made in genetically engineered cows have proved safe in an early stage clinical trial, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday, and could be developed into a treatment for the fatal viral disease, MERS.

MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, is a SARS-like viral infection first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012 that has caused deadly outbreaks in the Middle East as well as sporadic cases around the world.

Despite more than five years of waves of infection, no effective treatment or vaccine has been developed against MERS, which has a 35 percent case fatality rate and has so far killed at least 740 people worldwide.

More than 80 percent of MERS cases have been reported in Saudi Arabia, according to the World Health Organization.

In research published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday, scientists found that human antibodies called SAB-301 generated in so-called transchromosomic cattle — animals with human DNA incorporated into their genome — were safe in healthy volunteers.

The antibodies also persisted for more time than the MERS virus typically remains in the body, the study found, with antibodies still detected in bloodstream after 90 days.

This points a way ahead for the antibodies — which offer immunity against an invading infection — to be tested in further trials in people infected with MERS, the researchers said.

“This is the first study to show the safety and immune effects of a potential treatment for MERS,” said John Beigel at Leidos Biomedical Research, who co-led the U.S. government-funded study. “The data from our study suggest that SAB-301 is safe, and further research into the treatment is warranted.”

The idea of using human antibodies has developed in recent years in a variety of severe and emerging diseases, including flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), MERS and Ebola.

Blood plasma harvested from people whose immune systems have successfully fought the disease contains the right antibodies and can be given to other patients to help their immune systems fight the virus.

But harvesting human plasma is not always easy or swift when a new disease emerges, so scientists turned to the idea of transchromosomic cattle as a way of manufacturing specific antibodies in larger amounts.

Transchromosomic cattle have human DNA that codes for human antibodies incorporated into their genome. To make SAB-301, they were injected with a part of the MERS virus, stimulating their immune systems to produce antibodies against it. The antibodies were then extracted from the cattle’s blood and purified.

“The process of creating antibody treatments by harvesting antibodies from human donors is slow and often small-scale,” said Beigel. “However, the cattle-produced antibodies could be created as soon as three months.”
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to come up with a plan to improve mental health care for U.S. veterans.

“They get out of the military and they had nobody to talk to, nobody to speak to. And it’s been a very sad situation,” Trump said moments before signing his executive order.

Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shuklin said 20 U.S. veterans a day commit suicide.

Under the president’s order, the three departments will come up with a plan to provide U.S. servicemen and women with 12 months of mental health benefits after they leave active duty.

This includes suicide prevention services and a 24-hour veterans’ hotline.

“We will not rest until all of America’s great veterans receive the care they’ve earned through their incredible service and sacrifice to our country,” Trump said.
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A handful of Indian cities are gearing up to launch bike-sharing systems to ease traffic congestion and deadly air pollution, as urban populations surge and vehicles clog the streets.

Bike-sharing systems in the southern city of Mysuru and the central city of Bhopal, both launched last June, have met with a tremendous response, officials say.

About half a dozen more cities, including Bengaluru, Pune and Bhubaneswar, are now drawing up similar plans, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI), a Washington D.C.-based research organization.

“Bike sharing is a viable option for Indian cities — we just need good-quality bikes, dedicated lanes and a system that is efficient,” said Chandramauli Shukla, chief executive of Bhopal Smart City Corporation.

The corporation implements the federally-funded Smart Cities program to improve services like internet connectivity and public transport in 100 cities across India.

With rising incomes and a large young population, passenger vehicle ownership in India has nearly tripled in the last decade, government data shows. Gridlock has become common and transit systems struggle to keep pace.

Vehicle emissions account for almost a third of air pollution in India, which has nearly half the world’s 20 most polluted cities, according to the World Health Organization.

Some 2.5 million people in the country die every year due to pollution.

Mysuru, close to the technology hub of Bengaluru, was the first to introduce a bike-sharing program, with the state’s chief minister riding a yellow Trin Trin bike at the launch.

Registered users can borrow any of 450 bikes from 48 docking stations for a nominal fee.

In Bhopal, users can register on their smartphones and unlock one of 500 bikes from 60 docking stations.

The city now has 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) of dedicated bike lanes, according to WRI, which provided technical expertise to the Bhopal Municipal Corporation on the bike-sharing system.

More than 25,000 people registered in the first few months, half of them women, said Amit Bhatt, director of transport at WRI India.

“In India, people look down on those who bike. So we had to show this is cool, with good-quality bikes and a mobile app to register and unlock bikes,” he said.

“But the main priority is safety, with dedicated bike lanes. That has encouraged people to give it a go,” he told Reuters.

Officials must be careful not to repeat the mistakes of China, where unchecked growth of bike-sharing firms led to piles of discarded bikes clogging sidewalks, Bhatt added.
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Failure to rein in global temperature rises could cause the marine food web to collapse, devastating the livelihoods of tens of millions of people who rely on fisheries for food and income, scientists have warned.

Warming oceans restrict vital energy flows between different species in the marine ecosystem, reducing the amount of food available for bigger animals — mostly fish — at the top of the marine food web, according to a study in the journal PLOS Biology published Tuesday.

This could have “serious implications” for fish stocks, said Ivan Nagelkerken, a professor of marine ecology at Australia’s University of Adelaide and one of the study’s authors.

Globally, about 56.5 million people were engaged in fisheries and aquaculture in 2015, according to the latest data from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In addition, almost a fifth of animal protein consumed by 3.2 billion people in 2015 comes from fish, FAO said.

The Adelaide scientists set up 12 large tanks, each holding 1,800 liters of water, in a temperature-controlled room to replicate complex marine food webs, and test the effects of ocean acidification and warming over six months.

Plant productivity increased under warmer temperatures but this was mainly due to an expansion of bacteria which fish do not eat, Nagelkerken said in a phone interview.

The findings show that the 2015 Paris agreement on curbing global warming must be met “to safeguard our oceans from collapse, loss of biodiversity and less fishery productivity.”

Under the landmark agreement, world leaders agreed to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

The United Nations, however, has warned the world is heading toward a 3-degree increase by 2100.

Recent studies have sounded alarm bells for oceans and its inhabitants as the Earth continues to experience record-breaking heat.

A Jan. 4 paper published in the journal Science said “dead zones” — where oxygen is too low to support most marine life — more than quadrupled in the past 50 years due to human activities.

Another said high ocean temperatures are harming tropical corals, which are nurseries for fish, almost five times more often than in the 1980s.
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Children who eat restaurant carry-out, or “takeaway,” meals once a week or more tend to have extra body fat and long-term risk factors for heart disease, suggests a UK study.

In the study of 9- and 10-year-olds, the kids who ate carry-out most often also consumed more calories but fewer vitamins and minerals compared with kids who rarely or never ate carry-out food, the authors report in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

“Frequent consumption of takeaway foods could potentially be increasing children’s risk of future coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes by increasing their LDL cholesterol and body fat,” lead author Angela Donin told Reuters Health in an email.

“Takeaway outlets are increasing, as is consumption with more than half of teenagers reporting eating takeaways at least twice a week,” said Donin, a researcher at St. George’s, University of London.

In adults, regular consumption of carry-out meals is associated with higher risk of obesity, coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes, but little is known about the effects it may be having on children’s health, Donin said.

“We, therefore, wanted to see how much takeaway food children were eating and if there were any effects on their health.”

The researchers analyzed data from the Child Heart and Health Study in England, which looked at potential risk factors for heart disease and diabetes in pre-teens. Participants included about 2,000 kids aged 9 and 10 years at 85 primary schools in three cities: London, Birmingham and Leicester.

The children answered questions about their usual diets, including how often they ate carry-out meals purchased from restaurants. Foods purchased at convenience stores or grocery stores were not included in the category. Photos of common foods were provided to help the kids recall and estimate portion sizes.

About one quarter of the children said they never or rarely ate carry-out meals and nearly half said they ate carry-out less than once per week. Just over one quarter said they ate these kinds of meals at least once per week.

Boys were more frequent consumers of carry-out meals than girls, as were children from less affluent backgrounds.

The study team used the kids’ dietary responses to calculate calorie counts and nutrient intake. Among regular consumers of carry-out meals, the foods eaten were higher-calorie and higher-fat, while protein and starch intake was lower and intake of vitamin C, iron, calcium and folate was also lower compared with kids who didn’t eat these types of meals.

Researchers also measured the children’s height, weight, waist circumference, skinfold thickness and body-fat composition. In addition, they measured blood pressure and took blood samples for cholesterol levels.

There were no differences in blood pressure or how well the kids’ bodies used insulin based on who regularly ate carry-out meals. But skinfold thickness, body fat composition and blood fats like LDL (bad) cholesterol all tended to be higher in regular consumers of carry-out meals.

“Children who ate more takeaway meals had higher total and LDL cholesterol (both important risk factors for coronary heart disease) and body fat.,” Donin said.

“Most people who order takeout usually purchase fast food, which is high in sodium, fat, and calories,” noted Sandra Arevalo, who wasn’t involved in the study.

”Fast-food also has low nutritional value, which means it is low in vitamins, minerals, fiber and sometimes protein,” said Arevalo, a registered dietician who directs Nutrition Services and Community Outreach at Community Pediatrics, a program of Montefiore and The Children’s Health Fund, in New York. “If you eat these meals over a long period of time you can start seeing the health consequences associated with it.”

Arevalo recommends parents who need to bring home a meal, call the restaurant ahead of time to order salads, vegetables, brown rice, grilled meats and to provide a healthier meal for their children.

“The price might be a deterrent but you can cut portions in half and get two meals out of one large one,” she said by email. Another idea is to learn to prepare quick and healthy meals.

“For example, hummus, carrots, and crackers make a great lunch, as well as a tuna or turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes. Eggs are an excellent source of protein, you can scramble an egg with spinach, onions, and tomatoes and have it with a toast,” she said.
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