Eleven years since the end of the civil war in Uganda, which pitted Lord’s Resistance Army rebels against the government, tens of thousands of people still struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mental health practitioners estimate that seven in 10 people in Northern Uganda were traumatically affected by the war.

At the age of 12, Francis Okello Oloya was blinded by a bomb blast as he dug in the family garden. In a boarding school for the blind, Okello found it difficult to ask people for help, especially in getting to the toilet at night. Now a 29-year-old community psychologist, that childhood experience led to the birth of a project involving what he calls comfort dogs.

“I had to navigate my way from the sleeping quarter to latrine and that was not easy,” he said. “And these dogs came to know that I needed help. And they began the practice of helping me from the sleeping quarters to the latrine. Being a person of visual impairment, you normally feel that you are going to burden people a lot.”

Dogs are mainly used for hunting in Uganda, with a few people warming up to the idea of owning dogs at home, mostly for security. But Okello began collecting street dogs, which were handed over to guardians with training in dog handling.

In 2015, Okello started The Comfort Dog Project to help people in Gulu town, especially those who were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.

Philda Akum, 35, is one of the 29 beneficiaries of the project. In 1997, she and her four brothers were abducted by the LRA and taken to Sudan.

One of her brothers tried to escape.

That brother was captured and killed, Akum says. Another brother was selected to go to the battlefront; he was shot dead. Two days later, her youngest brother contracted cholera and died. The horrors have left her traumatized, she says. She returned home and joined group therapy, which is how she got her dog, Lok Oroma.

Lucy Adok, 39, spent five years fighting in the bush.

“I was in combat and saw many people being killed,” she said. “I was destroyed. When I returned home, I experienced flashbacks and any loud sound sounded like a bullet. When I learned that I could get a dog as a friend, I took on Sadiq.

“I now spend a lot of time with Sadiq. I have dreams of our games during the day and slowly Sadiq has replaced the bad memories from the war.”

The dogs find a home, and the guardians find life companions.
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A first-of-its kind genetic treatment for blindness will cost $850,000, less than the $1 million price tag that had been expected, but it’s still among the most expensive genetic therapies in the world.

Spark Therapeutics says it decided on the lower price tag for Luxturna (Lux-turn-a) after hearing from health insurers about their ability to cover the injectable treatment.

Consternation over skyrocketing drug prices, especially in the U.S., has led to intense scrutiny from patients, Congress, insurers and hospitals.

Luxturna, approved last month, is the nation’s first gene therapy for an inherited disease. It can improve the vision of those with a rare form of blindness that affects just a few thousand people in the U.S.
…

Malawi is battling a cholera outbreak that began at the start of the rainy season in November. The disease has killed four people, and more than 150 others are hospitalized.

The disease — an acute diarrheal infection caused by consuming contaminated food or water — affects children and adults, and can kill within hours if left untreated.

The hardest-hit districts are Nkhatabay and Karonga, on the shores of Lake Malawi.

“As of today, we have 137 cases which we have registered from Karonga only,” said Joshua Malango, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health. “And unlike Karonga, in Nkhatabay we have 16 cases as of today, with no deaths. While in Karonga we had three deaths.” 

The Kasungu and Dowa districts have registered one case each, while on Tuesday, medical workers confirmed two cases in the capital, Lilongwe.

The outbreak is believed to have been triggered by poor hygiene among residents, especially in Karonga.

According to Karonga-based journalist Special Absalom, more than 70 percent of people there use untreated water. 

“People who are along the lakeshore area use water directly from the lake, while others who are close to the rivers, they are using water from the rivers and some are even using wells,” Absalom said.

In neighboring Zambia, the disease has killed about 40 people in the capital, Lusaka, and affected more than 1,500 others since September.

However, Malawians bordering Zambia should not panic over the Lusaka outbreak, Malango says.

“We are not that close with Lusaka. But we are not taking it lightly. We are putting measures to ensure that people traveling in and out of the country, they must have proper surveillance, we have checked them to ensure that Malawians are safe,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Malawi’s government has embarked on a nationwide campaign to remind people to wash their hands with soap, especially after using the toilet and before eating any food.

More importantly, Malango says, the government is distributing chlorine and other chemicals to treat drinking water.

Malawi suffered its worst cholera outbreak in 2009, when 82 people died and more than 3,000 people were infected across the country.
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Gun violence is a reality of American life and across the country, more than a dozen people were shot to death on the first day of 2018. The shootings happen everywhere – in homes, shopping centers, on the street, and in schools. There were nine school shootings in the United States in 2017, leaving 15 people dead 18 others wounded. Now, a new simulation program is designed to help keep teachers and students safe from a shooter. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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After more than a decade of steady increases in the rate of children diagnosed with autism in the United States, the rate has plateaued in the past three years, researchers said Tuesday.

The findings were based on a nationwide study in which more than 30,000 parents reported whether their children had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

“The estimated ASD prevalence was 2.41 percent among US children and adolescents in 2014-2016, with no statistically significant increase over the three years,” said the research letter by experts at the University of Iowa, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The first observation of a plateau was made by a separate group in 2012, when the rate flattened out to 1.46 percent, according to the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network.

Federal health authorities say that means about one in 68 children in the United States have the neurodevelopmental disability, whose causes remain poorly understood.

The ADDM had documented a “continuous increase from 0.67 percent in 2000 to 1.47 percent in 2010.”

The 2.4 percent rate described in the JAMA report translates to one in 47 children, but researchers cautioned that the discrepancy may be explained by “differences in study design and participant characteristics.”

The JAMA report, based on the annual National Health Interview Survey, did not delve into “underlying causes for the findings and cannot make conclusions about their medical significance.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also noted a plateau in the autism rate in 2016, but said it was “too soon to know whether ASD prevalence in the United States might be starting to stabilize.”
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The record-shattering cold gripping most of the United States has been blamed for at least nine deaths in recent weeks and forecasters say the worst is yet to come. 

The National Weather Service issued wind chill advisories and freeze warnings Tuesday for 40 U.S. states.

“Arctic air mass will bring a prolonged period of much-below-normal temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills to the central and eastern U.S. over the next week,” NWS tweeted.

Hard freeze warnings remain in effect through Wednesday in typically balmy states, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Temperatures fell to -13 Celsius (8.6 Fahrenheit) near Cullman, Alabama, and -7 Celsius (19.4 Fahrenheit) in Mobile, Alabama.

City officials opened warming shelters across the South as cold temperatures brought rare snow flurries as far south as Austin, Texas. In Savannah, Georgia, where the average high temperature in January is 16 Celsius (61 Fahrenheit),  the temperature hovered at -1 Celsius (30.2 Fahrenheit) at noon Tuesday.

Hospitals across the U.S. are seeing a surge in emergency room visits for hypothermia and other ailments as temperatures plunge well below freezing.

The central U.S. has borne the brunt of the frigid temperatures since the snap began around Christmas. Omaha, Nebraska, broke a record dating back more than 130 years as teeth chattered in temperatures of -29C (-20 Fahrenheit). While Aberdeen, South Dakota, saw the mercury fall to -36C (32.8 Fahrenheit), breaking a record set in 1919.

Arctic temperatures also caused problems on waterways, for both waterfowl and boats. Firefighters in Richmond, Virginia, freed a swan that was stuck for hours Monday in the middle of a frozen pond.

In New York, transportation officials suspended the Newburgh-Beacon commuter ferry service on Tuesday because of icy conditions on the Hudson River. In Florida, several water parks in Orlando are closed because of the extreme temperatures, CNN reported. 

Tourists visiting the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara Falls snapped photos of flowing water that had turned to icicles.  

The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy reported frozen sharks were washing on beaches south of Boston

Meanwhile, forecasters are tracking a storm that could bring snow and ice to the East Coast later this week. The private AccuWeather forecaster said the cold snap could combine with a storm brewing off the Bahamas to bring snow and high winds to much of the Eastern Seaboard as it heads north on Wednesday and Thursday.
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Every day after work, Ariana Hawk drives to a water distribution center in Flint, Michigan, where the city provides free bottled water to its residents.

Hawk’s 4-year-old son, Sincere Smith, became the poster child for Flint’s water crisis when his face, pocked by lead-poisoning scars, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 2016.

His mother says she still only uses bottled water when she bathes her five children and prepares food. She continues this practice even though the state of Michigan has declared the water is safe to drink, but only if filtered because not all of the lead-affected pipes have been replaced.

“Governor Snyder say that we need to use that filter because our water is safe,” Hawk says. “Our water is not safe.”

Two years after a state of emergency was declared because of lead-poisoned water, many in Flint, like Hawk, still don’t believe the water is safe.

“Some people do not trust regardless of what scientific data shows,” says Sheryl Thompson of the Flint Department of Health and Human Services.

“I even had my pipes redone,” says Flint resident Clades Beal, “but the water is still looking the same.”

Pregnant women and people younger than 21 who drank Flint water are now eligible for special health care coverage paid for by the government. So far, there is no way to reverse the effects of lead poisoning.

“In children, we are worried about decreased IQ points, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as well as other cognitive impairment,” says Nathaniel DeNicola, MD of George Washington University. “For children, there is not really a way to reverse those effects, but with proper diet, nutrition, counseling, decrease of the exposures, you can help to not make that adverse effects as impactful.”

And while Flint residents continue to receive help, including bags of food, the government works on replacing lead pipes, which was made possible by a settlement from a $97 million lawsuit brought the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Right now we are in the implementation of the settlement, of the agreement,” says Dimple Chaudhary of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We were able to get this great agreement. Again recognizing that there is still so much to do in Flint but this piece of it is a good step forward.”

“The state who in my opinion is liable and really should step up so we can get this mass construction,” says Eric Mays, a Flint City councilman. “It should be a national infrastructure project.”

Meanwhile, Flint residents continue their daily battle for clean water.

“That is not fair to the citizens,” Hawk says. “That is not fair to these kids.”
…

For people who are in the workforce already, the added burden of unpaid caregiving for a family member or loved one may lead to insomnia and other sleep issues, according to a large study from Sweden.

Researchers found that the likelihood of sleep problems rose with the number of hours spent in unpaid caregiving, and when caregiving stopped, sleep disturbances were reduced.

“Informal caregiving is common, and the need for carers is expected to grow due to population aging and cuts to social care services in various countries,” said lead study author Lawrence Sacco of the Institute of Gerontology at King’s College London in the UK.

Caregivers often face conflicting schedules and feel a sense of obligation, leaving some with little or no choice about when and how to help loved ones, he noted.

“Sleeping problems are common and deserve attention because people with insomnia are more likely to suffer from other physical illnesses,” Sacco told Reuters Health by email. “Sleep disturbance and tiredness are also symptoms of depression and other mood disorders.”

Sacco and his colleagues at the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University analyzed responses from 12,200 participants in the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health, a questionnaire mailed every two years to employed residents of Sweden aged 16 to 64. The researchers focused on surveys in 2010 through 2016.

They defined informal caregivers as those who, without pay, help or care for an elderly, ill or disabled relative other than a child or grandchild. Participants were asked how many hours they typically spend on this caregiving each week.

They were also asked how often in the prior three months they had difficulties falling asleep, repeated awakenings, premature awakenings or restless sleep.

About 85 percent of the survey participants were not caregivers, while 12 percent spent 1 to 5 hours providing care each week and 2 percent spent anywhere from 6 to 15 hours caregiving.

After adjusting for social and economic factors, as well as the caregiver’s own health status, the researchers found that sleep problems were more common among caregivers overall, and most common among those who provided more than five hours a week.

When caregiving ceased from one survey year to the following one, researchers saw a drop in reported sleep troubles.

Caregivers were more likely to be female and older, to have less education, to work less than 20 paid hours per week and to report physical pain, chronic illness, poor health and depression.

“This means that increases in informal caregiving that are expected in the years ahead as a result of population aging may hit those who are already struggling the hardest,” Sacco said.

The study team saw no difference in sleep problems between men who provided no care versus those who provided up to five hours of caregiving, but women reported sleep problems at all levels of caregiving. That could be related to the different tasks that men and women perform as caregivers, the authors write in the journal Sleep.

Future studies should look at working people in various countries, Sacco added, since Sweden uses a welfare model aimed at minimizing conflict between paid work and caregiving commitments.

“This is a wake-up call to governments and employers that they should be supporting informal caregivers better,” he said.

In addition, future research should examine what types and aspects of caregiving affect sleep the most, said Dr. Barry Oken of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Caregiving at home for someone with dementia or chronic pain may cause more problems with the care recipient’s sleep and perhaps then the caregiver’s sleep,” he told Reuters Health by email.

Oken said he is interested in finding ways to help caregivers improve their sleep. In recent studies, he and colleagues have found that mind-body practices, such as mindfulness meditation, can improve mental health in caregivers and stressed older adults.

“Be aware that sleeping may be impacted by caregiving and explore with health providers what you can do to minimize it,” he said. “What society can do to help minimize this is alluded to here but is a bigger question.”

 
…

People who drink hot tea daily may be less likely than others to develop glaucoma symptoms, U.S. researchers say.

Compared to coffee, soft drink and iced tea drinkers, study participants who consumed a cup or more of hot caffeinated tea daily had 74 percent lower odds of having glaucoma, the study authors report in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

“Glaucoma can lead to blindness, and it would be great if it could be prevented because there is no cure,” said lead author Dr. Anne Coleman of the University of California, Los Angeles.

“The best way to prevent it is to get your eyes checked,” Coleman told Reuters Health in a telephone interview. “But we are also interested in lifestyle habits and what we can do to make a difference.”

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, affecting an estimated 58 million people. That includes more than three million Americans, only half of whom are aware they have the disease, according to the Glaucoma Research Foundation.

Coffee, or caffeine in general have previously been linked to increased glaucoma risk, although recent studies don’t agree, Coleman and her colleagues write.

To evaluate the relationship between specific caffeinated drinks and glaucoma, Coleman and colleagues analyzed data on a sample of more than 10,000 people in the U.S. who were representative of the entire population.

Participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey during 2005-2006 answered questions about their diets and lifestyles, had medical exams and blood tests and also underwent eye examinations.

About 1,700 participants were over age 40, had no other known eye diseases and had full eye examination results from the survey. In this group, Coleman’s team found that just over 5 percent, 82 people, had glaucoma.

Almost half of participants reported drinking coffee often, but less than 10 percent drank hot tea daily. The research team found no associations between coffee, iced tea, decaffeinated tea or soft drink consumption and the likelihood of having glaucoma.

“Tea drinkers should keep drinking and don’t need to stop because of a fear of glaucoma,” Coleman said. “This makes sense, but we’ll see if it holds up in future studies.”

Future studies should look at the habits, activities and nutrition that affect lifestyle and glaucoma risks, said Idan Hecht of Tel-Aviv University in Israel, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“In the past few years, there has been a tremendous increase in interest, and subsequently research, into the ways lifestyle changes can influence diseases,” Hecht told Reuters Health by email.

Recent research indicates that vitamins C, E and zinc can help vision. Other studies indicate that antioxidants in tea could have similar effects, he noted.

“Patients can and should be involved and take an active role in the management of their ailments,” Hecht said. “Exercising, eating healthy and trying novel ways to improve your health is something you should definitely explore and bring up with your physician.”

Environmental factors could play a role in glaucoma risk as well, said Dr. Ahmad Aref at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“As our population grows older, we need to think about the other factors that could help, particularly when it comes to the health benefits of physical activity,” he told Reuters Health by phone.

Overall, both medical and non-medical approaches are key to treating the disease in the future, Aref added.

“It’s a tough disease because we don’t have a way to bring vision back once it’s lost,” he said. “All we can do is prevent it from getting worse, and we want to help patients do that.”
…

Israeli archaeologists unveiled on Monday a 2,700-year-old clay seal impression which they said belonged to a biblical governor of Jerusalem.

The artifact, inscribed in an ancient Hebrew script as “belonging to the governor of the city”, was likely attached to a shipment or sent as a souvenir on behalf of the governor, the most prominent local position held in Jerusalem at the time, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.

The impression, the size of a small coin, depicts two standing men, facing each other in a mirror-like manner and wearing striped garments reaching down to their knees. It was unearthed near the plaza of Judaism’s Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.

“It supports the Biblical rendering of the existence of a governor of the city in Jerusalem 2,700 years ago,” an Antiquities Authority statement quoted excavator Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah as saying.

Governors of Jerusalem, appointed by the king, are mentioned twice in the Bible, in 2 Kings, which refers to Joshua holding the position, and in 2 Chronicles, which mentions Masseiah in the post during the reign of Josiah.

The Antiquities Authority’s announcement came several weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a decision that overturned a decades-old policy on the status of the city and stirred Palestinian protests and international concern.
…

Two years after a state of emergency was declared in Flint, Michigan because of lead-poisoned water, residents have been assured their water is now safe. But residents are wary even though these assurances come from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan visited Flint and spoke to residents who face a battle for clean water every day.
…

The Trump administration has fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, also known as PACHA.

Council members received a letter this week saying that their appointments to the panel were terminated, “effective immediately,” according to a report in The Washington Post.

PACHA was established in 1995, during the Clinton administration, to advise the White House on HIV strategies and policies.

Six of the members of the council, upset by White House actions on health policy, resigned in June. Scott Schoettes, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, a LGBT rights organization, was one of them.

He wrote in Newsweek at the time that U.S. President Donald Trump “simply does not care” about people living with HIV. Schoettes said the Trump administration “pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease.”

He told The Washington Post Friday, “The tipping point for me was the president’s approach to the Affordable Care Act,” which he said “is of great importance for people living with HIV like myself.”

Schoettes said in Newsweek that much of the public is unaware that “only about 40 percent of people living with HIV in the United States are able to access the life-saving medications that have been available for more than 20 years. It is not acceptable for the U.S. president to be unaware of these realities, to setup a government that deprioritizes fighting the epidemic and its causes or to implement policies and support legislation that will reverse the gains made in recent years.”

B. Kaye Hayes, PACHA’s executive director, said in a statement that the dismissals were part of the White House’s effort to “bring in new voices.”

Dr. David Kilmnick, CEO of the New York LGBT Network, saw the move differently. The firing of the council members “is another outlandish and despicable move by the Trump administration in his year-long effort to erase the LGBT community and the issues that disproportionately affect us,” he said in a statement Friday.

“From ending protections against bullying for trans youth in our schools to his attempt to ban the transgender community from the military to no mention of Gay Pride month during June to leaving out the LGBT community on World AIDS Day to banning words such as transgender, diversity and other, this president has been nothing but a complete train wreck that is a danger to the safety and lives of all Americans,” Kilmnick continued.

A notice on the Federal Register says the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking nominations for new council members. Nominations must be submitted by Tuesday.
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Russia has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N2 bird flu on a farm in the central region of Kostromskaya Oblast that led to the deaths of more than 660,000 birds, the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Friday.

The virus killed more than 44,000 birds in an outbreak first detected on December 17, the OIE said, citing a report from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture.

The rest of the 663,500 birds on the farm were slaughtered, it said in the report. It did not specify the type of birds that were infected.

It is the first outbreak of the H5N2 strain in Russia this year, but the country has been facing regular outbreaks of H5N8 since early December last year, with the last one reported to the OIE detected late November.

Bird flu has led to the deaths or culling of more than 2.6 million birds on farms between December last year and November this year, a report posted on the OIE website showed.

Neither the H5N2 or H5N8 strains has been found in humans.

The virulence of highly pathogenic bird flu viruses has prompted countries to bar poultry imports from infected countries in earlier outbreaks.
…

Beijing may have turned a corner in its battle against the city’s notorious smog, according to Reuters calculations, and environmental consultants say the Chinese government deserves much of the credit for introducing tough anti-pollution measures.

The Chinese capital is set to record its biggest improvement in air quality in at least nine years, with a nearly 20 percent change for the better this year, based on average concentration levels of hazardous breathable particles known as PM2.5.

The dramatic change, which has occurred across North China, is partly because of favorable weather conditions in the past three months but it also shows that the government’s strong-arm tactics have had an impact.

The Reuters’ estimates show that average levels of the pollutants in the capital have fallen by about 35 percent from 2012 numbers, with nearly half the improvement this year.

“The improvement in air quality is due both to long-term efforts by the government and short-term efforts this winter,” said Anders Hove, a Beijing-based energy consultant. “After 2013, the air in summers got much cleaner, but winter had not shown much improvement. This year is the first winter improvement we’ve seen during this war on pollution.”

Government officials this week signaled they were confident they were starting to get on top of the problem.

“The autumn and winter period is the most challenging part of the air pollution campaign. However, with the intensive efforts all departments have made, we believe the challenge is being successfully overcome,” Liu Youbin, spokesman for the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told reporters Thursday.

Still a long way to go

But environmental experts say that while they are optimistic, it may be too early to celebrate.

“The turning point is here but we cannot rule out the possibility we can turn back,” said Ranping Song, developing country climate action manager for the World Resources Institute. “We need to be cautious about challenges and not relax now that there have been improvements. There are lots of issues to be solved.”

And while China has scored an initial victory over smog, it still has to reverse public opinion outside China on its air quality.

New York-based travel guidebook publisher Fodor’s advised tourists in mid-November in its “No List” for 2018 to shun Beijing until the city’s anti-pollution campaign had reduced the “overwhelming smog.” Fodor’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Beijing there is certainly plenty of room for further progress as average air quality is still significantly worse than the World Health Organization’s recommendations.

And the region still sees bouts of heavy smog. On Friday afternoon, the U.S. embassy’s website said Beijing’s air was “very unhealthy” and the city issued a pollution alert Thursday.

Embassy monitoring

The Reuters calculations showing the improvement were based on average hourly readings of PM2.5 concentrations at the United States Embassy in Beijing from April 8, 2008 to Dec. 28, 2017.

The data was compiled from figures from the U.S. embassy’s air monitoring website, as well as data provided by AirVisual, a Beijing company that analyses air quality data.

The data from the embassy, though not fully verified or validated, is the only set available for PM2.5 levels in the capital over that time period. AirVisual provided the hour-by-hour air pollution data from the embassy for recent months.

PM2.5 levels are the most closely monitored because they account for the majority of air pollutants in China and can be harmful to the body when breathed.

Beijing’s air was actually worse in the first nine months of this year than in the same period last year, but PM2.5 concentrations from October to Dec. 28 this year were nearly 60 percent lower than last year, the Reuters figures show.

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Huang Wei said that less than half of the improvement is due to favorable weather — particularly stronger northerly winds and low humidity — with the government’s policies behind most of the change.

The Chinese government launched a winter smog “battleplan” in October for 28 northern cities that called for strict rules on emissions during the winter heating months when pollution typically worsens.

The authorities also sought to make sure that Beijing wasn’t too polluted during October’s Communist Party congress, which is only held once every five years, at which Xi Jinping consolidated his power as the nation’s leader. Some of the more-polluting businesses in and around the capital were told to shut down for a period before and during the gathering.

The plan for the winter months included switching millions of households and some industrial users to natural gas from coal for their heating and some other needs. There were also mandated cuts in steel production by up to 50 percent in some of the areas surrounding the city.

Contrast with India

Beijing’s improving air quality stands in stark contrast to India’s capital New Delhi, where pollution has steadily become worse over the past few years, and is now well above Beijing’s.

China’s improvement, and deterioration in some other countries, means China is now not among the 10 worst countries for pollution in the world anymore, according to at least one measure.

“At the national level, India tops the index rankings, followed by Bangladesh and Thailand,” said Richard Hewston, global head of environment and climate change at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which measures 198 countries for air quality.

Beijing’s clean-air campaign hasn’t been without its challenges.

The government this year botched the switch from coal to natural gas, leading to recent widespread shortages of gas, soaring liquefied natural gas prices, leaving some residents freezing in their homes and some factories shuttered.

There is also a wider economic cost. Growth in industrial output, especially in northern China, has slowed because of the pollution crackdown, economists say, and the prices of some key commodities, from LNG to copper, have risen.

Some of those who had been benefiting from the poor air quality by selling air filtration products have been taking a hit.

“Overall demand in China is down. … Some companies have 100 million yuan [$15.35 million] in unsold inventory this year as a result of the improved air quality,” said Liam Bates, CEO of Beijing-based Kaiterra, which makes air filters and air quality monitoring products.

“We haven’t seen huge impact because we’re expanding heavily overseas. While the air in China is getting better, the air in India is much, much worse and we just opened our India office,” he said.
…

Russia’s latest space launch failures have prompted authorities to take a closer look into the nation’s struggling space industry, the Kremlin said Thursday.

A Russian weather satellite and nearly 20 micro-satellites from other nations were lost following a failed launch from Russia’s new cosmodrome in the Far East on November 28. And in another blow to the Russian space industry, communications with a Russian-built communications satellite for Angola, the African nation’s first space vehicle, were lost following its launch on Tuesday.

Asked about the failures, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Thursday that authorities warrant a thorough analysis of the situation in the space industry.

Amid the failures, Russian officials have engaged in a round of finger-pointing.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees Russia’s military industrial complex and space industries, said in a television interview Wednesday that the November 28 launch from the new Vostochny launch pad in Russia’s Far East failed because the rocket had been programmed to blastoff from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan instead of Vostochny. He accused the Russian space agency Roscosmos of “systemic management mistakes.”

Roscosmos fired back Thursday, dismissing Rogozin’s claim of the flawed programming. It did acknowledge some shortcomings that led to the launch failure and said a number of officials were reprimanded.

Rogozin quickly riposted on Facebook, charging that Roscosmos was “trying to prove that failures occur not because of mistakes in management but just due to some `circumstances.”‘

The cause of the failure of the Angolan satellite hasn’t been determined yet. Communications with the satellite, which was built by the Russian RKK Energia company, a leading spacecraft manufacturer, were lost after it entered a designated orbit.

Russia has continued to rely on Soviet-designed booster rockets to launching commercial satellites, as well as crews and cargo to the International Space Station. A trio of astronauts from Russia, Japan and the United States arrived at the space outpost last week following their launch from Baikonur.

While Russian rockets have established a stellar reputation for their reliability, a string of failed launches in recent years has called into question Russia’s ability to maintain the same high standards for manufacturing space equipment.

Glitches found in Russia’s Proton and Soyuz rockets in 2016 were traced to manufacturing flaws at the plant in Voronezh.Roscosmos sent more than 70 rocket engines back to production lines to replace faulty components, a move that resulted in a yearlong break in Proton launches.

The suspension badly dented the nation’s niche in the global market for commercial satellite launches. Last year, Russia for the first time fell behind both the U.S. and China in the number of launches.

While Russia plans to continue to use Baikonur for most of its space launches, it has poured billions of dollars in to build the new Vostochny launch pad. A launch pad for Soyuz finally opened in 2016, but another one for the heavier Angara rockets is only set to be completed in late 2021 and its future remains unclear, drawing questions about the feasibility of the expensive project.

Work at Vostochny also has been dogged by scandals involving protests by unpaid workers and the arrests of construction officials accused of embezzlement.

Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.
…

Rehabilitation centers give critically wounded soldiers a second chance at life. Paraplegics and quadriplegics spend their days together in an environment built to aid them in self-reliance. Arash Arabasadi reports on one such facility.
…

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Wednesday that the failed launch of a 2.6 billion-ruble ($44.95 million) satellite last month was due to an embarrassing programming error.

Russian space agency Roscosmos said last month that it had lost contact with the newly launched weather satellite — the Meteor-M — after it blasted off from Russia’s new Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East.

Eighteen smaller satellites belonging to scientific, research and commercial companies from Russia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Japan, Canada and Germany were on board the same rocket.

Speaking to Rossiya 24 state TV channel, Rogozin said the failure had been caused by human error. 

The rocket carrying the satellites had been programmed with the wrong coordinates, he said, saying it had been given bearings for takeoff from a different cosmodrome — Baikonur — which Moscow leases from Kazakhstan.

“The rocket was really programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur,” said Rogozin. “They didn’t get the coordinates right.”

The Vostochny spaceport, laid out in the thick taiga forest of the Amur region, is the first civilian rocket launch site in Russia.

In April last year, after delays and massive costs overruns, Russia launched its first rocket from Vostochny, a day after a technical glitch forced an embarrassing postponement of the event in the presence of President Vladimir Putin.
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When Cyclone Winston pummeled through Fiji last year, the largest storm recorded in the southern hemisphere, Sofia Talei’s taro and cassava crops were destroyed, leaving her livelihood as a farmer uncertain.

“I was so desperate. All the effort we put into it was destroyed after a few hours,” Talei, 33, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But after the storm came an unexpected surprise: a wealth of financial literacy, business, and agricultural training, which led to Talei this year becoming the first female president of the main fruit and vegetable market in the Fijian capital Suva.

Women’s rights campaigners say disasters can present an opportunity for countries to not only rebuild infrastructure, but also tackle gender inequality, such as helping more women get into work and finding ways to address gender violence.

“Through the leadership training, it’s empowering us women to stand up and fight for women’s rights,” said Talei, a mother of three, standing proudly by her market stall, where she now sells coconuts and fast-growing crops like chilies, eggplants and cabbage which are better suited to unpredictable climates.

For stubborn gender stereotypes in small Pacific islands like Fiji mean women have fewer rights, such as access to services like banking, formal jobs, or even a chance to work, said Aleta Miller from U.N. Women in Fiji, which provides training for market stall vendors like Talei.

Such gender inequality has also led to high rates of violence against women. Two in every three women in the Pacific will experience violence — twice the global average — according to U.N. Women.

“What drives this violence? Fundamentally, it’s harmful social norms: deeply-held attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviors within society about the role of men and women,” said Miller, on the sidelines of a conference run by civil rights group CIVICUS in Suva earlier this month.

“Women hold the same values, in some cases. A woman may agree with a man that he has the right to keep her in the house and to make her report to him where ever she goes,” she said.

‘Change what’s wrong’

When disaster strikes — which is becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change — women’s vulnerabilities are even more exposed, said researcher Virginie Le Masson from London-based think tank Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

Some women and girls are forced to sell sex to survive, and some are raped due to the lack of shelter after disasters such as cyclones, earthquakes or floods.

“It’s a combination of existing inequality and violence against women and girls, and the failure of protective systems after a disaster,” said Le Masson. “But climate change is not the reason why women have been discriminated against for the last centuries.”

Le Masson said disasters can present an opportunity for women.

“This is an opportunity to change what is wrong. [After a disaster] we need everyone in the community to contribute to rebuild the economy and that’s an opportunity for women to take part,” she said.

Only 40 percent of Fijian women have formal work, compared to 80 percent of men, according to the International Women’s Development Agency.

U.N. Women’s Miller said providing skills training for women before and after a disaster is one way to help challenge ingrained gender stereotypes.

“It’s more than money and profit, it’s also about her agency [and] having more of a voice,” said Miller.

“We have many women telling us, ‘I never saw myself as a business woman. This is who I am and this is my future,'” she said.
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The environmental group Sea Shepherd said fishermen fired 25 shots at one of its night-vision drones in Mexico’s Gulf of California, bringing it down.

Various drones have been employed to patrol the Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez, to combat illegal fishing and save the critically endangered vaquita marina, the world’s smallest porpoise.

Poachers often go out at night to set nets for totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is prized in China. But vaquitas often get caught in totoaba nets, causing the population to plunge to less than 30.

Sea Shepherd has been the target of demonstrations by fishermen in the past, but said the Christmas Eve shooting represented “a new level of violence.”

The group said Tuesday that its drone had located four small boats illegally fishing for totoaba.

Men on three of the boats were observed firing at the device until its camera shut off.

The drone was then listed as “disconnected,” indicating it went down.

In the past, fishermen have thrown rocks and bricks at drones, staged demonstrations demanding that Sea Shepherd boats be expelled, burned vehicles and patrol boats, and beat inspectors from the office of environmental protection, but this is the first time they fired guns.

In other parts of the world, Sea Shepherd vessels have rammed into whaling ships to deter illegal activities.

But in the Gulf, the group has peacefully patrolled the waters, looking for vaquitas dead or alive and gill nets, which it removes.

The patrol effort has been welcomed by the Mexican government, which has had a difficult time enforcing a ban on gill net fishing because fishermen use fast boats, leading vessels on hours-long chases.

Sometimes, pickup trucks drop boat trailers onto beaches and haul off small fishing crafts before authorities arrive.
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There’s a good chance that 2017 will go down in the history of medicine as a year when genetic engineering finally started moving from research labs to clinics. Several successful stories coming from different parts of the world promise that hereditary diseases and cancers may soon be conquered. VOA’s George Putic looks back at a few of these cases.
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Starfish are making a comeback on the U.S. West Coast, four years after a mysterious syndrome killed millions of them.

From 2013 to 2014, Sea Star Wasting Syndrome hit sea stars from British Columbia to Mexico. The starfish would develop lesions and then disintegrate, their arms turning into blobs of goo.

The cause is unclear but researchers say it may be a virus.

Now, starfish are rebounding. The Orange County Register says sea stars are being spotted in Southern California tide pools and elsewhere.

Kaitlin Magliano of the Crystal Cove Conservancy says four adult starfish were recently spotted at Newport Beach. She calls them a treasure and says it’s good to see the stars surviving and thriving.
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Eight Eastern U.S. states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency, demanding that it order tougher controls on some Midwestern states over air pollution blowing eastward.

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is leading the lawsuit, saying the Trump administration had failed to impose congressionally mandated anti-pollution standards on parts of the Midwest. 

“Millions of New Yorkers are breathing unhealthy air as smog pollution continues to pour in from other states,” Schneiderman said.

The other that are part of the lawsuit are Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. They want the courts to overturn the EPA’s decision to exclude nine mostly Midwestern states from what is called the Ozone Transport Region.

States within the region, established under the Clean Air Act, are required to control emissions from coal plants and other sources.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt declined to add those states to the region by an October deadline.

The EPA said it could not comment on outstanding legal matters. 
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Earle Naval Weapons Station, where the Navy loads some of America’s most sophisticated weapons onto warships, suffered $50 million worth of damage in Superstorm Sandy. Now the naval pier is fortifying itself with some decidedly low-tech protection: oysters.

The facility has allowed an environmental group to plant nearly a mile of oyster reefs about a quarter-mile off its shoreline to serve as a natural buffer to storm-driven wave damage.

Other military bases are enlisting the help of oysters, too. In June, environmental groups and airmen established a reef in the waters of Elgin Air Force Base Reservation in Florida, and more are planned nearby. Oysters also help protect Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

Three oyster reefs protect the USS Laffey museum in South Carolina. And military installations in Alabama and North Carolina have dispatched their enlisted personnel to help build oyster reefs in off-base coastal sites.

They are among hundreds of places around the U.S. and the world where oyster reefs are being planted primarily as storm-protection measures. And a bill just introduced in Congress would give coastal communities $100 million over the next five years to create “living shorelines” that include oyster reefs.

“Having a hardened structure like that oyster reef will absorb some of that wave energy,” said Earle spokesman Bill Addison. “All the pipes and cables that are on the pier now, all of that was washed away and had to be rebuilt. And there was a lot of flooding that came into the base. Will this protect us against all of that? No, but it will do a significant amount of good to protect the base and the complex and our surrounding communities.”

The NY/NJ Baykeeper group has been experimenting with oysters at the Navy pier since 2011, originally as a way to see if the shellfish, through their natural filtering ability, might help improve water quality in the murky Raritan Bay. (They did somewhat.)

In summer 2016, the group planted the oyster reef primarily as a storm protection measure — a trend that has taken hold around the world within the past decade or so, according to Bryan DeAngelis, a program coordinator for The Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island. Every coastal state in America is using oyster reefs as either a combination storm-protection or a water improvement project, or both.

In addition to cleaning the water, the oyster reefs help blunt the force of incoming waves.

“They are nice speed bumps,” said Meredith Comi, an official with the Baykeeper group.

Environmentalists say “living shorelines” including oyster colonies are far preferable to, and cheaper than, armoring the coast with steel seas walls or wooden bulkheads that invariably accelerate erosion of the sand in front of such manmade structures.

“Waves are affected by the roughness of the bottom,” said Boze Hancock, a marine restoration scientist with The Nature Conservancy who has studied and participated in oyster projects around the world. “Picture a wave trying to roll over a huge sponge, compared to one rolling over an asphalt parking lot. The `sponge,’ or rough, uneven oyster reef, sucks the energy out of the wave as it rolls toward the shore.”

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, recently introduced The Living Shorelines Act, which would make coastal communities eligible for $100 million over five years in federal grants for oyster reefs and wetlands plants. Its prospects remain uncertain in the Republican-controlled Congress.

In most spots, the oysters are designed not to be harvested and eaten. But in other places, including New Jersey, the oysters have been planted in polluted waterways where shellfish harvesting is prohibited, leading to concerns about poachers stealing them and sickening customers.

Such a dispute forced Baykeeper to rip out an oyster reef it planted a few miles from the Navy pier and relocate the shellfish to waters near the pier that are patrolled by gun-toting boats.
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China published its first “green development” index on Tuesday, listing regional governments which promote environmentally friendly development, with Beijing coming out top, though it came second-to-last in a survey of public satisfaction.

The heavily polluted capital was first in the ranking of 31 provinces and regions for 2016, which was published by the National Bureau of Statistics, followed by Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, while Tibet and Xinjiang were the lowest ranked regions.

Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing and is home to several cities with some of the worst air pollution in the world, was ranked 20th.

President Xi Jinping said in October that fighting pollution was one of China’s key tasks through 2020, and the government has vowed to reduce air pollution across 28 northern cities this winter.

“By measuring overall progress on ecological civilization construction over the last year, the annual evaluation guides all regions to push forward green development, and implement ecological civilization construction,” statistics bureau head Ning Jizhe wrote in a note along with the data release.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Communist Party’s Organization Department jointly published the data with the statistics bureau.

While Beijing was top in the green index, the capital came in 30th out of 31 regions in a separate survey of public satisfaction with the environment published along with the green index data on the statistics bureau website.

Tibet came in first in public satisfaction with the environment.

In explaining the discrepancy, Ning wrote that the two indicators measured different things.

The green index was based on 55 statistical parameters and took into account investment in cleaning up the environment and use of resources, and reflected progress on moving towards a better environment.
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