Controversy is swirling around the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.  This new non-profit organization has come under intense criticism from health agencies and anti-tobacco campaigners who accuse it of acting as a smoke-screen for Big Tobacco, a charge vigorously denied by the foundation’s president.  

Derek Yach, who created and heads the foundation, was one of the architects of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which came into force February 27, 2005.   

He said he believes the provisions of the Convention were still valid and have been largely successful in preventing people from smoking and “in slowing the increase in kids through higher taxes, marketing and so on.”  

But, he told VOA that the Convention focuses little attention on trying to get the billion current smokers in the world to quit the habit.

“To actually accelerate the decline in the billion smokers, we need to have better cessation, harm reduction and better product regulation,” he said.  “And, I think those elements, I do not think have got the energy that we actually require.”

 

Yach said more than seven million people globally die prematurely each year from tobacco.  He said his foundation’s mission was to wean these smokers away from their deadly addiction by using new harm reduction tools such as e-cigarettes and vaping.

“If these products have an impact,” he said, “we need to have independent research to show that they should be given more support.  

“So, our work will not be to simply push them out, but to do high quality research to look at the negative and positive sides.”

Philip Morris is a producer of an e-cigarette-type product and is pushing hard into the vaping market.

The foundation is being subsidized by a $1 billion grant from tobacco giant Philip Morris, to be paid in $80 million yearly increments over the next 12 years.  This eye-popping amount of money makes people like Vince Willmore, Vice-President of Communications at the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, cringe.

He told VOA that the alliance between the foundation and Philip Morris has no credibility.

“This foundation is really a smoke-screen designed to promote Philip Morris’ business interests and undermine real efforts to reduce the death and disease caused by tobacco use around the world.  

“It is hard to take Philip Morris seriously that they want a smoke-free world when they are marketing cigarettes as aggressively as ever and they are fighting real solutions to reduce smoking.”

If Philip Morris really was serious about bringing smoking rates down, he said, it would embrace proven solutions, such as higher tobacco taxes, smoke-free policies, advertising bans and graphic health warnings on cigarette packages.

He said that “The actions of Philip Morris show that they are the main cause of the problem and not part of the solution”

Yach assured VOA that he had not “gone over to the dark side.”

He suggested that some people “could never understand that profitability and public health can actually work together.”

He said his relationship with Philip Morris was not based on trust.  “I am not naïve enough to believe that Philip Morris is doing this because of the warm fuzzy feeling that they want to lower the death rates.

“No.  What they want to do is have a product that is less risky and that makes them profits.  That is the beginning and end of it.”

Yach recognizes that many of his former colleagues at the World Health Organization disagree with his approach.  He said he shared their passion to rid the world of tobacco products entirely, but “with one billion lives hanging in the balance, we urgently must do more to cut the adult smoking rate,” he said.  “Too much is at stake.”

WHO would not comment for this article.  However, it did issue the following statement, which calls into question the tobacco harm reduction work of the foundation.

“The tobacco industry and its front groups have misled the public about risks associated with other tobacco products.  This includes promoting so-called light and mild tobacco products as an alternative to quitting, while being fully aware that those products were not less harmful to health.”

WHO noted the many “conflicts of interest” involved in the foundation’s alliance with a tobacco company “funding a purported health foundation.”

It stated that “WHO will not partner with the foundation. Governments should not partner with the foundation and the public health community should follow this lead.”

Foundation Chief Derek Yach told VOA that stringent safeguards were in place and that he had set up a legal firewall to insulate the foundation from the influence of the tobacco company.

“These are legally binding agreements under U.S. laws,” he said.  “If they are found to be inappropriately influencing, adversely influencing, we would lose our tax exempt status and under the law the foundation would be closed.”

Despite his many protestations, Yach acknowledged that he had a tough time dealing with his tobacco business partner.

“When I go into meetings with Philip Morris, I feel I have to hold my nose and that is something I suspect will continue for a long time,” he said.

 
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A trio of U.S. and Japanese astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off from Kazakhstan on Sunday for a two-day trip to the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed.

Commander Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and flight engineers Norishige Kanai of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Scott Tingle of NASA lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 1:21 p.m. local time (0721 GMT/0221 EST).

The crew will gradually approach the station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, for two days before docking.

Shkaplerov, Kanai and Tingle will join Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA, who have been aboard the orbital outpost since September.

Onboard cameras showed crew members making thumbs-up gestures after the liftoff. Also visible was a stuffed dog toy chosen by Shkaplerov’s daughter to be the spacecraft’s zero-gravity indicator.

Soyuz was safely in orbit about 10 minutes after the launch.
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Asbestos is a fibrous mineral that is incredibly useful, but it also causes lung cancer after long-term exposure. Fifty-five countries around the world have banned the use of asbestos, but not the United States, China, Russia or India. Indonesia has not banned asbestos either, but a recent court case suggests that its days there may be numbered. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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As climate change and rising seas threaten the world’s coastal cities, experts say natural systems can offer protection. VOA’s Steve Baragona reports from Florida, where mangroves may help shield shorelines.
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The Pentagon acknowledged Saturday that its long-secret UFO investigation program ended in 2012, when U.S. defense officials shifted attention and funding to other priorities.

But whether the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program has continued to investigate UFO sightings since its funding ended five years ago could rank as an unexplained phenomenon.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the hush-hush program, tasked with investigating sightings of unidentified flying objects, ran from 2007 to 2012 with $22 million in annual funding secretly tucked away in U.S. Defense Department budgets worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Its initial funding came largely at the request of former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat long known for his enthusiasm for space phenomena, the newspaper said.

Yet according to its backers, the program remains in existence and officials continue to investigate UFO episodes brought to their attention by service members, the newspaper said.

Other issues pursued

The Pentagon openly acknowledged the fate of the program in response to a Reuters query.

“The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 time frame,” Pentagon spokeswoman Laura Ochoa said in an email.

“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” Ochoa said.

But the Pentagon was less clear about whether the UFO program continues to hover somewhere in the vast universe of the U.S. defense establishment.

“The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed,” Ochoa said.

What is less in doubt is Reid’s enthusiasm for UFOs and his likely role in launching the Pentagon initiative to identify advanced aviation threats.

“If you’ve talked to Harry Reid for 60 seconds then it’s the least surprising thing ever that he loves UFOs and got an earmark to study them,” former Reid spokeswoman Kristen Orthman said in a message on Twitter.

Or as Reid himself said in a tweet that linked to the Times’ story: “The truth is out there. Seriously.” 
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is reportedly banning a list of seven words or phrases in official documents, sparking a flood of reaction on social media platforms.

Policy analysts at the CDC, based in Atlanta, Georgia, were told about the list of prohibited words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials, according to an unnamed analyst who attended the meeting as reported by The Washington Post newspaper.

The banned words are “diversity,” “entitlement,” “evidence-based,” “fetus,” “science-based,” “transgender,” and “vulnerable.”

The meeting was led by Alison Kelly, a top official in the CDC’s Office of Financial Services, according to the analyst who the Post said remained anonymous because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about agency affairs. The analyst said Kelly did not explain why the words were being forbidden.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a non-profit group that provides reproductive health care, said on Twitter the action sends strong messages about the administration of President Donald Trump.

“It’s clearer than ever: this administration has disdained women’s health, LGBTQ people, and science since day one.”

David Reiss, an internationally recognized psychiatrist, tweeted that the administration’s decision is counterproductive and outside the boundaries of traditional Washington politics.

“This is an attack on reality. Censoring names, Trump attempts to disappear knowledge, people & rational discourse. This is not politics or partisan but a takeover of society by authoritarian kleptocrats. Resist or Collaborate. No other options.”

Legal Lambda is a legal organization that advocates on behalf of bisexuals, gay men, lesbians, transgender people and people who have contracted HIV. The group responded on Twitter with disbelief.

“Unbelievable. You cannot erase us, @realDonaldTrump…”

Many of the responses on Twitter were triggered by comments from Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu, who blasted the Trump administration for reportedly banning the words.

“The @realDonaldTrump Administration is making America stupid again. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention banned from using “science-based” and “evidence-based” terms. Are we now going to use Voodoo & leeches to treat diseases?…”

Other officials with the nation’s top public health agency confirmed the existence of the list of banned words, the Post reported. The newspaper added the words will be prohibited from inclusion in any official CDC documents being prepared for the 2019 budget.

Unprecedented

The analyst, described by the Post as a “longtime CDC analyst” who helps write descriptions of the agency’s work for the administration’s annual budget proposal, could not remember past incidents of words being banned from budget documents because they were deemed controversial.   

“In my experience, we’ve never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint,” the analyst told the Post.

Others in the meeting reacted with disbelief, the analyst said.

The Trump administration has grappled with how to address issues such as abortion rights, gender identity and sexual orientation. Several federal agencies have altered some federal policies and how they gather information about bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender citizens.

The Department of Health and Human Services has eliminated questions about gender identity and sexual orientation in two surveys of older people. The agency has also deleted information about LGBT people from its website.

On many occasions, the Trump administration has dismissed science-based findings in favor of opinion – particularly regarding climate change. Trump has not said if he believes in climate science and numerous members of his administration have denied facets of scientific findings related to climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency has eliminated references to climate change on its website and has prohibited its scientists from presenting scientific reports on the topic.

The Office of Management and Budget, which produces the president’s budget and monitors federal agencies for compliance with the president’s policies, has not responded to requests for comment, nor has the CDC, the Post reported.

 
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Research funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research is helping give sniffer dogs the skills they need to detect complex modern explosives. Faith Lapidus reports.
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A study of California’s Sierra Nevada during the state’s extreme drought has led NASA scientists to new conclusions about how our planet stores water.

The study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, found that the mountain range rose nearly 2.5 centimeters in height from October 2011 to October 2015, when the state experienced its most extended drought.

In the following two years, with abundant snow and rain, the range lost about half, or 1.3 centimeters, of its new height.

“This suggests that the solid Earth has a greater capacity to store water than previously thought,” study leader Donald Argus said in a statement released Wednesday.

“One of the major unknowns in mountain hydrology is what happens below the soil. How much snowmelt percolates through fractured rock straight downward into the core of the mountain?” said Jay Famiglietti, a Jet Propulsion Lab scientist who participated in the research. “This is one of the key topics that we addressed in our study.”

The scientists reasoned that the Earth’s surface sinks when it is weighed down with water and rebounds when the water evaporates or is otherwise lost.

The study used data from 1,300 Global Positioning System stations in the mountains of California, Oregon and Washington that were placed for measurement of subtle tectonic motion in active faults and volcanoes and can detect elevation changes of less than 0.3 centimeter.

The scientists determined that the water lost in the four-year drought was about 45 times the amount that Los Angeles uses in a year.

The study also took into account other reasons for the change in height of the mountain range that runs 644 kilometers along California’s border with Nevada, including tectonic uplift or the extensive pumping of groundwater during the drought.
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English hospital officials said Wednesday that a baby born with her heart outside her body had survived three surgeries to mend her condition. 

Glenfield Hospital in Leicester said Vanellope Hope Wilkins was born in late November with her heart growing on the outside of her body. The unusual condition is called ectopia cordis.

She underwent the first surgery to put her heart back inside her body within in an hour of her birth. 

Dr. Nick Moore said the baby was in the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit.

Only eight babies in 1 million are born with ectopia cordis. The vast majority are stillborn or die within three days.

Cardiologists said they didn’t know of another case in Britain in which a baby had survived this condition. Several babies have survived the surgery in the United States, including Audrina Cardenas, who was born in Texas in 2012. 

The English baby’s parents, Naomi Findlay and Dean Wilkins, told BBC news that they named their daughter after a character in the Disney movie Wreck-It Ralph.

“Vanellope in the film is a real fighter and at the end turns into a princess, so we thought it was fitting,” Findlay said. 
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At least half the world’s population is unable to access essential health services and many others are forced into extreme poverty by having to pay for healthcare they cannot afford, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Some 800 million people worldwide spend at least 10 percent of their household income on healthcare for themselves or a sick child, and as many as 100 million of those are left with less than $1.90 a day to live on as a result, the WHO said.

In a joint report with the World Bank, the United Nations health agency said it was unacceptable that more than half the world’s people still don’t get the most basic healthcare.

“If we are serious – not just about better health outcomes but also about ending poverty – we must urgently scale up our efforts on universal health coverage,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement with the report.

Anna Marriott, health policy advisor for the international aid agency Oxfam, said the report was a “damning indictment” of governments’ efforts on health.

“Healthcare, a basic human right, has become a luxury only the wealthy can afford,” she said in a statement.

“Behind each of these appalling statistics are people facing unimaginable suffering – parents reduced to watching their children die; children pulled out of school so they can help pay off their families’ health care debts; and women working themselves into the ground caring for sick family members.”

The WHO and World Bank report did have some positive news: This century has seen a rise in the number of people getting services such as vaccinations, HIV/AIDS drugs, and mosquito-repelling bednets and contraception, it said.

But there are wide gaps in the availability of services in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, the report found. In other regions, basic services such as family planning and child immunization are more available, but families are suffering financially to pay for them.

Yong Kim said this was a sign that “the system is broken”.

“We need a fundamental shift in the way we mobilize resources for health and human capital, especially at the country level,” he said.
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When U.S.-based scientist Christopher Cantrell heard President Donald Trump pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, he did not imagine that six months later he would be shaking the French leader’s hand and starting anew in France.

Hours after Trump’s announcement in June, President Emmanuel Macron made a dramatic TV announcement in English, responding that he would not give up the fight against climate change and adding in a dig: “Make our planet great again.”

That later became the name of a research grant program sponsored by the French presidency to attract U.S.-based scientists — like Cantrell, 62, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“It was all over the news in the United States and on social media,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a summit in Paris marking the Paris accord’s two year anniversary.

“I found out about a week ago that I was successful. This is going to be fun,” he said.

Moving for the funding

For Cantrell, the decision to move to France is not a political one, but a response to a gradual decline in public funds in his field, which he did not expect to get better under Trump.

“I’ve been disappointed with this whole administration, as to how they … view the world of science and policy-making,” Cantrell said.

“I wouldn’t say I’m coming to France to get away from the Trump administration, but it was an opportunity that wasn’t available in the United States,” he added.

Macron, who repeatedly tried to persuade the U.S. leader to reverse his decision, also sees an opportunity to raise the profile of French research institutes and attract top talent.

‘World-class’

Some 1,822 researchers applied for the program, the French presidency said, with almost two thirds of them coming from the United States.

Thirteen of the initial 18 grants awarded on Monday were given to U.S.-based scientists, including some from prominent Ivy League universities such as Princeton, Stanford and Harvard.

A second batch of grants will be awarded early next year.

Cantrell, who works on air quality and what happens to pollution when the atmosphere tries to process it, will be based at the University of Paris-Est in the suburb of Creteil. He will study the Paris plume — the cloud of pollution that regularly shrouds the French capital. 

“This laboratory that I’m going to be associated with has world-class expertise, state-of-the-art computer models to simulate the atmosphere, so this place I’m going to is actually perfect for the kind of work I’m interested in,” he said.

Salary covered for five years

The 1.5-million-euro ($1.76-million) French grant means the constant hunt for funds to finance his research that was part of his daily life in the U.S. was now less of a concern.

“It’s been tough. Now I’ll be able to not have to worry about that part of it. My salary is covered for five years, I can focus on science,” he said.

He and his wife are now busy brushing up on their French.

“I came for a week to visit the lab, see the kind of things they did, I got to meet the staff, English works fine for all the people that work there,” he said.

 
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A new report finds permafrost in the Arctic is thawing faster than ever before.

The annual report card released Tuesday also finds water is warming and sea ice is melting at the fastest pace in 1,500 years at the top of the world.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says Earth’s northern region has entered a “new normal” for levels of warming.

And while Arctic temperatures this year weren’t record-breaking hot, scientists are still concerned.

Jeremy Mathis, head of NOAA’s Arctic research program, says the region is a different place than just a decade ago. He says a warming Arctic can cause problems like extreme weather that affects the rest of the world.
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SpaceX has delayed its latest grocery run for the International Space Station for at least a day.

 

The company now aims to launch its first recycled rocket for NASA on Wednesday.

 

The unmanned Falcon originally flew in June. The Dragon capsule, meanwhile, made a space station shipment in 2015.

 

This will be the first launch in more than a year from this Florida pad, the scene of a rocket explosion in 2016. SpaceX says it needs more time for checks. Liftoff time is 11:24 a.m.

 

As before, SpaceX will attempt to land the first-stage booster back at Cape Canaveral. SpaceX chief Elon Musk is pushing to lower launch costs by reusing the most expensive rocket parts.

 

The Dragon holds nearly 5,000 pounds of supplies, including a barley experiment for Budweiser.

 
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French President Emmanuel Macron has told more than 200 global investors and 50 world leaders in Paris the global community “is losing the battle” against climate change.

“It’s time to act and move faster and win this battle,” Macron said Tuesday at a summit to secure more funding to fight climate change.

Macron’s office announced a dozen initiatives designed to inject hundreds of millions of dollars in efforts to stem global warming, including the World Bank’s decision to stop financing oil and gas exploration and extraction after 2019.

Bid to cut emissions

A coalition of 237 companies, including banking giant HSBC and French insurer AXA, announced a five-year initiative called “Climate Action 100+” that aims to pressure 100 of the largest greenhouse gas producers to cut emissions.

An estimated 20 companies joined a global alliance of 26 nations that have committed to phase out coal. The plan by the “Powering Past Coal Alliance” calls for traditional coal power to be phased out by 2030 in wealthy countries and by 2050 in other parts of the world. 

The summit comes two years after nearly 200 nations agreed to the Paris climate accord, which calls for nations to limit greenhouse gas emissions and for rich nations to help developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change.

U.S. President Donald Trump was not among those invited to take part in the conference. Last year, Trump announced he was pulling out of the accord, saying it “disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.” The U.S. is now the only country in the world to have rejected the global climate agreement. 

Kerry attends summit

While the U.S. federal government stepped back from the global effort, many of the country’s states and some cities have pledged to move forward with steps consistent with the agreement.

“We have 38 states that have renewable portfolio standard laws,” said former Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attending the summit. “We have 90 cities, the major cities in America, their mayors all committed to meeting Paris. So 80 percent of the population of America is in those 38 states that are committed, and we are going to stay on track.”

Scientists offered French grants  

The European Union announced a new investment plan aimed at supporting renewable energy production, climate-friendly transportation, sustainable water and sanitation systems, as well as growth in sustainable agriculture.

The EU commissioner for climate action and energy, Miguel Arias Canete, also urged contributors to fulfill their commitments to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing nations to help them utilize renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels that boost carbon levels in the atmosphere.

Ahead of Tuesday’s summit, Macron awarded 18 scientists, including 13 from the United States, grants to relocate to France and carry out climate change research. He announced the initiative after Trump said the United States was withdrawing from the global accord, and the French leader played on Trump’s campaign slogan by naming his own program “Make Our Planet Great Again.”

“I refuse this double fatality, the one that says that there is this global warming that we can do nothing against and the one that says that this world is forced onto us and we cannot make profound changes,” Macron said. “But what you are showing here tonight, through your commitment, these projects that have been selected through your commitment on a daily basis is the exact opposite. We don’t want climate change and we want to produce and create jobs and do things differently if we decide so. There is no fatality.”
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Medical marijuana has been used to treat epilepsy in patients for years, and this month, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said it should be studied and treated like other pain relief drugs. A growing body of scientific evidence is leading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to do that. Meanwhile, researchers at Colorado State University are examining the benefits of cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive byproduct of marijuana, for treating dogs with epilepsy and arthritis. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Scientists have for the first time fixed a protein defect that causes Huntington’s disease by injecting a drug from Ionis Pharmaceuticals into the spine, offering new hope for patients with the devastating genetic disease.

The success in the early-stage clinical trial has prompted Roche to exercise its option to license the product, called IONIS-HTT(Rx), at a cost of $45 million.

Lead researcher Sarah Tabrizi, professor of clinical neurology at University College London, said the ability of the drug to tackle the underlying cause of Huntington’s by lowering levels of a toxic protein was “groundbreaking.”

“The key now is to move quickly to a larger trial to test whether IONIS-HTT(Rx) slows disease progression,” she said in a statement Monday.

Ionis senior vice president of research Frank Bennett said the protein reductions observed in the study “substantially exceeded our expectations” and that the drug was also well tolerated.

However, experts cautioned that the results were still early and the ability of the new medicine to improve clinical outcomes for patients had yet to be demonstrated.

“The question is whether this is enough to make a difference to patients and their clinical course, and for that we will have to wait for bigger trials,” said Roger Barker of the University of Cambridge, who was also involved in the research.

Huntington’s is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting mental abilities and physical control that normally hits sufferers between the ages of 30 and 50 years before continually worsening over a 10- to 25-year period.

There is currently no effective disease-modifying treatment for the condition, with existing medicines focused only on managing disease symptoms.

Ionis said Roche would now be responsible for all IONIS-HTT(Rx) development, regulatory and commercialization activities and costs.

The drug uses an approach called antisense to stop a gene producing a particular protein. The technique has already led to a drug for spinal muscular atrophy that was approved last year.

Shares in Ionis rose around 2 percent in early Nasdaq trade as did those in Wave Life Sciences, which is also working on antisense medicine.
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Emmanuel Macron plans to award multi-year grants for several U.S.-based scientists to relocate to France, his office said on Monday on the eve of a climate summit hosted by the president to raise finances to counter global warming.

Macron unveiled the “Make our Planet Great Again” grants after President Donald Trump in June said he was pulling the United States out of an international accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that was brokered in Paris in 2015.

Macron repeatedly tried to persuade the U.S. leader to reverse his decision. In a statement, the Elysee Palace said 13 of the initial 18 grants would be awarded to scientists based in the United States. Macron will make a detailed announcement later on Monday evening.

At Tuesday’s summit, Macron will urge wealthy nations to increase climate financing and urge investors to turn their backs on polluters in a bid to accelerate efforts to combat global warming.

French state-controlled utility EDF on Monday said it would invest 25 billion euros to develop 30 gigawatt of solar capacity in France between 2020 an 2035. Daily Newspaper Les Echos quoted the chief executive of Engie, Isabelle Kocher, as saying her company would invest one billion euros to improve the energy efficiency of buildings.

Separately, nine European energy companies including EDF, Italy’s Enel, Spain’s Iberdrola and Britain’s SSE said they would include green bonds in their financing policies.

Developing nations say that the rich are not on track with a broader commitment in the Paris accord for wealthy economies to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 – from public and private sources alike — to help developing countries switch from fossil fuels to greener energy sources and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Oxfam estimated that there was only between $4-$8 billion available for adaptation and that recent estimates showed the cost of helping emerging nations deal with rising sea levels, droughts, flooding and other effects of global warming could add up to $140 to 300 billion per year by 2030.

“Right now, the world’s poorest people are getting only a tiny fraction of the help they desperately need to survive,” Oxfam said in a statement.

“This year’s barrage of climate disasters showed that poor communities are often completely unprepared to deal with extreme weather.”

($1 = 0.8487 euros)

Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey; writing by Richard Lough; editing by John Irish and William Maclean
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Space Age hand-me-downs are soaring to a whole new level. 

On Tuesday, SpaceX plans to launch its first rocket for NASA. The unmanned Falcon 9 — last used in June — will carry up a Dragon capsule that’s also flown on a previous space station supply run. 

NASA’s International Space Station manager, Kirk Shireman, says the risk of launching a recycled rocket is about the same as for a brand new one. He says he’ll be just as anxious as he always is at every launch.

As before, the first-stage booster will attempt to land back at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This will be the first launch in more than a year from Launch Complex 40. The pad was ruined when a SpaceX rocket exploded during testing in September 2016.
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Pledging that “America will once again reach for the moon,” President Donald Trump Monday ordered the National Air and Space Administration to revive the manned space exploration program that was suspended in 2011.

 

“[This] marks an important step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 for long-term exploration and use,” Trump said.  “This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars.  And perhaps, someday, to many worlds beyond.”

 

Surrounded by several astronauts and former astronauts in a White House ceremony, Trump paraphrased Neil Armstrong, who famously said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” when he first set foot on the lunar surface in 1969.

 

“This is a giant step toward that inspiring future and reclaiming America’s proud destiny in space,” Trump proclaimed.

 

Among those attending the event were two of the 12 humans ever to have walked on the moon, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who touched the surface shortly after Armstrong’s historic step, and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, who did it as a crewmember of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon in 1972.

 

Trump noted that the signing ceremony came exactly 45 years to the day after Schmitt’s moonwalk with Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan.

 

David Kring, head of the Lunar and Planetary Institute at the Universities Space Research Association, says the first unmanned launch in the program to get back to the moon could come in a little more than a year.

 

“2019 is Exploration Mission One. That will launch the Orion crew vehicle and will orbit the moon without astronauts,” Kring told VOA. “Then in 2023 the vehicle launches again, this time with astronauts who will orbit the moon and return. After that is successful, we can actually deploy the astronauts in space (in between the earth and the moon),” he said.

 

Kring, who led a joint academic-industry-NASA design team to develop a robotic lunar lander and rover system that can be deployed anywhere on the lunar surface, said he expects the first manned mission to the lunar surface probably will take place about 2030.

 

“The current schedule within my own group includes a human-assisted lunar sample return mission about 2025 or 2026. This would be a robotic mission on the surface that would collect samples and then launch them into orbit where the astronauts would collect them and return them to earth,” Kring explained. “We’ve also designed a series of five landing sites for human astronauts, NASA astronauts from 2030 to 2035.”

 

Trump has long said he wants the United States to return to space exploration in a big way. Last March he signed the first NASA funding authorization in more than six years, endorsing a “stepping stone approach to exploration” with “missions to intermediate destinations in sustainable steps” while maintaining a long-term goal of human missions to Mars.

 

The $19.5 billion bill ordered NASA to come up with an “initial exploration roadmap” that is due this month.

 

In June he signed an executive order re-establishing the National Space Council and naming Vice President Mike Pence as its head.

 

In Monday’s White House signing ceremony, Trump recalled the great accomplishments of the nation’s immigrants who came to the country with a pioneering spirit “that few dared to dream.”

 

“Today the same spirit beckons us to begin new journeys of exploration and discovery. To lift our eyes all the way up to the heavens and once again imagine the possibilities waiting in those big beautiful stars if we dare to dream big,” Trump said.

 

The USRA’s David Kring said all the data and much of the hardware needed to put astronauts back on the moon has already been developed.

 

“We actually made tremendous progress in the Constellation program of the early 2000s before it was cancelled,” Kring said. 

 

“We have a prototype design for a rover that can carry astronauts long distances over the lunar surface. We’ve done mission simulations for up to 28 days on the lunar service. We have an Orion crew vehicle that has already had one test flight. We have a large rocket under construction. What we’re still missing is the lunar lander that would carry crew to the lunar surface.”

 

Kring told VOA that in his long career, some of the wisest words about proceeding in space exploration had come from astronaut Schmitt.

 

“He told me that the fastest way to Mars is through the moon,” Kring said.  He’s absolutely right. We have to develop the capability and the work force to put humans back on the lunar surface, and once we have learned how to do that we’ll be in a better position to carry our astronauts to Mars.”
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Coral reefs stop erosion, and are incredibly biodiverse. Mangroves store carbon and keep rising seas at bay. But U.N. officials say we are losing both at an alarming rate. In Kenya, government and U.N. officials are enlisting locals to help replace what is being lost. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Morocco’s government is partnering with civil society groups to plant the roots of understanding about deforestation’s potential harm to local communities. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Treating spinal cord injuries is one of the dreams of modern science, and one Israeli research group may be on the right path. Using human stem cells, they have repaired the spinal cords of mice, allowing the paraplegic rodents to walk again. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Many scientists believe the Arctic, one of the fastest-changing places on the planet, could drive change in other parts of the world, including wildfire-ravaged Southern California.

In a recent NASA mission called Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG), climate scientist Josh Willis embarked on a journey to study ice in Greenland and surrounding oceans and how much oceans are eating away at the ice around the edges of the ice sheet. The data collected included the ocean’s temperature and salinity, and the shape and depth of the sea floor.

“The shape of the sea floor determines how much the warm water can reach in and touch the glaciers,” said Willis, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.

“Warm water is widespread across the Greenland shelf, and it is very much a major threat to the glaciers,” Willis said. “The thing we really don’t know is how fast is Greenland’s ice going to disappear.

“If it takes a thousand years or two thousand years, then we can probably adapt. But if it happens in a few hundred, we should already be evacuating cities around the world,” he added.

Impact of sea ice

A separate study from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggests a link between sea ice melting in the Arctic and drier conditions in California. A new simulation that only looks at sea ice in the next two decades, shows a pressure ridge pushing the winter air masses north into Alaska and Canada, which impacts California.

“We saw quite substantial drying of California so with (looking at) the sea ice alone, we saw 10 to 15 percent decrease in precipitation over a 20-year period,” said Ivana Cvijanovic, an atmospheric scientist and post-doctoral researcher at the national laboratory.

Other factors such as greenhouse gases and particulate pollution can also affect the future of rainfall in California. The modeling framework used in the study at Lawrence Livermore helps scientists understand the impact of sea ice in isolation to these other factors.

“Ice is disappearing on the Arctic Ocean. It’s disappearing from Greenland and this is reshaping climate patterns all across the planet,” Willis said.

He and other scientists predict that as Arctic regions warm, the American Southwest will feel the impact.

“We will probably see drier conditions in the long run in the second half of the [21st] century in the Southwest and that means we’re going to struggle with water needs and also fire,” Willis said.

Intersection of wildland, people

Dry conditions plus a growing population and urban sprawl equals more wildfires and costly devastation, such as the ones in Southern California.

“We are in Southern California and a lot of the fires we find that happen right where people intersect with wildland happen because of people,” said Natasha Stavros, an applied science system engineer and fire expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

As the weather evolves and more wildfires burn, Stavros expects other environmental changes.

“As we experience climate changes and things become hotter and dryer, fire acts kind of like an eraser. It erases the landscape and it actually allows new ecosystems to establish because they don’t have to compete with what was there,” Stavros said.

The American Southwest is not the only place where change is predicted.

“As the atmosphere heats up, it becomes a better pipe for carrying water for picking it up from one place and dumping it in another,” Willis said. “This means that dry places are more likely to get drier and wet places are likely to get wetter. It also means that bigger more torrential downpours become more likely.”
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A new report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predicts a link between sea ice melting in the Arctic and drier conditions in California over the next several decades. This finding comes at a time when several wildfires are raging across Southern California. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports on the work of scientists as they look at the global implications of the melting of glaciers and sea ice, and other impacts a changing climate could have around the world.
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