With ever-dwindling space and resources available in overburdened Rohingya refugee camps in southern Bangladesh, the government in Dhaka is boosting family planning measures and considering a voluntary sterilization plan.

The efforts include hiring more staff, distributing birth control pills and handing out condoms, a senior official told VOA.

“We have reorganized our operations in our seven camps meant for Rohingya. [Before] we had only 40 staff and now we have hired 160 others from different places to speed up our activities,” said Pintu Kanti Bhattacharjee, the head of the family planning department in Cox’s Bazar district, where the camps are located just across the border from Myanmar.

“We have distributed 3,000 strips of oral pills and 3,900 women have been given birth control injections in September and October. Only 1,000 condoms have been distributed at the same time. We are providing free of cost. At the same time, our staff is continuing family planning related counseling,” Pintu said.

Hundreds of thousands

More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar since attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in August prompted a brutal crackdown that has revived discussions of targeted U.S. sanctions less than two years into the civilian administration of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Many arrive in camps that have existed for more than two decades, and the surge has put pressure on aid agencies to respond to the growing humanitarian crisis.

It has also strained resources within Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries on earth. Even though the country has welcomed refugees, it insists Myanmar take them back.

Voluntary sterilization

The growing concerns over the lack of resources have led to a proposal to introduce voluntary sterilization, which exists as an option for Bangladeshi nationals, into the camps.

The government is considering the idea, which would provide voluntary vasectomies for men and tubectomies for women, but it has not been approved yet.

It’s possible that the various family planning measures could conflict with more conservative cultural and religious beliefs among refugees. Islam does not explicitly forbid birth control but views in the camps are somewhat mixed on the idea.

Religious teacher Aminul Islam said there is nothing wrong with any method if it protects a woman’s health, but that permanent birth control procedures conflict with the faith.

But Hafez Abdul Wahab, 42, who came to Bangladesh 27 years ago and is a registered refugee in the Kutupalang camp, is not as certain.

He and his wife have 10 children and are expecting another. They are open to new options after the next birth.

“The birth control process is difficult so we prefer to go without it. But now I am thinking we will try any process after the last child is born,” he said.

Family planning sensitive topic

Family planning is also a sensitive subject for persecuted Rohingya communities. Buddhist nationalists within Myanmar advocated for a “Population Control” bill that many saw as aimed at the Muslim minority.

The bill, which was passed in 2015 but seems to have not been enforced, requires 36-month spacing between births.

The Rohingya crisis has impacted tens of thousands of children who have had to leave their homes, and some of them showed up in Bangladesh missing one or both parents.

UNICEF says there are 958 unaccompanied children in the camps, 1,968 unaccompanied minors, and 5,009 children who are separated from their parents.

Myanmar says it will take back refugees who fled to Bangladesh under a citizenship verification process, but the process has yet to resume in earnest.

De facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi made her first visit to the conflict-torn area of northern Rakhine State on Thursday in her capacity as the chairperson of the Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine Committee, which was set up last month in response to the crisis.

The country has faced mounting criticism from the international community and the United States, where members of Congress have proposed a new round of sanctions, many of which were lifted after Myanmar’s peaceful 2015 election that brought Aung San Suu Kyi to power after decades of military rule.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to visit Myanmar on Nov. 15.
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A Chinese official on Friday disputed President Donald Trump’s claim that the deadly opioid fentanyl flooding the U.S. is mostly produced in China.

China doesn’t deny that some fentanyl produced illicitly inside the country is contributing to the epidemic, Wei Xiaojun, deputy director-general of the Narcotics Control Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, said at a news conference.

However, according to the intelligence the two countries have exchanged, “the evidence isn’t sufficient to say that the majority of fentanyl or other new psychoactive substances come from China,” Wei said.

Trump, Xi to talk

Trump last month said the U.S. was stepping up measures to “hold back the flood of cheap and deadly fentanyl, a synthetic opioid manufactured in China and 50 times stronger than heroin.”

He said he would mention it to Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing next week. “And he will do something about it,” Trump said.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s representative in Beijing, Lance Ho, declined to comment on Wei’s assessment.

Wei also said the Justice Department’s public announcement last month of indictments against two Chinese men accused of making tons of fentanyl and other powerful narcotics sold in the U.S. could impede efforts to bring them to justice.

“I have to admit regret regarding the U.S. move to unilaterally use the method of calling a news conference to announce the matter of these two wanted individuals who’ve fled to China,” he said.

​US, China cooperation

The release of information would “impact on the ongoing joint investigation into the case,” Wei said, adding that China noted the U.S. failure to mention their successful cooperation on this and other cases.

The Justice Department said Xiaobing Yan, 40, and Jian Zhang, 38, worked separately but similarly and controlled one of the most prolific international drug-trafficking organizations. The lack of an extradition treaty significantly reduces the chances they will be returned to the U.S. for trial.

The Trump administration’s anti-drug efforts suffered another recent setback when its nominee as drug czar withdrew from consideration following reports that he played a key role in weakening the federal government’s authority to stop companies from distributing opioids.

Trump last week declared opioid abuse a national public health emergency and announced new steps to combat the crisis.

Fentanyl can be lethal even in small amounts and is often laced with other dangerous drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the drug and its analogues killed more than 20,000 Americans last year, and the number is rising.

Friday’s rare news conference, held in the Ministry of Public Security’s tightly guarded compound near Tiananmen Square, appeared aimed at emphasizing China’s progress on cooperation with the U.S. on fighting opioids ahead of Trump’s visit.

China has noted Trump’s announcement of an opioid crisis and “China attaches great importance to this,” Wei said.
…

In the past 25 years, the world has made remarkable progress in saving the lives of young children, according to the latest report from the United Nations.

In 1990, 35,000 children died every day; last year, 15,000 children and babies died daily, the first time that annual child deaths have fallen below the 6 million mark. But most of these deaths could have been prevented, according to a U.N. interagency group that put together this year’s report on child mortality.

Dr. Flavia Bustreo of the World Health Organization acknowledged the effort it has taken to get to this point. But while the progress is good, it is not enough, she said.

“I need to stress these deaths can be prevented. With the scientific knowledge we have, with the interventions we have, with the resources that we have available, these deaths can be prevented,” said Bustreo, WHO assistant director-general for family, women’s and children’s health.

And that is the tragedy that coincides with this achievement. The report on child and infant mortality states that every year, millions of children younger than 5 die, mostly from malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea. The last two are related to unsanitary conditions.

​Malnutrition plays a part

In almost half of these cases, malnutrition weakens the immune system, leaving the child unable to fight off the disease.

Bustreo said access to clean water and exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life can reduce an infant’s risk of infection.

Although more children are living to their fifth birthday, Bustreo says the U.N. report shows that 46 percent of child deaths occur shortly after birth. She said the babies who die in the first months of life are born prematurely.

“They (the deaths) are caused by low birth weight. They are caused significantly by sepsis, severe infection that is acquired during the delivery, and they are also caused by asphyxia,” Bustreo said.

While in the womb, the fetus floats in amniotic fluid. This fluid is in the fetus’ mouth, ears and nose. But after birth, if a baby cannot breathe and the birth attendant, if there is one, does not know how to clear the baby’s airways, the baby will suffocate.

The report shows the largest number of newborn deaths occurred in Southern Asia (39 percent), followed by sub-Saharan Africa (38 percent). Five countries accounted for half of all newborn deaths: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.

Children younger than 5 also are more likely to die from malaria than adults, which is one reason sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia have higher child mortality rates than other parts of the world.

​Progress with vaccines

But there are bright spots in the report. 

A vaccine for yellow fever spared children’s lives during an outbreak in Angola last year, and a new vaccine for malaria has proved effective for children. Tanzania has tackled air pollution, improved sanitation, and has worked to provide safe drinking water, which has also had a positive impact on child health there.

Bustreo said the concentration of child deaths are increasingly occurring in countries that are either in acute conflict or in a chronic state of strife, such as Somalia, which has the highest child death rate.

“That is important because it also links to not just the medical care, but also the social determinants of health, which, of course, include peace, stability and education, particularly girls’ education,” she said.

Bustreo explains that a girl who is educated can take better care of herself, “she does not become pregnant too early, because that is another important social phenomenon that we’re seeing that is early pregnancy associated with early and forced child marriage.”

Part of the solution lies in multisectorial planning, better training for midwives, training for nurses and vaccines.

Bustreo is dismayed that some parents in developed countries are refusing to get their children vaccinated against these diseases. Ongoing outbreaks of measles in Europe have claimed the lives of 35 children so far.

She said this trend needs to be tackled aggressively. Parents in low- and middle-income countries want to see their children immunized against measles and other disabling or life-threatening diseases.

Despite the overall gains in reducing child mortality, there’s a sense of urgency among health officials. The U.N report said if current trends continue, about 60 million children younger than 5 will die between now and 2030, and half of them will be newborns.
…

Over the past 25 years, the world has made remarkable progress in saving young children’s lives. For the first time ever, child deaths have fallen below the 6 million mark globally, but most of these deaths could be prevented according to the latest report from the U.N. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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The World Health Organization says that since the beginning of August there have been about 1,800 cases of plague in Madagascar with 127 resulting in death. Bubonic plague is not uncommon in the island nation, but this year the population also has been hit by plague pneumonia, which is spreading fast through the densely populated areas. Health officials say the outbreak is unusually severe and there are five more months before the end of the plague season. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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A new species of orangutan has been identified in remote Indonesian forests and immediately becomes the most endangered type of great ape in the world with just 800 individuals, scientists said on Thursday.

The Tapanuli orangutan, found only in upland forests in North Sumatra, differs from the other two species of orangutan in the shape of its skull and teeth, its genes, and in the way the males make long booming calls across the jungle, they said.

“The differences are very subtle, not easily observable to the naked eye,” Professor Michael Kruetzen of the University of Zurich, who is part of an international team, told Reuters.

“With no more than 800 individuals, this species is the most endangered great ape,” the scientists wrote. Apart from humans, great apes comprise orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and

bonobos.

The Tapanuli orangutan had probably been isolated from other populations for 10,000-20,000 years, the researchers wrote in the journal Current Biology. The population had been known by scientists since at least 1997 but had not previously been considered a separate species.

The Tapanuli orangutan faces threats including from forest clearance to make way for mining or palm oil plantations. The region also had plans for a hydro-electric dam.

The scientists urged quick conservation measures. Otherwise, “we may see the discovery and extinction of a great ape species within our lifetime,” they wrote.

Laurel Sutherlin of Rainforest Action Network, who was not involved in the study, said the finding “must also serve as a wake up call to all of us from consumers, to global food and paper brands, to investors and local and national governments” to protect forests.
…

A first attempt at gene therapy for a disease that leaves babies unable to move, swallow and, eventually, breathe has extended the tots’ lives, and some began to roll over, sit and stand on their own, researchers reported Wednesday.

Only 15 babies with spinal muscular atrophy received the experimental gene therapy, but researchers in Ohio credited the preliminary and promising results to replacing the infants’ defective gene early – in the first few months of life, before the neuromuscular disease destroyed too many key nerve cells.

“They all should have died by now, said Dr. Jerry Mendell of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, who led the work published by The New England Journal of Medicine. Yet, “those babies are still improving.”

Mendell cautioned that much more study is needed to prove the gene therapy works and is safe. Nor is it clear whether the replacement gene’s effects would wane over time.

Spinal muscular atrophy occurs in about 1 in 10,000 births, and those with the most severe form, called SMA Type 1, rarely reach their second birthday. They can be born looking healthy but rapidly decline. One study found just 8 percent of the most severely affected survived to age 20 months without needing permanent mechanical ventilation to breathe.

There is no cure. The first treatment wasn’t approved until last December _ a drug named Spinraza that requires spinal injections every few months.

The experimental gene therapy approach aims for a one-time fix.

What goes wrong

Spinal muscular atrophy is caused when a mutated gene can’t produce a protein crucial for survival of motor neurons, nerve cells in the spinal cord that control muscles.

Some children carry extra copies of a backup gene that produces small amounts of the vital protein, and thus have much milder forms of the disease.

Gene replacement

Scientists loaded a healthy version of the gene into a virus modified so it couldn’t cause illness. Then 15 babies got a one-time intravenous injection. The virus carried the healthy gene into motor neurons, where it got to work producing the protein those nerve cells require to live.

Three babies received a low dose of the gene therapy, as a first-step safety precaution. The remaining 12 got a high dose.

Results

All of the children are alive, Mendell said, about two years and counting after treatment. All beat the odds of needing permanent machine help to breathe by age 20 months.

But only the high-dose recipients saw better motor control, reaching some developmental milestones usually unthinkable for these patients. Eleven could sit unassisted at least briefly; nine could roll over. Eleven are speaking and able to swallow. Two were able to crawl, stand and then walk, Mendell’s team reported.

Those results are “very striking,” said Dr. Basil Darras, who directs Boston Children’s Hospital’s neuromuscular center and wasn’t involved in the new research.

While the treatment needs testing on far more babies, usually “there are no further developmental gains” after diagnosis, Darras explained. “They stagnate for a while and they go downhill very fast and die.”

The only serious side effect attributed to the gene therapy so far involved possible signs of a liver problem that eased with treatment.

Next steps

AveXis Inc., which is developing the gene therapy and helped fund Wednesday’s study, has opened a second small trial at seven hospitals.

Meanwhile, doctors are prescribing SMA patients the new medication Spinraza, which works by increasing that backup gene’s protein production and, according to a separate New England Journal study, had some benefit in about half of patients. The first year of treatment costs about $750,000, an accompanying editorial noted.

With the drug’s availability, some health groups are urging that SMA be added to the list of diseases that all newborns are screened for, so parents can seek early treatment.
…

“Like a monster, it destroys everything.”

That’s how one school girl from a Pacific Island nation described a tsunami.

On Dec. 26, 2004, a magnitude-9.1 earthquake in Indonesia set off a massive tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people across four countries and cost an estimated $10 billion in damage.

Nov. 5 is World Tsunami Awareness Day and at the United Nations Wednesday, disaster risk reduction was high on the agenda.

“What I can tell you is that the tsunami wave cannot be stopped,” said Bulgaria’s U.N. Ambassador Georgi Velikov Panayotov, who with his wife was on vacation in Thailand in 2004 and survived the tsunami. “What we can do is build early warning systems and of course, educating the population about the devastating power of the tsunami wave,” he said.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake rocked northeastern Japan triggering a fierce tsunami that also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, south of Sendai.

It was the most powerful quake ever recorded in Japan, killing more than 15,000 people and causing widespread damage and destruction.

“When the big earthquake hit Japan in 2011, people thought that we were prepared for it,” said Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho. “We had embankments, we had drills, however, we had been counting on something the size of which that hits every 100 years and the earthquake was of the size of possibly every 500 years or thousand years,” he said.

These two events sent the countries of the region into overdrive to review and improve disaster preparedness. In 2015 the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction was born. It aims to help create a better understanding of disaster risk and enhance preparedness for an effective response.

Individual countries also assessed their preparedness and planning.

“As a consequence of the 2004 tsunami, Indonesia passed a law on disaster management,” said Willem Rampangilei, head of the Disaster Management Agency of Indonesia, which led to the creation of his agency in 2008. “Our responsibilities include mitigation and preparedness, emergency response, as well as post disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction.”

Indonesia is an archipelago made up of thousands of islands which are disaster-prone. Rampangilei noted that 150 million Indonesians live in danger of earthquakes, 60 million from floods, and four million at risk from tsunamis.

He said his government now has contingency plans for every disaster-prone city which identifies its vulnerabilities, outlines the relief response, and builds overall preparedness.

The Maldives are another Indian Ocean chain of more than one thousand small islands, of which about 188 are inhabited.

“Until the Indian Ocean tsunami … we lived in complacency,” said the Maldives U.N. Ambassador Ali Naseer Mohamed. “We all heard the word ‘tsunami’ probably in our sixth grade geography (class), but never probably paid much attention.”

Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where the quake struck, is about 700 kilometers from the Maldives.

“Three hours after the earthquake hit, the tsunami hit the Maldives and put the entire country under water for a few minutes,” Mohamed said. “About 10 percent of the islands were hit.” The death toll was comparatively low 127 fatalities. But the damage was estimated at about 60 percent of the Maldives Gross Domestic Product and the country’s mainstay  its tourism industry took a nosedive.

Early warning systems

In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, the region put in place a Tsunami Warning System. It provides alerts through three regional watch centers in India, Indonesia and Australia, and a network of 26 national tsunami information centers.

In 2012, Banda Aceh again experienced an earthquake, but within eight minutes of it, early warnings were emitted across the region and no casualties were reported.

There are also now tsunami early warning systems in place for the Caribbean and the Northeast Atlantic, Mediterranean and connecting seas.

This week, UNESCO is helping coordinate a drill of the early warning system throughout 15 countries in the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean. The agency hopes to evaluate local tsunami response plans, increase tsunami awareness and improve regional coordination.

Educating youth

At risk countries are also expanding their education programs, specifically targeting children from an early age so they know how to react in case of a tsunami.

Children are taught to shelter in place till the earthquake passes and then go with their classmates to higher ground away from coastal areas to avoid the walls of water the tsunami triggers.

Japan is sharing its expertise, assisting with joint evacuation drills in schools in 18 countries. It is also hosting next week a summit of high school students from 25 mainly island nations next aimed at improving their understanding on tsunami risks and on life-saving measures during such events.

Building back better

Countries which have experienced earthquakes and tsunamis have also learned that better building codes can save lives and prevent damage.

Chile, which is one of South America’s most earthquake and tsunami-prone nations, has seen the difference tougher building codes and other measures can make.

In February 2010, the country experienced an 8.8-magnitude quake and a devastating tsunami that killed some 525 people. Four years later, an 8.4-magnitude earthquake struck. Fifteen people were killed in the quake, but no one in the tsunami that followed.

“Building codes were strengthened,” said Chilean diplomat Jorge Iglesias Mori of the measures taken between 2010 and 2014. He said the country also put more resources into developing their early warning systems and expanding their disaster education programs and drills, and they joined forces with Japan, sharing knowledge and experiences.
…

President Donald Trump’s commission on the opioid crisis called Wednesday for more drug courts, more training for doctors and penalties for insurers that dodge covering addiction treatment.

The panel’s final report stopped short, however, of calling for new dollars to address the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. Instead, the commission asked Congress for “sufficient funds” and suggested giving the White House drug czar’s office the ability to review federal spending on the problem.

“If we are to invest in combating this epidemic, we must invest in only those programs that achieve quantifiable goals and metrics,” the report said. The drug czar’s office “must establish a system of tracking and accountability.”

But adding a new layer of oversight was met with skepticism from addiction treatment advocates. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, known as the drug czar’s office, “is not a watchdog agency,” said Andrew Kessler, a behavioral health consultant in Washington, D.C.

Trump launched the commission seven months ago, tapping his friend and former rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to lead the fight. Since then, it has held five meetings and, in July, issued an interim report urging the president to elevate attention by declaring a national emergency.

Last week, Trump did so, talking in a White House speech about his brother’s alcoholism and declaring the crisis a national public health emergency.

“The president did exactly what I asked him to do,” Christie said Wednesday, addressing reports that a different type of emergency declaration, one overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency would have been stronger. Christie said he wanted the Department of Health and Human Services to take the lead, not FEMA.

“It’s now incumbent on Congress to step up and put money in the public health emergency fund,” Christie said. Congress hasn’t replenished the fund for years and it contains just $57,000.

More than 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, most involving a prescription painkiller or an illicit opioid like heroin.

The panel’s report contained 56 new recommendations and called for streamlining funding to states by using block grants, which would give states more flexibility.

What’s missing is more money, said Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal of Phoenix House, a nonprofit addiction treatment provider. “We need significantly more funding to the states on the front lines of this crisis, otherwise they won’t be able to implement the prevention and treatment programs that can save so many lives,” Rosenthal said.

The commission urged White House support for the Prescription Drug Monitoring Act, which would require states with federal grants to share information on narcotics users in a federal data-sharing hub.

The panel recommended training doctors who prescribe opioids and allowing more emergency responders to administer overdose reversal drugs. It called for establishing drug courts in all 93 federal judicial districts to get more treatment to drug offenders rather than send them to prison.

Alternatives to incarceration are needed, said Lindsey Vuolo of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and author of a recent strategy guide for states.

“It’s not enough to say addiction is a disease. We have to treat it as one,” Vuolo said.

 
…

Plenty of words have been written and spoken about climate change. But residents of Kolkata and other Indian cities are being given the opportunity to get to grips with the issue in a new way: via dance and music.

Ekonama: The Beginning in the End is a contemporary dance work that challenges audiences to consider what humans will have to live for if the environment is ravaged beyond sustainability.

The creators of the hour-long performance hope that the combination of dramatic choreography, folk dance, vivid costumes and music will raise awareness and compel viewers to become climate change activists.

“I find art is extremely impactful in cases where you want the audience to have an emotional response,” Paramita Saha, co-director of Sapphire Creations Dance Company in Kolkata, said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The performance depicts members of a secluded Indian tribal community going about their lives, reliant on their masked gods to protect them. One day a storm comes and the villagers find themselves caught in the throes of extreme weather brought on by climate change.

The dance depicts a future where hurricanes, droughts, floods and pollution have turned the planet’s last survivors into half-naked creatures scrounging and even killing for food, water and shelter.

Their gods, stripped of their regal costumes, turn out to be themselves only human.

“You could read three textbook chapters on the environment and feel bored, but when the same subject is turned out as an hour-long creative dance you get goosebumps, in awe when it ends,” said 22-year-old Anusaya Mitra about the piece, which premiered in Kolkata in 2016.

End of the journey

Mitra was one of a group of university students who were also studying dance at Sapphire Creations, and who developed an early version of the dance in 2015 as part of a fellowship sponsored by Microsoft.

The fellowship offered 18- to 25-year-olds a chance to experiment with art projects on environmental issues affecting Kolkata.

Mitra’s team created a 15-minute dance work entitled Ekoboom, which was performed in 16 universities and schools in and around Kolkata and seen by around 6,000 young people.

Saha, the co-director of Sapphire Creations, said that Ekoboom’s impact on audiences inspired her company to create the longer version, with a more developed narrative and sophisticated lighting and music.

The costumes worn by the dancers are made from textile off-cuts, to emphasize the need for recycling and reducing waste.

“For the general population a journey of a ‘thing’ ends in its being thrown into the bin or on the road. What happens after is none of their concern or is not even something they would think about normally. Such a journey depicted through any artistic medium… can be extremely thought-provoking for them,” Saha said.

Wake-up call

Mahashweta Bhattacharya, 20, who was part of the fellowship team, said the play was a wake-up call, even for many of the cast.

“We know that each of us is responsible in some small way for the decay of our planet. But we keep ignoring that voice and pushing it to the back of our minds. After seeing Ekonama, we couldn’t ignore our consciences any longer,” Bhattacharya said.

Sudarshan Chakravorty, artistic director of the dance company, worked with Turkish, Singaporean and Canadian choreographers and composers to develop the piece.

“Because climate change is already deeply touching everyone on this planet, Ekonama’s music… shows how art, when about a threat shared by all, can transcend cross-country borders, genres and culture,” Chakravorty said.

Following Ekonama’s international premiere at the Seattle International Dance Festival in June, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change newsroom also has publicized the piece, noting the contribution of art and culture in raising awareness about climate change.

“Science, economics and politics will be crucial (to building climate resilience) but so will new thinking and new ways of expressing the challenges and opportunities to both leaders and the public — something arts and culture can do in fresh and fundamental ways,” Nick Nuttall, director of communications for the UNFCCC, said at a seminar earlier this year.

Now the Sapphire Creations troupe is busy practicing for performances scheduled for Mumbai’s Contemporary Dance Season in December, and the Uday Shankar Dance Festival in Jaipur, Rajasthan, in February.

Moved to act

Performers say they have already seen those affected by the performance taking action on environmental issues.

“Ekonama made an environmental activist out of my mother. She now goes up to people at our apartment block and asks them not to throw trash everywhere, especially (one-use) plastic stuff,” said Bhattacharya, who is pursuing a master’s degree in sociology at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Saha points out that India, a country heavily vulnerable to climate disasters, needs greater public awareness of the need to act — but also policies to put that will into action.

“Performances like ours (will) help to open the climate conversation more in the mainstream,” she predicted.

 
…

A recent report by the World Health Organization and the World Bank says climate change and pollution are damaging the health of millions every year. Add to that the increasing impact of water scarcity, and the future is troubling for places like Jordan. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

The smog-prone northern Chinese region of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei will set up a joint environmental protection agency in an effort to coordinate the region’s war on pollution, the official China Securities Journal reported on Wednesday.

The new agency, part of wider efforts to improve cross-regional environmental governance, will be in place by the end of the year, the paper said, citing Ministry of Environmental Protection officials.

The region, also known as Jing-Jin-Ji, was home to eight of China’s 10 smoggiest cities in September and is involved in a winter campaign that will slash industrial output and restrict traffic in a bid to meet air quality targets.

Creating unified environmental standards across the region was a key element of a regional economic integration plan launched by President Xi Jinping in 2014.

According to academic studies, around a third of the smog drifting across the capital, Beijing, originates in neighboring Hebei, China’s biggest steel-producing region and also a major producer of cement.

Regulators have already promised to establish a unified system of environmental governance that will create cross-regional emission standards and prevent non-compliant firms in Beijing from shifting operations to neighbouring Hebei.

They have also vowed to implement coordinated emergency response plans during heavy smog outbreaks.

 
…

California Governor Jerry Brown is continuing his international fight against climate change with an 11-day trip to Europe starting Saturday that includes stops at the Vatican and a U.N. conference in Germany.

Brown is a chief adversary to Republican President Donald Trump in the battle over U.S. climate policy, promising to help the country reach its emissions reductions targets even as Trump withdraws from an international climate accord. He’s been named the special adviser for states and regions at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

“While the White House declares war on climate science and retreats from the Paris Agreement, California is doing the opposite and taking action,” Brown said in a statement announcing the trip. “We are joining with our partners from every part of the world to do what needs to be done to prevent irreversible climate change.”

The nonprofit California State Protocol Foundation, which accepts donations from private businesses, pays for Brown’s international travel. Travel for Brown’s staff members will be partially covered by money from the nonprofit Climate Registry and the Climate Action Reserve, a program that deals with carbon offset projects, spokesman Evan Westrup said.

Summit next year

Brown’s November trip follows visits to China and Russia earlier this year to promote international collaboration on climate change. Next year, he plans to host a summit in San Francisco.

He will give a speech Saturday to the Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences symposium. During the week, Brown will address European Parliament leaders and the state parliament in Baden-Wurttemberg Germany, meet with representatives from national scientific academies and serve on several panels at the U.N. conference.

Governors Kate Brown of Oregon, Jay Inslee of Washington and Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, all Democrats, will join him on a panel about states’ roles in fighting climate change. California Senate leader Kevin de Leon, also a Democrat, is scheduled to speak Friday at a Vatican workshop on climate.

The trip ends November 14.
…

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday he intends to replace the outside experts that advise him on science and public health issues with new board members holding more diverse views.

In announcing the changes, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt suggested many previously appointed to the panels were potentially biased because they had received federal research grants. The 22 boards advise EPA on a wide range of issues, including drinking water standards and pesticide safety.

“Whatever science comes out of EPA shouldn’t be political science,” said Pruitt, a Republican lawyer who previously served as the attorney general of Oklahoma. “From this day forward, EPA advisory committee members will be financially independent from the agency.”

Pruitt has expressed skepticism about the consensus of climate scientists that man-made carbon emissions are the primary cause of global warming. He also overruled experts that had recommended pulling a top-selling pesticide from the market after peer-reviewed studies showed it damaged children’s brains.

Pruitt said he will name new leadership and members to three key EPA advisory boards soon — the Science Advisory Board, Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, and the Board of Scientific Counselors.

It was not clear from the EPA’s media release if all current board members serving out their appointed terms were immediately dismissed. EPA’s press office did not respond to messages seeking clarification on Tuesday.

As part of his directive, Pruitt said he will bar appointees who currently in receipt of EPA grants or who is in a position to benefit such grants. He exempted people who work at state, local or tribal agencies, saying he wants to introduce more “geographic diversity” to the panels.

The five-page policy Pruitt issued Tuesday makes no mention of other potential conflicts of interest, such as accepting research funding from corporate interests regulated by EPA.

Tuesday announcement comes after Pruitt in May said he would not reappoint nine of the 18 members of the Board of Scientific Counselors to serve a second three-year term, as had been customary.

Current board chairwoman Deborah Swackhamer said the members were already required to follow rules intended to prevent conflicts of interests.

“It obviously stacks the deck against scientists who do not represent corporate special interests,” said Swackhamer, a retired professor who taught environmental health sciences at the University of Minnesota. “It speaks volumes that people funded by special interests are OK to be advisers, but not those who have received federal grants.”

Senate Environment Committee Chairman John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who shares Pruitt’s skepticism of mainstream climate science, cheered the move. He said EPA’s science boards would now better reflect the views of rural states like his own.

But environmentalists worried that Pruitt will now select board members with financial ties to the fossil fuel and chemical industries.

“The Trump EPA’s continued attack on science will likely be one of the most lasting and damaging legacies of this administration,” said Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee that approves EPA’s funding. “Pruitt is purging expert scientists from his science boards — and replacing them with mouthpieces for big polluters.”
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What killed off the Neanderthals? It’s a big debate, and now a study says that no matter what the answer, they were doomed anyway.

Our close evolutionary cousins enjoyed a long run in Europe and Asia, but they disappeared about 40,000 years ago after modern humans showed up from Africa.

The search for an explanation has produced many theories including climate change, epidemics, or inability to compete with the modern humans, who may have had some mental or cultural edge.

The new study isn’t intended to argue against those factors, but just to show that they’re not needed to explain the extinction, says Oren Kolodny of Stanford University.

He and colleague Marcus Feldman present their approach in a paper released Tuesday by the journal Nature Communications.   

They based their conclusion on a computer simulation that represented small bands of Neanderthals and modern humans in Europe and Asia. These local populations were randomly chosen to go extinct, and then be replaced by another randomly chosen population, with no regard for whether it represented the same species.

Neither species was assumed to have any inherent advantage, but there was one crucial difference: Unlike the Neanderthals, the modern humans were supplemented by reinforcements coming in from Africa. It wasn’t a huge wave, but rather “a tiny, tiny trickle of small bands,” Kolodny said.

Still, that was enough to tip the balance against the Neanderthals. They generally went extinct when the simulation was run more than a million times under a variety of assumptions.

If survival was a game of chance, “it was rigged by the fact that there’s recurring migration,” Kolodny said. “The game was doomed to end with the Neanderthals losing.”

Kolodny said the evidence that such migrations actually occurred is suggestive rather than conclusive. Such migrations would not be expected to leave much of an archaeological trace, he said.

Experts in human origins said the paper could help scientists pin down the various factors that led to the Neanderthals’ demise. It fits in with other recent attempts to explain the extinction without assuming behavioral differences between Neanderthals and our ancestors, said Wil Roebroeks of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. The notion of such differences is largely disproven, he said.

Katerina Harvati of the University of Tuebingen in Germany said while the new work could be useful in solving the extinction mystery, it doesn’t address the question of why modern humans dispersed from Africa into Europe and Asia. It’s important to figure out what was behind that, she said in an email.
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The suburbs of Washington are the setting for a pilot project to promote healthier eating habits, a partnership between leaders of the Latino community there and researchers at George Washington University. The “Water up Project” encourages the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages. Faiza Elmasry reports. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The U.N.’s environment program said Tuesday countries and industries need to do more to meet targets to trim emissions of greenhouse gases that experts say are contributing to global warming.

In its latest “Emissions Gap” report issued ahead of an important climate conference in Germany next week, the program takes aim at coal-fired electricity plants being built in developing economies and says investment in renewable energies will pay for itself — and even make money – over the long term.

Tuesday’s report comes as U.N. officials are making a renewed push to maintain momentum generated by the Paris climate accord of 2015.

It aims to cap global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (Fahrenheit) by the year 2100 compared to average world temperatures at the start of the industrial era.

“The Paris agreement boosted climate action, but momentum is clearly faltering,” said Edgar Gutierrez-Espeleta, Costa Rica’s environment minister who heads the 2017 UN Environment Assembly. “We face a stark choice: up our ambition, or suffer the consequences.”

A new round of U.N. climate talks known as COP 23 starts in Bonn, Germany, on Monday, when countries will take stock of their achievements and prepare more ambitious national goals.

In a summary of the report, UNEP says that current trends suggest that even if current national commitments are met, a temperature increase of 3-degrees Celsius by the end of the century is “very likely — meaning that governments need to deliver much stronger pledges when they are revised in 2020.”

“Should the United States follow through with its stated intention to leave the Paris agreement in 2020, the picture could become even bleaker,” the statement said, alluding to the Trump administration plans to withdraw the U.S. from the global climate pact.

On the upside, the agency highlights “rapidly expanding mitigation action” and says carbon-dioxide emissions have remained stable since 2014, thanks partly to renewable-energy use in China and India. It cautioned that other greenhouse gases like methane continue to rise, however.

UNEP trumpets the positive effects of investment in solar and wind energy and efficient appliances and cars, and efforts to preserve forests.

 
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The suburbs of Washington are the setting for a pilot project to promote healthier eating habits, a partnership between leaders of the Latino community there and researchers at George Washington University. The “Water up Project” encourages the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages. Faiza Elmasry reports. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The luncheon special has brought a crowd into El Puente de Oro, a Salvadoran restaurant in Langley Park, Maryland. Owner and chef, Ciro Castro, has put together a meal with a large plate of chicken, beans and rice, salad, and a bottle of water.

“The plate that costs $10, for them costs only $5,” he says.

The meal deal is not only saving his customers money, it’s encouraging them do what they usually don’t – drink water.

“When they are over here eating, they ask for juice or soda, or any other stuff – no water,” Castro says. “I ask the waiters to offer water, even if they have a beer or any other soda or other drink, they can sometimes get a sip of water.”

Castro is pleased to be part of a positive change in his customers’ eating habits.

El Puente de Oro is one of five restaurants in this largely Latino suburb that joined a pilot program called the Water Up Project. Its goal is to get the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages.

Neighbors and Friends

The campaign depends on volunteers, like local leader Brenda Barrios, who’s been explaining the program to neighbors and restaurant owners.

“It’s not like convincing (the business’ owners), it’s more like informing,” she explains. “It’s more like, you know why we need to change these menus. Can you, please help your families because at the end we are a big family, a big Latino family. We want to be healthy.”

Cindy Aguiler is one of her neighbors who have become supporters of the campaign.

“I like the idea and very excited about the Water Up Project because it promotes water. One of the simple, healthy and cheap things is water.”

She’s now drinking more water, and helping her five children develop this healthy habit by not buying soda drinks at home. “I buy juices. It’s maybe on the weekends, but try to make them drink a lot of water.”

Make it Visible, Make it Accessible

Uri Colon-Ramos, assistant professor of global heath at Milken Institute of Public Health in George Washington University, is co-principal investigator of the Water Up Project.

She says the question was how to promote drinking water instead of sugary drinks.

“One of the things we noticed right away that you go to these businesses, to the restaurants and you sit down and they don’t offer you water to drink,” she says. “You go here in DC and elsewhere, you sit down and this is the first thing they bring you, or there is a place where you can just grab water for free. That’s a big barrier because people would come thirsty, they would say, well give me a beer or horchata or tamarind or something really sugary. And they don’t drink water because they don’t have access there, and even if they ask for water, they would bring you a bottle of water that costs more than sugary drinks.” 

And, she says, ads target Latinos encouraging them to consume more sugary drinks. “Also in their home countries, they are targeted as well, and the globalization is very real. They’re used to drinking or seeing the promotion of soft drinks as well. They come here to the U.S. and they have more access to these drinks.”

The commercials downplay the serious health risks linked to sugary drinks.

“Sugary drinks are the number one risk factor for diabetes that we don’t need to have in in our diet,” the researcher explains. “There is no reason why we need the calories that are coming from sugary drinks. At least other foods provide other kinds of nutrients. These are nutrient poor type of food that contributes nothing but calories. And those calories come all in the form of sugar.”

The four-month long Water Up project started a few months ago, and researchers are now evaluating the results and feedback, hoping to make it more impactful and expand it to more neighborhoods. They hope this pilot project will inspire other communities around the United States and the world to think about what they drink and choose more water.
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Climate change has caused severe harm to human health since the year 2000 by stoking more heat waves, the spread of some mosquito-borne diseases and under-nutrition as crops fail, scientists said on Tuesday.

Scant action to slow global warming over the past 25 years has jeopardized “human life and livelihoods,” they wrote in a report published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

“The human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible,” said the report, entitled Lancet Countdown and drawn up by 24 groups, including universities, the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Many governments are now trying to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, though U.S. President Donald Trump has weakened the pact by saying the United States, the world’s second biggest greenhouse gas polluter after China, will pull out.

“This (report) is a huge wake-up call,” Christiana Figueres, chair of the Lancet Countdown’s high-level advisory board and the United Nations’ climate chief at the Paris summit, told Reuters. “The impacts of climate change are here and now.”

Among its findings, the report said an additional 125 million vulnerable people had been exposed to heat waves each year from 2000 to 2016, with the elderly especially at risk.

Labor productivity among farm workers fell by 5.3 percent since the year 2000, mainly because sweltering conditions sapped the strength of workers in nations from India to Brazil.

The report, based on 40 indicators of climate and health, said climate change seemed to be making it easier for mosquitoes to spread dengue fever, which infects up to 100 million people a year.

The number of undernourished people in 30 countries across Africa and Asia rose to 422 million in 2016 from 398 million in 1990, it said.

“Undernutrition is identified as the largest health impact of climate change in the 21st century,” the report added.

“Glimmers of hope”

But despite the overall gloom, Anthony Costello, a director at WHO and co-chair of the Lancet Countdown study, said there were “significant glimmers of hope” in the situation.

The number of weather-related disasters such as hurricanes and floods rose 46 percent since 2000, but the number of deaths remained stable, suggesting that societies were improving protection measures against environmental catastrophes.

Almost 200 nations will meet in Bonn, Germany, from Nov. 6-17 to work on a “rule book” for the 2015 Paris climate agreement for shifting from fossil fuels.

The Lancet Countdown study did not estimate the total number of deaths from climate change. The WHO has previously estimated there could be 250,000 extra deaths a year between 2030 and 2050 because of climate change.

Nick Watts, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, said there could be a few benefits from warmer temperatures, such as fewer deaths from winter cold in nations from Russia to Canada.

“But those numbers are … almost negligible,” he said compared to the overall harm from global warming.

The Lancet study also said that the air in 87 percent of all cities, home to billions of people, exceeded pollution guidelines set by the WHO. Fossil fuels release both toxins and heat-trapping carbon dioxide when burnt.

Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and who was not involved in the Lancet study, said the report could bolster efforts to limit pollution in cities from Beijing to Mexico City.

“Air pollution is in a way an old issue,” he said, referring to decades of efforts to limit smog. “But it’s potentially coming to the forefront again as the most rapid vehicle to get action on climate change.”
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The best way to further reduce deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is paying owners to preserve their land, and Brazil plans to discuss how to fund such a program at a climate summit next month, the country’s environmental minister said on Monday.

Brazil wants to switch from stick to carrot in its fight against deforestation, with Minister Jose Sarney Filho telling reporters that enforcement and penalties used to decrease the clearance of forest will not be enough.

The Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest tropical one, soaks up vast amounts of carbon and its preservation is seen as vital in the fight against climate change.

Sarney Filho told reporters that payments for so-called “environmental services” to landowners who maintain a minimum percentage of their land in its natural state, is the next step.

“Command and control has already reached its limit. If we don’t immediately start to demonstrate that forest services will be fairly paid, we will have serious problems,” Sarney Filho said.

In the Amazon, landowners generally must maintain 80 percent of their land in their natural state while being allowed to develop the other 20 percent with the rate varying for different biomes.

“We need to start discussing the reward to those that preserve their land,” Sarney Filho said.

The matter of how to value and fund this preservation will be featured at next month’s U.N. climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, on guidelines related to the Paris climate accord.

It will be the first meeting of the group since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to pull the United States out of the Paris Accord, which seeks to limit the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

While programs like the Amazon Fund, which is sponsored by Norway and Germany, pay for efforts to stop deforestation, they do not pay these types of rewards to landowners, Sarney Filho said.

He did not offer specifics on how to pay for them.

Brazil is drawing up a national plan for implementing the Paris Accord after seeking opinions from companies, environmentalists, indigenous groups and others.

Sarney Filho said he expects carbon emissions to fall in Brazil this year, corresponding to a 16 percent drop in deforestation between August 2016 and July 2017 from the year-earlier period.
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Cetaceans — whales and dolphins — are among the brainiest of beings. In terms of sheer brain size, the sperm whale is tops on Earth, with a brain six times larger than that of a person.

And now, scientists have identified key differences among cetaceans linked to brain size. A study of 90 cetacean species published last week found that those with larger brains exhibit greater complexity in social structures and behaviors, with species like the killer whale and sperm whale leading the way.

“Dolphin and whale societies are at least as complex as what we have observed in primates,” said evolutionary biologist Susanne Shultz of the University of Manchester in Britain.

“They are extremely playful, they learn from each other, have complex communication. One problem for understanding just how smart they are is how difficult it is to observe them and to understand their marine world. Therefore, we have only a glimpse of what they are capable of.”

The researchers created a comprehensive database of brain size, social structures and cultural behaviors across cetacean species. The group of species with the largest brain size relative to body size was the large whale-like dolphins such as the killer whale, the similar-looking false killer whale and the pilot whale, Shultz said.

“Killer whales have cultural food preferences, have matriarchs that lead and teach other group members, and cooperatively hunt,” Shultz said.

In terms of intra-species food preferences, certain killer whale populations, also known as orcas, prefer salmon whereas others prefer seals or other whales or sharks depending on their group’s culture.

Other big-brained cetaceans also demonstrate sophisticated behaviors.

Mother sperm whales organize babysitting duties using other members of their pod to protect their young while they hunt for food down deep. The distinctive vocalizations sperm whales use to communicate sometimes differ depending upon where they live, much like regional dialects in human language.

Bottlenose dolphins use sea sponges as tools to protect their beaks while foraging for food, and live in structured communities.

Some of the largest cetaceans — filter-feeding baleen whales like the blue whale, fin whale and humpback whale that eat tiny crustaceans called krill rather than fish or squid — were on the low end of relative brain size. They live fairly solitary lives, coming together only for breeding seasons and near rich food sources.

The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
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At least one in 10 people globally lives near the coast in a low-lying area. As the population increases and sea level rises, their homes are increasingly being threatened. The countries with the most people at risk include the United States, China, India and Bangladesh, and Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Scientists say climate change is to blame for the threat, and it has far reaching implications. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains.
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Australian lawmakers in the state of Victoria will debate a bill to allow medically assisted dying, a highly controversial issue fraught with arguments over who, if anyone, should be able to decide the timing of his or her own death.

Victoria’s lower house of parliament passed legislation October 20 that would allow what the bill calls “voluntary assisted dying.” The 47-37 vote came after contentious debate that lasted more than 24 hours.

Once the bill was passed, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters he was “very proud” of the vote.

“We have taken a very big step towards giving many, many Victorians the dignity and compassion they have been denied for far too long,” Andrews said.

The vote in the upper house, the 40-member Legislative Council, is  also expected to be close. Australian reports said 19 members of the upper house supported the bill, 11 were thought to oppose it, and the votes of the remaining 10 were uncertain.

Those who oppose assisted dying — including the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Melbourne Anglican Diocese, in the area affected by next week’s vote — urge the medical community to concentrate on developing better palliative care. The term means making a patient as comfortable as possible when an illness cannot be cured.

Setting boundaries

Five nations have legalized assisted dying: Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Assisted death usually involves issuance of prescription for drugs that will end life at the time and place of the patient’s choosing. Most patients eligible for it are terminally ill and near death.

But patients in other circumstances have argued that they, too, should be able to choose assisted dying, including psychiatric patients and elderly people in good health who feel that they have completed their lives and are ready to go.

In 2014, Belgium became the first nation to expand access to assisted dying to include terminally ill children, although not those with psychiatric disorders. It does allow mentally ill adults access to that option, although not all doctors are keen on granting it.

The Associated Press reported that, in Belgium, the mental illnesses most common among people who request euthanasia are depression, personality disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. Belgians with dementia can also request the medications used for assisted dying.

In addition to the countries that allow assisted dying, which is defined as hastening the process for a patient who is already dying, assisted suicide — death for someone who is not terminally ill — is legal in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Canada, and six U.S. states plus Washington, D.C.

Most of those places do not grant foreigners permission to apply for assisted suicide, but Switzerland does, which has led to a growing number of people traveling to Switzerland to seek it — an act given the macabre nickname “suicide tourism.”

A study of “suicide tourists” from 2008 to 2012, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, said 611 people went to Switzerland, mostly to Zurich, in those four years to seek help in ending their lives. Forty-four percent of those cases were from Germany, and 21 percent were from Britain. Twenty-one of those people were from the United States.

Forty-seven percent of those foreign patients cited neurological diseases as the reason they wanted to end their lives; 25 percent cited rheumatic or connective tissue diseases. Only 3 percent to 4 percent cited mental illness.

Selective process

In none of the places where assisted dying is legal are all requests for assistance granted.

A Netherlands-based study published in 2015 in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted that the rates of requests granted between 1990 and 2011 ranged from 32 to 45 percent.

And issuance of a prescription for the drugs used in assisted death does not always mean the patient will use them. In the U.S. state of Oregon, only about a third of the people issued permission to end their lives end up using the prescription to do so.

In the Victorian parliament, the legislation would set the legal age for assisted dying at 18 and above, and the illness the patient suffers from must be “causing suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that is tolerable to the person.”

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating voiced disapproval of the measure the day it passed in the lower house. He called the vote a “truly sad moment for the whole country.” He said he hoped the upper house would reject the bill, or in his words, “beat this deeply regressive legislation.”

The current Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has said he has reservations about assisted dying but will not stand in the way of the Victorian parliament.
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