Water flows a long and winding path from the sink to the ecosystem, but not before making an all-important stop at a waste water treatment plant. It’s more than just cleaning out dirt and debris we can see; it’s about removing invisible contaminants that could poison nearby waters. Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington.
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When black rats invaded Lord Howe Island after the 1918 wreck of the steamship Makambo, they wiped out numerous native species on the small Australian isle in the Tasman Sea including a big, flightless insect that resembled a stick.
But the Lord Howe Island stick insect, once declared extinct, still lives.
Scientists said on Thursday DNA analysis of museum specimens of the bug and a similar-looking one from an inhospitable volcanic outcrop called Ball’s Pyramid 14 miles (23 km) away confirmed they are the same species. The finding could help pave the way for its reintroduction in the coming years.
“The Lord Howe Island stick insect has become emblematic of the fragility of island ecosystems. Unlike most stories involving extinction, this one gives us a unique second chance,” said evolutionary biologist Alexander Mikheyev of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan.
The glossy-black insect that grow up to six inches (15 cm) in length is nicknamed the “land lobster.” Other stick insects are found around the world, so named because their appearance lets them blend in with trees and bushes to evade predators.
As adults, the wingless Lord Howe Island stick insects shelter in trees during daytime and come out at night to eat shrubbery. The bright-green babies are active during daytime.
By about 1930, they had vanished on Lord Howe Island, which was thought to be their only home. There were no land-dwelling mammals there when the rats arrived, and they also vanquished five bird species and 12 other insect species.
A rock-climbing ranger made a curious discovery in 2001 on Ball’s Pyramid: a similar-looking insect. Since then, captive breeding programs have begun at the Melbourne Zoo and elsewhere.
Because of certain differences between the Ball’s Pyramid insects and the Lord Howe Island insect museum specimens, there was some question about whether they were the same species.
“We found what everyone hoped to find, that despite some significant morphological differences, these are indeed the same species,” said Mikheyev, who led the research published in the journal Current Biology.
Officials are planning a program to eradicate the invasive rats on Lord Howe Island, which could allow the stick insects to return.
“I imagine that maybe a decade from now, people will travel to Lord Howe Island and take night walks, hoping to glimpse this insect,” Mikheyev said. “In maybe 20 years, they could become a ubiquitous sight.”
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Seated before the grounded space shuttle Discovery, a constellation of Trump administration officials used soaring rhetoric to vow to send Americans back to the moon and then on to Mars.
After voicing celestial aspirations, top officials moved to what National Intelligence Director Dan Coats called “a dark side” to space policy. Coats, Vice President Mike Pence, other top officials and outside space experts said the United States has to counter and perhaps match potential enemies’ ability to target U.S. satellites.
Pence, several cabinet secretaries and White House advisers gathered in the shadow of the shuttle at the Smithsonian Institution’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center to chart a new path in space — government, commercial and military — for the country. It was the first meeting of the National Space Council, revived after it was disbanded in 1993.
But details, such as how much the new ideas will cost, were scant and outside experts said they’ve heard grandiose plans before only to see them fizzle instead of launch.
“We will return American astronauts to the moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond,” Pence said.
Timelines
Space industry leaders say they and NASA are building the spaceships to get there. And they’re promising that in five years, astronauts could be working around the moon.
David Thompson, president of the space company Orbital ATK, said NASA’s Orion capsule and super-sized Space Launch System rocket should be ready in a couple years, so flying around the moon and even making a lunar orbiting outpost is within reach. But he said a lunar landing would take longer. Blue Origin rocket company chief executive officer Bob Smith said his firm could have a lunar lander program ready within five years.
Past presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and to a lesser extent Barack Obama have proposed spectacular missions to the moon or Mars or both, only to have funding trouble keep them from coming true, said space expert Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation. He wasn’t part of the council meeting.
“Is it going to happen? Who knows? I feel like I’ve been disappointed so many times I refuse to get excited,” said Roger Launius, a longtime space historian.
And Gwynn Shotwell, president of SpaceX, said her company next year will launch astronauts to the International Space Station, the first American launch of people since 2011. After the 2003 space shuttle Columbia broke apart on descent, then-president George W. Bush announced the phasing out of the space shuttle program. Eventually, NASA started building new multibillion dollar ships, the Orion capsule and the SLS mega-rocket.
Pence several times bemoaned a U.S. space program that had fallen behind, asking space executives what they thought.
“America is out-innovating the world in space launch,” Shotwell said, noting that her company had launched 13 rockets this year, more than any other nation.
Weaponizing space
After talking about how “we will blaze new trails into that great frontier” Pence turned the discussion to the dangers of space and how much of the U.S. intelligence system and day-to-day life are dependent on commercial satellites operating safely. And he and others outlined threats to those satellites from potential enemies that could cripple American security and daily life.
Experts worried that satellites could be destroyed and debris in orbit could ruin others.
Pence asked if the U.S. should “weaponize” space.
“The choice whether or not to weaponize space is not one that we can make. We can only decide to match and raise our adversaries who are already weaponizing space,” former NASA chief Michael Griffin said. “That horse is already out of the barn.”
White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the country needs to “deter and when necessary defeat adversaries’ counter-space efforts. … We may not start it, but we will finish it.”
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News bulletin in 1957: Sputnik stuns the world.
CIA in 2017: Not really.
The CIA released newly declassified documents Wednesday revealing that while the American public was surprised when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite 60 years ago, intelligence agencies weren’t caught off guard.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower had advance knowledge about the Soviets’ work on Sputnik, which was launched by a rocket on October 4, 1957. He had been worrying for several years about the Kremlin’s long-range missile capability and how rockets armed with nuclear warheads could threaten America.
The documents indicate that U.S. intelligence and military officials and members of the Eisenhower administration not only knew that the Soviet Union was planning to launch Sputnik but also knew it could be put into orbit by the end of 1957.
The launch of Sputnik opened the space age and became a major victory for the Kremlin that highlighted its military might and technological abilities. But it wasn’t a surprise to those in the know within the Eisenhower administration.
Before the launch, the CIA issued two National Intelligence Estimates that included possible timelines for what was then called an “Earth satellite vehicle.” In December 1955, one predicted the Soviets could launch one by 1958. In March 1957 — about six months before the launch — another intelligence estimate said Moscow was capable of putting a satellite into orbit before the end of that year.
And even earlier, then-CIA Director Allen Dulles wrote a letter to the defense secretary in which he pushed for rapid development of an American Earth satellite and warned of a public relations fallout for the United States if the Soviets were first to launch one.
“In addition to the cogent scientific arguments advanced in support of the development of Earth satellites, there is little doubt but what the nation that first successfully launches the Earth satellite, and thereby introduces the age of space travel, will gain incalculable international prestige and recognition,” Dulles wrote in January 1955.
“Our scientific community as well as the nation would gain invaluable respect and confidence should our country be the first to launch the satellite.”
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Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is heading to the hurricane-battered Caribbean, where he said Wednesday that scientists predict the extreme storms during this year’s Atlantic hurricane season “will be the new normal of a warming world.”
The U.N. chief told reporters that Hurricane Irma, which devastated Barbuda, was a Category 5 storm for three consecutive days — “the longest on satellite record” — and its winds that reached 300 kilometers per hour for 37 hours were “the longest on record at that intensity.”
Hurricanes Harvey and Irma marked the first time two Category 4 storms made landfall on the United States mainland in the same year, Guterres said, and Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm, followed up by decimating Dominica and devastating Puerto Rico.
The secretary-general said “scientists are learning more and more about the links between climate change and extreme weather.”
A warmer climate “turbocharges the intensity of hurricanes,” which pick up energy as they move across the ocean, he said. “The melting of glaciers, and the thermal expansion of the seas, means bigger storm surges” and with more people living along coastlines “the damage is, and will be that much greater.”
Guterres said the world has “the tools, the technologies and the wealth to address climate change, but we must show more determination in moving towards a green, clean, sustainable energy future” — and in stepping up implementation of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
The secretary-general said he will travel to Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica on Saturday to survey the damage and assess what more the United Nations can do.
Stephen O’Malley, the U.N. resident coordinator for Barbados and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, said Tuesday that the United Nations, World Bank and Antigua government have conducted a post-disaster needs assessment for Barbuda, whose 1,800 residents were evacuated to Antigua before Hurricane Irma damaged 95 percent of its structures on September 14.
He said a similar assessment will be done in Dominca, which was ravaged on September 18 by Hurricane Maria, probably in about three weeks.
Guterres said the response to the $113.9 million U.N. appeal to cover humanitarian needs in the Caribbean for the immediate period ahead has been poor and he urged donors “to respond more generously in the weeks to come.”
He also stressed that “innovative financing mechanisms will be crucial” to enable these small islands to recover, rebuild and “strengthen resilience.”
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The Trump administration has refused to designate the Pacific walrus as an endangered or threatened species.
The move announced Wednesday reverses the Obama administration finding that the walrus deserves protection because of diminished Arctic Ocean sea ice.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has instead concluded the walrus population is healthy and “can adapt to the changing conditions in the Arctic,” said Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and supporter of the initiative.
The decision could be challenged in court by environmental groups, who say a decline in Arctic Ocean sea ice due to climate change is a threat to the walruses’ future.
“This is a truly dark day for America’s imperiled wildlife,” said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biodiversity. “You couldn’t ask for a clearer sign that the Trump administration puts corporate profits ahead of protecting endangered species.”
While older male walruses spend summers in the Bering Sea, females with calves ride sea ice north as it melts in spring and summer. The ice provides a moving platform, giving walruses a place to rest and nurse, and protection from predators.
Arctic sea ice this summer dropped to 4.64 million square kilometers, about 1.58 million square kilometers below the 30-year average.
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A report shows that solar energy was the fastest-growing source of power last year, accounting for almost two-thirds of net new capacity globally.
The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that the rise was due to a boom in photovoltaic panel installations, particularly in China, thanks to a drop in costs and greater support from governments.
It is the first time that solar energy growth surpasses any other fuel as a source of power. Coal in particular had continued to grow in recent years despite global targets to reduce carbon emissions.
The IEA said solar panels capacity grew 50 percent last year, with China accounting for almost half the expansion. The country has become a leader in renewable energy production, with the United States the second-largest market.
Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for their work to simplify and improve the imaging of biomolecules.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award Wednesday along with its $1.1 million prize.
The scientists developed a way to generate three-dimensional images of molecules, which the academy said has brought biochemistry “into a new era.”
“Researchers can now freeze biochemicals mid-movement and visualize processes they have never previously seen, which is decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals,” the academy said.
The plague, bubonic plague to be exact, is endemic to the island of Madagascar, where about 400 cases show up every year. But this year cases have spiked early and more than two dozen people have died. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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An outbreak of plague has killed at least 20 people in a month in Madagascar, with more than 80 others infected, the World Health Organization said.
Plague is mainly spread by flea-carrying rats. Humans bitten by an infected flea usually develop a bubonic form of plague, which swells lymph nodes and can be treated with antibiotics.
But the more dangerous pneumonic form invades the lungs and can kill a person within 24 hours if not treated. About half of the 104 known cases are pneumonic, the WHO said.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva late last week that areas affected included the capital, Antananarivo, and the port cities of Mahajenga and Toamasina.
The U.N. health agency said it feared that the outbreak could worsen because the season for plague, which is endemic in Madagascar, had only just begun and runs until April. On average, 400 cases are reported each year.
“The overall risk of further spread at the national level is high,” WHO said in a statement.
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Three U.S.-based astrophysicists won the Nobel prize in physics Tuesday for their discovery of gravitational waves, a phenomenon Albert Einstein predicted a century ago in his theory of general relativity. Here’s what their discovery means and why they won the prize worth $1.1 million (9 million kronor).
Who won?
Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a German-born scientist who initially flunked out of MIT, won half the prize as the astronomer who initially spearheaded the push for the $1.1 billion project called LIGO. Theorist Kip Thorne and physicist Barry Barish, both of the California Institute of Technology, split the other half.
So far, the LIGO twin detectors in Louisiana and Washington — and a new one in Italy — have spotted four gravitational waves in about two years since going online in September 2015.
What is a gravitational wave?
Gravitational waves are extremely faint ripples in the fabric of space and time that come from some of the most violent events in the universe. The four observations came from the merger of two black holes. The first one was 1.3 billion light-years away.
These waves stretch in one dimension — like left and right — while compressing in another, such as up and down. Then they switch, Weiss explained.
“They are ripples that stretch and squeeze space and everything that lives in space,” Thorne said.
What is space-time?
Space-time is the mind-bending, four-dimensional way astronomers see the universe. It melds the one-way march of time with the more familiar three dimensions of space.
Einstein’s general relativity says that gravity is caused by heavy objects bending space-time. And when massive but compact objects like black holes or neutron stars collide, their immense gravity causes space-time to stretch or compress.
When two black holes collide, you get “a storm in the fabric of space-time … vortices of twisting space fighting with each other,” Thorne said.
Ironically, Einstein would have been quite surprised because even though he theorized about gravitational waves, he didn’t think humans would ever have the technology to spot them. And he didn’t believe black holes existed, Weiss said.
Why is it important?
Unlike other types of waves that go through the universe such as electromagnetic waves, gravitational waves go through matter — stars, planets, us — untouched. So it’s an entirely new type of astronomy, with experts comparing it to Galileo’s observations of the solar system. There’s information in gravitational waves that cannot be found elsewhere.
The first gravitational wave detected was in the form of an audible chirp that some call the music of the cosmos. University of Florida’s Clifford Will said it offers a new way of observing the cosmos beyond light and particles.
How is this “hearing” the cosmos?
Scientists mostly use the word “hear” when describing gravitational waves, and the data does, in fact, arrive in audio form. The researchers can don headphones and listen to the detectors’ output if they want. But Weiss said it is not quite like sound waves.
What’s next?
Scientists are waiting to detect crashes of neutron stars, which many thought would be the first collision to be heard.
Other types of gravitational detectors are being built, including one in India.
The European Space Agency is planning a multibillion-dollar probe to be launched in about 17 years that would look for gravitational waves from space. With better technology, Weiss hopes astronomers will learn more about nuclear physics, states of matter and how heavy elements are made, and detect information from “the very moment when the universe came out of nothingness.”
“We expect surprises,” Weiss said. “There has to be surprises.”
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Fifty leading United Nations and international agencies on Wednesday will roll out a global road map for reducing cholera deaths by 90 percent by 2030.
The new strategy from the Global Task Force on Cholera Control will target “hot spots” with simple, effective tools to prevent the disease from taking hold.
The World Health Organization reports cholera kills an estimated 95,000 people and affects nearly 3 million more every year at a cost of about $2 billion to world economies.
WHO says it expects the global cholera situation to worsen because of accelerating conflicts, climate change and population growth.
Currently, 47 countries are affected by cholera. The disease is endemic in 20 of these countries.
The director of WHO Health Emergencies, Peter Salama, said the cholera “hot spots” are relatively small but play a disproportionate role in spreading this fatal disease.
“Just to give you a sense of what we are talking about, in sub-Saharan Africa, around 40 million to 80 million people live in these cholera hot spots,” he said. “If we can effectively target water and sanitation and health interventions at those areas, we will make a tremendous contribution in controlling this disease.”
Success in Nigeria
Salama told VOA the road map for ending cholera already was in play in some of the world’s crisis spots.
“We have seen, for example, in northern Nigeria’s Borno state, the very effective use of oral cholera vaccine in a displaced population affected by conflict,” he said, noting that there had been “a rapid decline” in cholera cases there.
Salama said this case provided a template for a very early response to any new emergency where a significant risk of cholera exists. For example, he cited the dire situation of a half-million Rohingya refugees who recently fled to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar.
Health professionals say new tools, including oral vaccines, can prevent death from cholera. They note it has been more than 150 years since rich countries achieved cholera control. They say poor countries also can end cholera by improving water, sanitation and hygiene.
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The rates of 12 obesity-related cancers rose by 7 percent from 2005 to 2014, an increase that is threatening to reverse progress in reducing the rate of cancer in the United States, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 630,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with a cancer linked with being overweight or obese in 2014.
Obesity-related cancers accounted for about 40 percent of all cancers diagnosed in the United States in 2014. Although the overall rate of new cancer diagnoses has fallen since the 1990s, rates of obesity-related cancers have been rising.
“Today’s report shows in some cancers we’re going in the wrong direction,” Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC said on a conference call with reporters.
According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, 13 cancers are associated with overweight and obesity.
They include meningioma, multiple myeloma, adenocarcinoma of the esophagus, and cancers of the thyroid, postmenopausal breast, gallbladder, stomach, liver, pancreas, kidney, ovaries, uterus and colon and rectum (colorectal).
In 2013-2014, about two out of three U.S. adults were considered overweight or obese. CDC researchers used the U.S. cancer statistics database to see how obesity was affecting cancer rates.
Although cancer rates rose in 12 of these cancers from 2005 to 2012, colorectal cancer rates fell by 23 percent, helped by increases in screening, which prevents new cases by finding growths before they turn into cancer.
Cancers not associated with overweight and obesity fell by 13 percent.
About half of Americans are not aware of this link, according to Schuchat. The findings suggest that U.S. healthcare providers need to make clear to patients the link between obesity and cancer, and encourage patients to achieve a healthy weight.
“The trends we are reporting today are concerning,” Schuchat said. “There are many good reasons to strive for a healthy weight. Now you can add cancer to the list.”
She said the science linking cancer to obesity is still evolving, and it is not yet clear whether losing weight will help individuals once cancer has taken root.
What is clear is that obesity can raise an individual’s risk of cancer, and that risk may be reduced by maintaining a healthy weight, Schuchat said.
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Scientists Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne have won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in detecting gravitational waves.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award Tuesday along with its $1.1 million prize.
Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves that are created anytime a mass accelerates, but it was not until recently that the waves were actually observed.
Weiss, Barish and Thorne were key figures in the work done by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which measures tiny disturbances the waves make to space and time as they pass through the Earth.
LIGO made the world’s first-ever detection of gravitational waves in 2015. Scientists say those waves were produced as two black holes collided and merged into a single, massive black hole.
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Increasingly, doctors are working on ways to turn a cell phone into a powerful tool for preventive medicine. Fitness apps and calorie counter apps are paving the way. But soon to arrive on your phone — screening apps that could diagnose everything from diabetes to cancer. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Gun violence interrupts a peaceful gathering and scores of people die once again. This time it was in Las Vegas, where a gunman fired upon thousands of people attending a music festival Sunday night. At least 59 people died. More than 500 were wounded. VOA’s Carol Pearson looks at why people commit these atrocities.
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In Zimbabwe, researchers say they are breeding maize that is drought and heat resistant as part of efforts to fight hunger across Africa, where maize is a staple food.
In Hezekaya Village in Gokwe, about 200 kilometers west of Harare, cotton is what most people plant because it can grow in hot, dry weather. But that is slowly changing, thanks to a program of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, funded by USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The head of the center’s southern Africa program, Cosmos Magorogosho, says the vitamin-A fortified, drought-resistant maize varieties being developed will ensure food security across Africa if they are widely adopted.
“Since its inception, this program has been able to produce more than 50,000 tons of maize seed, not just for Zimbabwe, but for Southern Africa, Eastern Africa and West Africa,” Magorogosho said. “And these seeds are certified. They have been produced by seed companies and have been marketed in communities, and communities are benefiting from increased yields.”
According to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Agriculture, this year the country harvested about 2.8 million tons of maize — well above the minimum requirement of 1.8 million tons.
One of the farmers who planted the new seeds is Tariro Mudazvose in Gokwe.
“We managed to have a good harvest in relation to the farming seeds that were distributed to us,” Mudazvose said. “There is much difference with other existing maize seeds because this maize seed reduces hunger and is drought resistant. It produces high yields, and creates food security in our households. We eat sadza three times a day as a result of this seed.”
Eating sadza, a thick corn porridge, three times a day is a luxury for most people in Zimbabwe because of the chronically poor economy and erratic rainfall.
Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, maize production is almost completely dependent on rain, making farmers highly vulnerable to drought.
Magorogosho hopes the new seeds will make farmers more resilient and productive, and put more sadza on tables across Zimbabwe.
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The 2017 Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to three American scientists.
Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young were awarded for their discoveries of the molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm.
“Using fruit flies as a model organism, this year’s Nobel laureates isolated a gene that controls the normal daily biological rhythm,” the award committee said. “They showed that this gene encodes a protein that accumulates in the cell during the night, and is then degraded during the day.”
Circadian rhythms adapt one’s physiology to different phases of the day, influencing sleep, behavior, hormone levels, body temperature and metabolism.
The prize for physiology or medicine is first Nobel Prize awarded each year.
The prizes for physics, chemistry, literature and peace will also be announced from Tuesday to Friday respectively; and the prize for economics on Monday, October 9.
The prize comes with $1.1 million.
Who are they?
Jeffrey C. Hall was born 1945 in New York, USA. He received his doctoral degree in 1971 at the University of Washington in Seattle and was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena from 1971 to 1973. He joined the faculty at Brandeis University in Waltham in 1974. In 2002, he became associated with University of Maine.
Michael Rosbash was born in 1944 in Kansas City, USA. He received his doctoral degree in 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. During the following three years, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Since 1974, he has been on faculty at Brandeis University in Waltham, USA.
Michael W. Young was born in 1949 in Miami, USA. He received his doctoral degree at the University of Texas in Austin in 1975. Between 1975 and 1977, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto. From 1978, he has been on faculty at the Rockefeller University in New York.
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Animals that make the water their home are uniquely sensitive to changes in their liquid world. Oysters are very good at filtering dirty water, and crayfish are very sensitive to changes in water quality. Now scientists in the Czech Republic are using these sensitive bottom dwellers to monitor water quality in a business where clean water matters. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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What makes autistic children different and how can their parents make the best choices to integrate them into daily life, especially with an overwhelming amount of clinical research to consider? In the United States, where an estimated one in 68 children suffer from the condition, thousands of parents are faced with these questions. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan introduces us to a mother who has first-hand experience.
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To mark the International Day of the Older Person, the World Health Organization is calling for a new, integrated approach to meet the health needs of an aging population.
By mid-century, the World Health Organization reports one in five people in the world will be aged 60 or older. As people age, it says they are likely to be afflicted with numerous health problems.
WHO Department of Aging and Life Course Director, John Beard, says older people probably will have more than one chronic disease at the same time. He says knowing how to treat these complex conditions is challenging.
“It has been demonstrated that integrated care that is already into a holistic system of the individual provides much better outcomes than just health services, which respond independently to a specific condition every time somebody presents with them. And, so one of the things we are trying to emphasize is the need to develop these systems of integrated care and chronic care,” he said.
Ed Kelley is Director of the Department of Service Delivery and Safety at WHO. He personally identifies with a health system that does not comprehensively assess the problems of older persons.
“If you take my own father, I have these parents we are dealing with — he is 90 years old, he takes 13 medications, he has got five doctors. None of them talk to each other. And, he is relatively healthy. That is a very typical situation for your average elderly person around the world,” he said.
The World Health Organization says the health of older people would improve if all ailments were taken into consideration when an individual seeks relief for one specific illness or disease. For example, chronic pain might be linked to an individual’s difficulties with hearing, seeing, walking or performing other activities.
A rescued green sea turtle named Picasso was released back into the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, carrying the ashes of a self-taught Texas oceanographer who founded the rehabilitation center that helped nurse it back to health.
Hundreds of well-wishers pressed forward to get better views during a sunset ceremony that effectively allowed Tony Amos, who devoted his life to helping the endangered reptiles, to do so once more in death. On a stretch of beach named in his honor, Amos’ wife, Lynn; his son, Michael; and other relatives sprinkled ashes on the turtle’s back, then watched it slowly flap and craw its way into the waves.
“Come on little turtle, off you go. The sun’s about to set,” called Lynn Amos, when the creature stopped and briefly raised its head, almost as if to acknowledge the onlookers.
Many in attendance were barefoot. Some choked back tears. When the turtle finally disappeared into the shimmering surf, a few cried, “Bye Tony!”
Weathering the hurricane
Amos, 80, died of complications from prostate cancer on Sept. 4, days after Harvey roared ashore as a fearsome Category 4 hurricane. It damaged the Animal Rehabilitation Keep for ailing sea turtles and aquatic birds that Amos opened nearly four decades ago.
But the turtles there weathered the storm well, as their counterparts in the wild also appear to have done, advocates say.
Turtle, bird center battered
At Amos’ turtle and aquatic bird center in the Harvey-ravaged beach town of Port Aransas, the hurricane smashed roof tiles and solar panels and collapsed parts of buildings. Partially submerged concrete tanks housing around 60 rescue turtles were also damaged, but the animals weren’t harmed. Even Barnacle Bill, a 200-plus pound loggerhead who first came to the center in 1997, was fine despite the storm mangling the cover of his pool.
Sea turtles generally are good at avoiding hurricanes except for eggs that can be flooded or babies who are displaced from floating mats of seaweed where they feed, said Jeff George, executive director of Sea Turtle, Inc., a rescue and rehabilitation center on South Padre Island near the Texas-Mexico border. As Harvey approached Texas, George and volunteers scoured the beach and collected about 280 eggs that waited out the storm indoors, inside insolated containers. All but a few hatched and were released about a week later.
In Port Aransas, a few turtles were discovered amid Harvey’s wreckage, but most marine experts say it could have been worse.
Oil spill’s impact
Amos was born in London and went to Bermuda at 17, trying unsuccessfully to engineer a color, flat-screen television. Having never graduated from college, he moved to Port Aransas in 1976 and became an oceanographer for the University of Texas Marine Science Institute.
Three years later, the Ixtoc I exploratory well exploded in the Gulf about 50 miles from Mexico’s coast, and Amos saw the devastating effects of the resulting oil spill on sea life. He later founded the Animal Rehabilitation Keep, which still helps hundreds of turtles and birds annually _ tackling everything from pelicans that swallow plastic to turtles stricken with a tumor-causing virus.
Known for a long, white beard that helped him play Santa Claus at Christmas, Amos collected and analyzed debris on Texas beaches and painstakingly entered findings in databases. He also sailed on marine voyages throughout the world.
At the conclusion of Saturday’s ceremony, some attendees tossed flowers into the surf behind the turtle, but then went to retrieve them, wary that Amos would have objected to littering in the Gulf.
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The World Health Organization warns a highly infectious, deadly form of pneumonic plague is spreading rapidly in Madagascar and quick action is needed to stop it.
Pneumonic plague, which is transmitted from person to person, has been detected in several cities in Madagascar. This worries the World Health Organization as the disease is highly contagious and quickly causes death without treatment.
Plague is endemic to Madagascar resulting in around 400 cases annually. Most are cases of bubonic plague, which is spread by the fleas of rats and other small rodents. The disease is usually confined to rural areas, but this year it has spread to large urban areas and port cities.
WHO spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic, says cases of bubonic, as well as the human transmissible pneumonic plague have been found in the capital Antananarivo and the port cities of Majunga and Toamasina.
“So far, 104 cases of plague were reported since the first case has been identified that was dating from the 23rd of August,” said Jasarevic. “So, from the 23rd of August to 28th September, 104 cases that have been reported, including 20 deaths.”
Jasarevic notes the fatality rate is more than 19 percent. He tells VOA this outbreak is very dangerous and must be brought under control quickly.
“The plague epidemic season usually runs from September to April, so we really are at the beginning of the epidemic season of plague,” said Jasarevic. “And, we have already from the 23rd of August until yesterday—so that is like five-weeks-time—we had 104 cases and again half of those cases were pneumonic plague.”
WHO says urgent public health response in terms of surveillance and treatment is required. The health agency has released $250,000 from its emergency fund to get immediate action underway. It plans to appeal for $1.5 million to fully respond to the needs.
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U.S. billionaire innovator Elon Musk has unveiled plans for a new rocket that would allow passengers to travel from one continent to another in about 30 minutes.
At a presentation Friday in Adelaide, Australia, Musk showed a video of images of a rocket taking off in New York and landing in various places around the world, including Tokyo and Shanghai.
He said the New York-Shanghai trip could be done in 39 minutes, while a trip from Bangkok to Dubai would take 27 minutes and Tokyo to Delhi would be 30 minutes.
He added that the cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft.
Musk noted there is no weather outside the Earth’s atmosphere to interfere with travel times and said that once you are beyond the atmosphere, “it would be as smooth as silk, no turbulence, nothing.”
“If we are building this thing to go to the moon and Mars, then why not go to other places on Earth as well?” Musk said.
Musk, who founded and runs the company SpaceX along with the electric luxury car company Tesla, has long been making plans for rockets to travel to Mars.
Musk said SpaceX plans its first trip to Mars in 2022, carrying only cargo with a key mission to find the best source of water on the Red Planet. That mission would be followed by the first manned mission in 2024. He said the company was aiming to start construction on the first spaceship in the next six to nine months.
Musk said space flights to enable people to travel from one continent to another could help to pay for future missions to Mars.
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