Zimbabwe has recorded more than 7,000 suspected cholera cases and almost 150 deaths
…

The moon glowed in the predawn Mongolia sky as Agvaantogtokh and his family prepared for another big move. On horseback, he rode to a well with nearly a thousand sheep and goats. Occasionally, he and his wife, Nurmaa, stopped to help struggling young ones, weak after a harsh winter.

Thousands of miles away in Senegal, Amadou Altine Ndiaye’s family led livestock through a sparse African savannah. Horses and donkeys pulled a four-cart caravan along dirt paths in sweltering heat. Cattle followed. The family believed the next village would be richer with vegetation.

“I was born into pastoralism, and since then I’ve known only that,” said Ndiaye, 48, a member of the Muslim Fulani ethnic group who learned the ways of herding alongside his elders. “It’s a source of pride.”

More than 50 million people in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere practice this way of life. As nomadic pastoralists, they keep domestic animals and move with them to seek fresh pastures — often selling some livestock for meat.

Although pastoralism has sustained these populations for millennia, it faces mounting pressures from deteriorating environments, shrinking rangelands, and new generations who seek a less grueling life. At the same time, pastoralism is modernizing, with groups leveraging technology.

The practice has survived for so long because it is designed to adapt to a changing environment — pastoralists move with animals to find fresh pasture and water, leaving behind fallow land to regrow.

Experts say it’s a lesson that could help those who raise livestock at larger scales adapt and reduce the impact on the environment. Pastoralists aren’t only trying to outrun climate change; they’re combating it.

‘We need more rain’

Perhaps more than any other place, Mongolia is known for pastoralism. The practice is enshrined in the nation’s constitution, which calls its 80 million camels, yaks, cows, sheep, goats and horses “national wealth” protected by the state.

For families like Agvaantogtokh’s, pastoralism is more than a profession. It’s a cultural identity that connects generations. At its heart is the human connection to animals.

Agvaantogtokh and his family sell animals for meat. They also sell dairy products such as yogurt and hard cheeses. While they consider animals their property, they also see them as living beings working alongside them.

Researchers say herders believe in “animal agency.” Agvaantogtokh lets his livestock pick grass, flowers or herbs to eat, and find their own water. To him, fencing an animal and asking it to eat the same thing daily is like putting a person in prison.

In Mongolia, weather extremes are a part of life. When Agvaantogtokh thinks about climate change, he worries about humans and livestock.

Chronic drought and warming plague Mongolia. Since 1940, the government says, average temperatures have risen 2.2 degrees Celsius. Dzuds — natural disasters unique to Mongolia caused by droughts and severe, snowy winters — have grown harsher and more frequent.

A dzud pushed Agvaantogtokh and his family to move out after a disastrous winter killed 400 of their animals.

The family lives simply. They have a sink with a rubber pump to limit water use. They live in a tent called a ger, with wooden circular frames insulated with sheepskin and felt, and doors facing east to let in the morning sun.

Nurmaa, who married into this way of life, uses a boiler fired with horse dung to cook and stay warm.

“Year by year,” she said, “I have learned a lot of things.” Herding and birthing animals. Setting up camp. Cooking meals of breads, stews, milk tea and homemade wine.

Surviving on the edge of the Sahara

In Senegal, caravans carry the comforts of a furnished home, such as a metal bed frame and mattress, and water for people and animals.

With the rainy season approaching earlier this year, Ndiaye, his son-in-law Moussa Ifra Ba and the rest of the family prepared for a 170-kilometer, 16-day trek.

“The livestock are hungry, and you sometimes have trouble selling one because it is so thin,” Ndiaye said. Water and plentiful grass have become harder to come by.

Ba said: “Many varieties of tree have disappeared, and even our children are unaware of certain species. The best varieties of grass no longer grow in certain areas, and the most widespread grass is more like rubber: It fills the belly but doesn’t nourish the animals.”

Meals for Ndiaye’s family rarely include meat. Only when they pass through certain villages can they stock up on food — vegetables, rice. Per-person meat consumption in Senegal is among the lowest in the world; rates are more than six times higher in Mongolia.

Ndiaye’s family doesn’t sell animals regularly. Meat is mostly for special occasions: weddings, holidays. When they do, a few head of cattle can provide enough money to get married, buy rice or even emigrate.

Ancient practice, new techniques

To keep their practice alive, pastoralists seek ways to modernize.

In Mongolia, Lkhaebum recently began using a motorbike to more easily search for horses. The family has a solar-powered battery that runs a television and washing machine, a karaoke machine, and a cellphone to keep track of weather and access Facebook groups where herders exchange information.

Though modern tools promise to make things easier, many pastoralists run into obstacles. Those in Senegal, for example, often struggle to find cellphone signals. They rely mostly on older technology and methods. An important advancement in infrastructure has helped: water towers known as forages that have sprung up with government assistance.

Perhaps the biggest threat to pastoralism comes from within, as the next generation chooses other paths.

Nurmaa and Agvaantogtokh’s 18-year-old daughter studies medicine. Their son spoke about becoming a herder in his early teens. But not anymore.

“I won’t regret anything if my child won’t be a herder,” Nurmaa said. “I would like them to do what they aspire to do.”

Four of Ndiaye’s seven living children don’t travel with their parents. Ba, 28, and his wife Houraye, 20, have a 2-year-old daughter and want to expand their family. They mused about a future in which at least one child stays in pastoralism while at least one goes to school.

“I’d like my children to keep up with the changing world,” Ba said. 
…

Hundreds of previously unreported workplace injuries surface at a space industry titan. Plus, the European Space Agency chief’s warning on climate change, and we say goodbye to a space travel pioneer. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. A caution to our viewers – this report contains graphic images some may find disturbing.
…

Advances in childhood cancer are a success story in modern medicine. But in the past decade, those strides have stalled for Black and Hispanic youth, opening a gap in death rates, according to a new report published Thursday.

Childhood cancers are rare and treatments have improved drastically in recent decades, saving lives.

Death rates were about the same for Black, Hispanic and white children in 2001, and all went lower during the next decade. But over the next 10 years, only the rate for white children dipped a little lower.

“You can have the most sophisticated scientific advances, but if we can’t deliver them into every community in the same way, then we have not met our goal as a nation,” said Dr. Sharon Castellino, a pediatric cancer specialist at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, who had no role in the new report.

She said the complexity of new cancers treatments such as gene therapy, which can cure some children with leukemia, can burden families and be an impediment to getting care.

“You need at least one parent to quit their job and be there 24/7, and then figure out the situation for the rest of their children,” Castellino said. “It’s not that families don’t want to do that. It’s difficult.”

More social workers are needed to help families file paperwork to get job-protected leave and make sure the child’s health insurance is current and doesn’t lapse.

The overall cancer death rate for children and teenagers in the U.S. declined 24% over the two decades, from 2.75 to 2.10 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

The 2021 rate per 10,000 was 2.38 for Black youth, 2.36 for Hispanics and 1.99 for whites.

Nearly incurable 50 years ago, childhood cancer now is survivable for most patients, especially those with leukemia. The leading cause of cancer deaths in kids is now brain cancer, replacing leukemia.

Each year in the U.S. about 15,000 children and teens are diagnosed with cancer. More than 85% live for at least five years.

The improved survival stems from research collaboration among more than 200 hospitals, said Dr. Paula Aristizabal of the University of California, San Diego. At Rady Children’s Hospital, she is trying to include more Hispanic children, who are underrepresented in research.

“Equity means that we provide support that is tailored to each family,” Aristizabal said.

The National Cancer Institute is working to gather data from every childhood cancer patient with the goal of linking each child to state-of-the-art care. The effort could improve equity, said Dr. Emily Tonorezos, who leads the institute’s work on cancer survivorship.

The CDC’s report is “upsetting and discouraging,” she said. “It gives us a roadmap for where we need to go next.”
…

How was the air breathed by Caesar, the Prophet Mohammed or Christopher Columbus? A giant freezer in Copenhagen holds the answers, storing blocks of ice with atmospheric tales thousands of years old.

The Ice Core Archive, housing 25 kilometres (15 miles) of ice collected primarily from Greenland, is helping scientists understand changes in the climate.

“What we have in this archive is prehistoric climate change, a record of man’s activities in the last 10,000 years,” glaciology professor Jorgen Peder Steffensen of the University of Copenhagen told AFP.

Blocks of ice have been his passion for 43 years — and it was while drilling into Greenland’s ice sheet that he met his wife Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, also a top expert in the field of paleoclimatology.

Steffensen has since 1991 managed the repository, one of the biggest in the world, with 40,000 blocks of ice stacked on long rows of shelves in large boxes.

The frozen samples are unique, made up of compressed snow and not frozen water.

“All the airspace between the snowflakes is trapped as bubbles inside (and) the air inside these bubbles is the same age as the ice,” Steffensen explained.

The repository’s antechamber is similar to a library’s reading room: this is where scientists can examine the ice they have withdrawn from the main “library”, or storage room.

But they must be quick: the temperature in the antechamber is kept at -18 degrees Celsius (-0.4F) — decidedly balmy compared to the -30C (-22F) in the storage room.

Here, Steffensen removes a block of ice from a box. Its air bubbles are visible to the naked eye: it’s snow that fell during the winter of year zero.

“So we have the Christmas stuff, the real Christmas snow,” says Steffensen with a big grin, his head covered in a warm winter bonnet with furry ear flaps.

Bedrock

A team of researchers brought the first ice cores to Denmark in the 1960s from Camp Century, a secret US military base on Greenland.

The most recent ones date from this summer, when scientists hit the bedrock on eastern Greenland at a depth of 2.6 kilometres, gathering the oldest ice possible.

Those samples contain extracts from 120,000 years ago, during the most recent interglacial period when air temperatures in Greenland were 5C higher than today.

“The globe has easily been much warmer than it is today. But that’s before humans were there,” Steffensen said.

This recently acquired ice should help scientists’ understanding of rising sea levels, which can only be partly explained by the shrinking ice cap.

Another part of the explanation comes from ice streams, fast-moving ice on the ice sheet that is melting at an alarming rate.

“If we understand the ice streams better, we can get a better idea of how much the contribution will be (to rising sea levels) from Greenland and Antarctica in the future,” Steffensen said.

He hopes they’ll be able to predict the sea level rise in 100 years with a margin of error of 15 centimetres — a big improvement over today’s 70 centimetres.

‘Treasure’

Ice cores are the only way of determining the state of the atmosphere prior to man-made pollution.

“With ice cores we have mapped out how greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane vary over time,” Steffensen said.

“And we can also see the impact of the burning of fossil fuels in modern times.”

This project is separate from the Ice Memory foundation, which has collected ice cores from 20 sites worldwide to preserve them for future researchers at the French-Italian Concordia research station in Antarctica, before they disappear forever due to climate change.

“Storing Greenland’s ice memory is very good,” said the head of the foundation, Jerome Chappellaz.

But, he noted, the storage of samples in an industrial freezer is susceptible to technical glitches, funding woes, attacks, or even wars.

In 2017, a freezer that broke down at the University of Alberta in Canada exposed 13 percent of its precious samples thousands of years old to undesirably warm temperatures.

At Concordia Station, the average annual temperature is -55C, providing optimal storage conditions for centuries to come.

“They have a treasure,” said Chappellaz, appealing to the Danes to join Concordia’s project.

“We must protect this treasure and, as far as possible, ensure that it joins mankind’s world heritage.”
…

It began as a familiar old story.

In the early 2000s, multinational mining giant Rio Tinto came to the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to dig a nickel mine.

Environmentalists feared pollution. The company promised jobs.

The usual battle lines were drawn. The usual legal fights ensued.

But this time, something different happened.

The mining company invited a respected local environmental group to be an independent watchdog, conducting pollution testing that goes above and beyond what regulators require.

More than a decade has passed, and no major pollution problems have arisen. Community opposition has softened.

“I was fiercely opposed to the mine, and I changed,” said Maura Davenport, board chair of the Superior Watershed Partnership, the environmental group doing the testing.

The agreement between the mining company and the environmentalists is working at a time when demand for nickel and other metals used in green technologies is on the rise, but the mining activity that supplies those metals faces fierce local resistance around the world.

Historic mines, polluting history

The shift to cleaner energy needs copper to wire electrical grids, rare earth elements for wind turbine magnets, lithium for electric vehicle batteries, nickel to make those batteries run longer, and more. Meeting the goals of the 2015 U.N. Paris climate agreement would mean a fourfold increase in demand for metals overall by 2040 and a 19-fold increase in nickel, according to the International Energy Agency.

That means more mines. But mines rarely open anywhere in the world without controversy. Two nearby copper-nickel mine proposals hit major roadblocks this year over environmental concerns.

For the third year running, mining companies listed environmental, social and governance issues as the leading risk facing their businesses in a survey by consulting firm EY.

Mining is not new to the Upper Peninsula, the northern tip of the state of Michigan that is mostly surrounded by the Great Lakes. The region was the nation’s leading copper and iron producer until the late 1800s. An open-pit iron mine still operates about 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of the college town of Marquette.

Most of the historic copper mines closed in the 1930s. But the waste they left behind is still polluting today.

Residue left over from pulverizing copper ore, known as stamp sands, continues to drift into Lake Superior, leaching toxic levels of copper into the water.

“The whole history of mining is so bad, and we feared … for our precious land,” Davenport said.

The ore Rio Tinto sought is in a form known as nickel sulfide. When those rocks are exposed to air and water, they produce sulfuric acid. Acid mine drainage pollutes thousands of kilometers of water bodies across the United States. At its worst, it can render a stream nearly lifeless.

When Rio Tinto proposed building the Eagle Mine about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Marquette, “it divided our community,” Davenport said.

“The Marquette community was against the mine,” she said, but the “iron ore miners, they were all about it.”

Mining dilemma

It’s the same story the world over, according to Simon Nish, who worked for Rio Tinto at the time.

“Communities are faced with this dilemma,” Nish said. “We want jobs, we want economic benefit. We don’t want long-term environmental consequences. We don’t really trust the regulator. We don’t trust the company. We don’t trust the activists. … In the absence of trusted information, we’re probably going to say no.”

Nish came from Australia, where a legal reckoning had taken place in the 1990s over the land rights of the country’s indigenous peoples. Early in his career, he worked as a mediator for the National Native Title Tribunal, which brokered agreements between Aboriginal peoples and resource companies who wanted to use their land.

It was a formative experience.

“On the resource company side, you can crash through and get a short-term deal, but that’s actually not benefiting anybody,” he said. “If you want to get a long-term outcome, you’ve actually really got to understand the interests of both sides.”

“Absolutely skeptical”

When Nish arrived in Michigan in 2011, Rio Tinto’s Eagle Mine was under construction but faced multiple lawsuits from community opponents.

In order to quell the controversy, Nish knew that Rio Tinto needed a partner that the community could trust. So he approached the Superior Watershed Partnership with an unusual offer. The group was already running programs testing local waterways for pollution. Would they be willing to discuss running a program to monitor the mine?

“We were surprised. We were skeptical. Absolutely skeptical,” Davenport said. But they agreed to discuss it.

SWP insisted on full, unfettered access to monitor “anything, any time, anywhere,” Nish said.

SWP’s position toward Rio Tinto was “very, very clear,” he recalled: “‘We’ve spent a long time building our reputation, our credibility here. We aren’t going to burn it for you guys.'”

Over the course of several months — “remarkably fast,” as these things go, Nish said — the environmental group and the mining company managed to work out an agreement.

SWP would monitor the rivers, streams and groundwater for pollution from the mine and the ore-processing mill 30 kilometers (19 miles) south. It would test food and medicinal plants important for the local Native American tribe. And it would post the results of these and other tests online for the public to see.

And Rio Tinto would pay for the work. A respected local community foundation would handle the funds. Rio Tinto’s funding would be at arm’s length from SWP.

“We didn’t want to be on their payroll,” said Richard Anderson, who chaired the SWP board at the time. “That could not be part of the structure.”

Not over yet

The agreement launching the Community Environmental Monitoring Program was signed in 2012. More than a decade later, no major pollution problems have turned up.

But other local environmentalists are cautious.

“I do think [Eagle Mine is] really trying to do a good job environmentally,” said Rochelle Dale, head of the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, another local environmental group that has opposed the mine.

“On the other hand, a lot of the sulfide mines in the past haven’t really had a problem until after closure.

“It’s something that our grandchildren are going to inherit,” she said.

As demand for metals heats up, opposition to new mines is not cooling off. Experts say mining companies are wising up to the need for community buy-in. Eagle Mine’s Community Environmental Monitoring Program points to one option, but also its limitations.

So far, so good. But the story’s not over yet.
…

A new report says heat-related deaths will increase 370 percent by 2050 if global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, as predicted. 

The findings were part of a report published Wednesday in the medical journal Lancet’s annual assessment, known as the Coundown, on the effects of climate change on public health.  

The Countdown found that the number of heat-related deaths among people aged 65 and older has risen 85% over the last decade compared to the years between 1991 and 2000.  The study found that people around the world were exposed to an average of 86 days of life-threatening high temperatures.  

The study also projected that more than 500 million more people could be at risk for food insecurity by mid-century from droughts triggered by more frequent heatwaves.

The international team of experts that conducted the Lancet study criticized the rise in fossil fuel production, helped by massive government subsidies and investments by private banks.  

A study released last week by the U.N. Environment Program says 20 of the world’s major fossil fuel-producing nations are on track to produce about 110% more oil, gas and coal in 2030 than the amounts consistent with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

Holding down global temperatures to a 1.5 degree increase compared with pre-industrial levels was a key goal of the global climate pact signed in Paris in 2015.  

The 20 countries in the report include Australia, Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, which account for 82% of fossil fuel production and 73% of consumption.   

The report says none of the nations have committed to reducing production of oil, gas and coal to levels that would meet the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. 
…

Rheumatology diseases were previously considered to be rare in Africa but that is changing, as the number of cases is on the rise. Health experts attribute the trend to changing lifestyles on the continent. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. (Camera and video editing: Jimmy Makhulo)
…

Fifty young innovators and leaders from 19 African countries attended a three-week leadership and professional development training program in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Sponsored by the U.S. government, the Young African Leaders Initiative, or YALI, program challenges them to find technology-focused social and business solutions to climate challenges. Isaac Kaledzi has more from Accra.
…

Almost two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, combat medics have started to perform blood transfusions in the trenches. To carry out this crucial task, the medics are undergoing specialized training. Myroslava Gongadze reports from Bucha, Ukraine. Camera — Eugene Shynkar.
…

Earlier this year, the doctor who leads the World Health Organization’s efforts to prevent sexual abuse traveled to Congo to address the biggest known sex scandal in the U.N. health agency’s history, the abuse of well over 100 local women by staffers and others during a deadly Ebola outbreak.

According to an internal WHO report from Dr. Gaya Gamhewage’s trip in March, one of the abused women she met gave birth to a baby with “a malformation that required special medical treatment,” meaning even more costs for the young mother in one of the world’s poorest countries.

To help victims like her, the WHO has paid $250 each to at least 104 women in Congo who say they were sexually abused or exploited by officials working to stop Ebola. That amount per victim is less than a single day’s expenses for some U.N. officials working in the Congolese capital — and $19 more than what Gamhewage received per day during her three-day visit — according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The amount covers typical living expenses for less than four months in a country where, the WHO documents noted, many people survive on less than $2.15 a day.

The payments to women didn’t come freely. To receive the cash, they were required to complete training courses intended to help them start “income-generating activities.”

The payments appear to try to circumvent the U.N.’s stated policy that it doesn’t pay reparations by including the money in what it calls a “complete package” of support.

Many Congolese women who were sexually abused have still received nothing. WHO said in a confidential document last month that about a third of the known victims were “impossible to locate.” The WHO said nearly a dozen women declined its offer.

The total of $26,000 that WHO has provided to the victims equals about 1% of the $2 million, WHO-created “survivor assistance fund” for victims of sexual misconduct, primarily in Congo.

In interviews, recipients told the AP the money they received was hardly enough, but they wanted justice even more.

Paula Donovan, who co-directs the Code Blue campaign to eliminate what it calls impunity for sexual misconduct in the U.N., described the WHO payments to victims of sexual abuse and exploitation as “perverse.”

“It’s not unheard of for the U.N. to give people seed money so they can boost their livelihoods, but to mesh that with compensation for a sexual assault, or a crime that results in the birth of a baby, is unthinkable,” she said.

Requiring the women to attend training before receiving the cash set uncomfortable conditions for victims of wrongdoing seeking help, Donovan added.

The two women who met with Gamhewage told her that what they most wanted was for the “perpetrators to be brought to account so they could not harm anyone else,” the WHO documents said. The women were not named.

“There is nothing we can do to make up for (sexual abuse and exploitation),” Gamhewage told the AP in an interview.

The WHO told the AP that criteria to determine its “victim survivor package” included the cost of food in Congo and “global guidance on not dispensing more cash than what would be reasonable for the community, in order to not expose recipients to further harm.” Gamhewage said the WHO was following recommendations set by experts at local charities and other U.N. agencies.

“Obviously, we haven’t done enough,” Gamhewage said. She added the WHO would ask survivors directly what further support they wanted.

The WHO has also helped defray medical costs for 17 children born as a result of sexual exploitation and abuse, she said.

At least one woman who said she was sexually exploited and impregnated by a WHO doctor negotiated compensation that agency officials signed off on, including a plot of land and health care. The doctor also agreed to pay $100 a month until the baby was born in a deal “to protect the integrity and reputation of WHO.”

But in interviews with the AP, other women who say they were sexually exploited by WHO staff asserted the agency hasn’t done enough.

Alphonsine, 34, said she was pressured into having sex with a WHO official in exchange for a job as an infection control worker with the Ebola response team in the eastern Congo city of Beni, an epicenter of the 2018-2020 outbreak. Like other women, she did not share her last name for fear of reprisals.

Alphonsine confirmed that she had received $250 from the WHO, but the agency told her she had to take a baking course to obtain it.

“The money helped at the time, but it wasn’t enough,” Alphonsine said. She said she later went bankrupt and would have preferred to receive a plot of land and enough money to start her own business.

For a visiting WHO staffer working in Congo, the standard daily allowance ranges from about $144 to $480. Gamhewage received $231 a day during her three-day trip to the Congolese capital Kinshasa, according to an internal travel claim.

The internal documents show that staff costs take up more than half of the $1.5 million the WHO allotted toward the prevention of sexual misconduct in Congo for 2022-2023, or $821,856. Another 12% goes to prevention activities and 35%, or $535,000, is for “victim support,” which Gamhewage said includes legal assistance, transportation and psychological support. That budget is separate from the $2 million survivors’ assistance fund, which assists victims globally.

The WHO’s Congo office has a total allocated budget of about $174 million, and its biggest funder is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The U.N. health agency continues to struggle with holding perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation to account in Congo. A WHO-commissioned panel found at least 83 perpetrators during the Ebola response, including at least 21 WHO staffers. The youngest known victim was 13.

In May 2021, an AP investigation revealed that senior WHO management was told of sexual exploitation during the agency’s efforts to curb Ebola even as the abuse was happening but did little to stop it. No senior managers, including some who were aware of the abuse during the outbreak, were fired.

After years of pressure from Congolese authorities, the WHO internal documents note it has shared information with them about 16 alleged perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation who were linked to the WHO during the Ebola outbreak.

But the WHO hasn’t done enough to discipline its people, said another Congolese woman who said she was coerced into having sex with a staffer to get a job during the outbreak. She, too, received $250 from the WHO after taking a baking course.

“They promised to show us evidence this has been taken care of, but there has been no follow-up,” said Denise, 31.

The WHO has said five staffers have been dismissed for sexual misconduct since 2021.

But in Congo, deep distrust remains.

Audia, 24, told the AP she was impregnated when a WHO official forced her to have sex to get a job during the outbreak. She now has a 5-year-old daughter as a result and received a “really insufficient” $250 from WHO after taking courses in tailoring and baking.

She worries about what might happen in a future health crisis in conflict-hit eastern Congo, where poor infrastructure and resources mean any emergency response relies heavily on outside help from the WHO and others.

“I can’t put my trust in (WHO) anymore,” she said. “When they abandon you in such difficulties and leave you without doing anything, it’s irresponsible.”
…

The Biden administration on Monday announced a White House initiative to improve how the federal government approaches and funds research into the health of women, who make up more than half of the U.S. population but remain understudied and underrepresented in health research. 

That underrepresentation can lead to big gaps in research and potentially serious consequences for the health of women across the country, Biden administration officials and others told reporters during a White House conference call to announce the new effort. 

The White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research will be led by first lady Jill Biden and the White House Gender Policy Council. 

President Joe Biden said he’s long been a believer in the “power of research” to help save lives and get high-quality health care to the people who need it. Surrounded by the first lady and other officials who will have a role in the government-wide effort, Biden signed paperwork Monday in the Oval Office to direct federal departments and agencies to begin their work. 

“To achieve scientific breakthroughs and strengthen our ability to prevent, detect and treat diseases, we have to be bold,” the president said in a written statement. He said the initiative will “drive innovation in women’s health and close research gaps.” 

Jill Biden said during the conference call that she met earlier this year with former California first lady and women’s health advocate Maria Shriver, who “raised the need for an effort inside and outside government to close the research gaps in women’s health that have persisted far too long.” 

“When I brought this issue to my husband, Joe, a few months ago, he listened. And then he took action,” the first lady said. “That is what he does.” 

Jill Biden has worked on women’s health issues since the early 1990s after several of her friends were diagnosed with breast cancer, and she created a program in Delaware to teach high school girls about breast health care. 

Shriver said she and other advocates of women’s health have spent decades asking for equity in research but that the Democratic president and first lady “understand that we cannot answer the question of how to treat women medically if we do not have the answers that only come from research.” 

Shriver said women make up two-thirds of those afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis and represent more than three-fourths of those who are diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. 

Women suffer from depression and anxiety at twice the levels of men, and women of color are two to three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women, she said. Millions of other women grapple daily with the side effects of menopause. 

“The bottom line is that we can’t treat or prevent them from becoming sick if we have not invested in funding the necessary research,” Shriver said on the call. “That changes today.” 

Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, said the leaders of government departments and agencies important to women’s health research will participate, including those from the departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Defense and the National Institutes of Health, among others. 

Women’s health issues were raised by most of the women on the Senate health committee during its recent confirmation hearing on Dr. Monica Bertagnolli’s nomination to become permanent director of the National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s leading biomedical research agencies. Bertagnolli gave a broad answer in which she said far too little is known about women’s health through all stages of life. 

President Biden’s memorandum directs members to report back within 45 days with “concrete recommendations” to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of women’s health issues. It also asks them to set “priority areas of focus,” such as research ranging from heart attacks in women to menopause, where additional investments could be “transformative.” 

The president also wants collaboration with the scientific, private sector and philanthropic communities. 

Carolyn Mazure will chair the research effort. Mazure joined the first lady’s office from the Yale School of Medicine, where she created its Women’s Health Research Center. 
…

In the Western United States, foresters are working to minimize threats from wildfires by thinning nearly 20 million hectares of forests. From the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado, Shelley Schlender reports on how scientists are using mushrooms to reduce wildfire risks organically.
…

Residents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland left their homes Saturday after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency in the region.

Police decided to evacuate Grindavik after recent seismic activity in the area moved south toward the town and monitoring indicated that a corridor of magma, or semi-molten rock, now extends under the community, Iceland’s Meteorological Office said. The town of 3,400 is on the Reykjanes Peninsula, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik.

“At this stage, it is not possible to determine exactly whether and where magma might reach the surface,” the Meteorological Office said.

Authorities also raised their aviation alert to orange, indicating an increased risk of a volcanic eruption. Volcanic eruptions pose a serious hazard to aviation because they can spew highly abrasive ash high into the atmosphere, where it can cause jet engines to fail, damage flight control systems and reduce visibility.

A major eruption in Iceland in 2010 caused widespread disruption to air travel between Europe and North America, costing airlines an estimated $3 billion as they canceled more than 100,000 flights.

The evacuation comes after the region was shaken by hundreds of small earthquakes every day for more than two weeks as scientists monitor a buildup of magma some 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) underground.

Concern about a possible eruption increased in the early hours Thursday when a magnitude 4.8 earthquake hit the area, forcing the internationally known Blue Lagoon geothermal resort to close temporarily.

The seismic activity started in an area north of Grindavik where there is a network of 2,000-year-old craters, geology professor Pall Einarrson, told Iceland’s RUV. The magma corridor is about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) long and spreading, he said.

“The biggest earthquakes originated there, under this old series of craters, but since then it [the magma corridor] has been getting longer, went under the urban area in Grindavík and is heading even further and towards the sea,” he said. 
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Hundreds of environmental activists marched in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Saturday demanding drastic curbs on plastic production, ahead of a meeting to negotiate a global plastics treaty.

Representatives of more than 170 nations will meet in Nairobi Monday to negotiate what concrete measures should be included in a binding worldwide treaty to end plastic pollution.

Marchers waved placards reading “Plastic crisis = climate crisis” and “End multigenerational toxic exposure.”

They chanted “let polluters pay the price” as they walked slowly behind a ceremonial band from central Nairobi to a park in the west of the capital.

Nations agreed last year to finalize by 2024 a world-first U.N. treaty to address the scourge of plastics found everywhere from mountain tops to ocean depths and within human blood and breast milk.

Negotiators have met twice already but Nairobi is the first opportunity to debate a draft treaty published in September that outlines the many pathways to tackling the plastic problem.

The Nov. 13-19 meeting is the third of five sessions in a fast-tracked process aiming to conclude negotiations next year so the treaty can be adopted by mid-2025.

At the last talks in Paris, campaigners accused large plastic-producing nations of deliberately stalling after two days were lost debating procedural points.

This time around, the sessions have been extended by two days but there are still concerns a weaker treaty could emerge if time for detailed discussion is swallowed up going in circles.

Global plastic production has more than doubled since the start of the century to reach 460 million tons and it could triple by 2060 if nothing is done. Only nine percent is currently recycled.

Microplastics have been found everywhere from clouds to the deepest sea trenches, as well as throughout the human body.

The effects of plastics on human health remain poorly understood but there is growing concern among scientists.

Plastic also contributes to global warming, accounting for 3.4% of global emissions in 2019, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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The proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements has hit its highest level ever, 3%, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

More parents are questioning routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect of the political schism that emerged during the pandemic around COVID-19 vaccines, experts say.

Even though more kids were given exemptions, the national vaccination rate held steady: 93% of kindergartners got their required shots for the 2022-23 school year, the same as the year before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Thursday. The rate was 95% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The bad news is that it’s gone down since the pandemic and still hasn’t rebounded,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious diseases specialist. “The good news is that the vast majority of parents are still vaccinating their kids according to the recommended schedule.”

All U.S. states and territories require that children attending child care centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including, measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.

All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevents them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.

In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has inched up, lifting the overall exemption rate from 1.6% in the 2011-12 school year to 3% last year.

Last year, more than 115,000 kindergartners were exempt from at least one vaccine, the CDC estimated.

The rates vary across the country.

Ten states — all in the West or Midwest — reported that more than 5% of kindergartners were exempted from at least one kind of required vaccine. Idaho had the highest percentage, with 12% of kindergartners receiving at least one exemption. In contrast, 0.1% had exemptions in New York.

The rates can be influenced by state laws or policies can make it harder or easier to obtain exemptions, and by local attitudes among families and doctors about the need to get children vaccinated.

“Sometimes these jumps in exemptions can be very local, and it may not reflect a whole state,” said O’Leary, who chairs an American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases.

Hawaii saw the largest jump, with the exemption rate rising to 6.4%, nearly double the year before.

Officials there said it’s not due to any law or policy change. Rather, “we have observed that there has been misinformation/disinformation impacting people’s decision to vaccinate or not via social media platforms,” officials at the state’s health department said in a statement.

Connecticut and Maine saw significant declines, which CDC officials attributed to recent policy changes that made it harder to get exemptions.

Health officials say attaining 95% vaccination coverage is important to prevent outbreaks of preventable diseases, especially of measles, which is extremely contagious.

The U.S. has seen measles outbreaks begin when travelers infected elsewhere came to communities with low vaccination rates. That happened in 2019 when about 1,300 measles cases were reported — the most in the U.S. in nearly 30 years. Most of the cases were in were in Orthodox Jewish communities with low vaccination rates.

One apparent paradox in the report: The national vaccination rate held steady even as exemptions increased. How could that be?

CDC officials say it’s because there are actually three groups of children in the vaccination statistics. One is those who get all the shots. A second is those who get exemptions. The third are children who didn’t seek exemptions but also didn’t get all their shots and paperwork completed at the time the data was collected.

“Last year, those kids in that third group probably decreased,” offsetting the increase in the exemption group, the CDC’s Shannon Stokley said.
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Global cases of tuberculosis continued to rise last year, as disruption to health services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic set back efforts to fight the disease, according to the latest annual report from the World Health Organization. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Iceland declared a state of emergency on Friday after a series of powerful earthquakes rocked the country’s southwestern Reykjanes peninsula in what could be a precursor to a volcanic eruption. 

“The National police chief … declares a state of emergency for civil defense due to the intense earthquake (activity) at Sundhnjukagigar, north of Grindavik,” the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said in a statement. 

“Earthquakes can become larger than those that have occurred, and this series of events could lead to an eruption,” the administration warned. 

The Icelandic Met Office (IMO) said an eruption could take place “in several days.” 

The village of Grindavik, home to around 4,000 people, is located some three kilometers (1.86 miles) southwest of the area where Friday’s earthquake swarm was registered. 

It has evacuation plans in place in case of an eruption. 

Thousands of tremors since October

Around 1730 GMT, two strong earthquakes were felt as far away as the capital Reykjavik some 40 kilometers away, and along much of the country’s southern coast, rattling windows and household objects. 

According to preliminary IMO figures, the biggest tremor had a magnitude of 5.2, north of Grindavik. 

Police closed a road running north-south to Grindavik on Friday after it was damaged by the tremors. 

Some 24,000 tremors have been registered on the peninsula since late October, according to the IMO, with “a dense swarm” of nearly 800 quakes registered between midnight and 1400 GMT Friday. 

The IMO noted an accumulation of magma underground at a depth of about five kilometers (3.1 miles). Should it start moving towards the surface, it could lead to a volcanic eruption. 

“The most likely scenario is that it will take several days rather than hours for magma to reach the surface,” it said. “If a fissure were to appear where the seismic activity is at its highest now, lava would flow to the southeast and to the west, but not towards Grindavik.” 

Nonetheless, the Department of Civil Protection said it was sending the patrol vessel Thor to Grindavik “for security purposes.” 

Emergency shelters and help centers were to open in Grindavik later Friday, as well as three other locations in southern Iceland, for information purposes and to assist people on the move. 

On Thursday, the Blue Lagoon, a popular tourist destination located near Grindavik famed for its geothermal spas and luxury hotels, closed as a precaution following another earthquake swarm. 

Also nearby is the Svartsengi geothermal plant, the main supplier of electricity and water to 30,000 residents on the Reykjanes peninsula. 

The plant has contingency plans in place to protect the plant and its workers in the event of an eruption. 

Since 2021, three eruptions have taken place on the Reykjanes peninsula, in March 2021, August 2022 and July 2023.  

Those three were located far from any infrastructure or populated areas. 

Cycle could could last decades, centuries

Iceland has 33 active volcanic systems, the highest number in Europe. 

The North Atlantic island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a crack in the ocean floor separating the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. 

Prior to the March 2021 eruption in an uninhabited area around Mount Fagradalsfjall, the Reykjanes volcanic system had remained dormant for eight centuries. 

Volcanologists believe the new cycle of increased activity could last for several decades or centuries. 

An April 2010 massive eruption at another Iceland volcano, the Eyjafjallajokull in the south of the island, forced the cancellation of some 100,000 flights, leaving more than 10 million travelers stranded. 
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Global cases of tuberculosis — also known as TB — continued to rise last year as disruption to health services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic set back efforts to fight the disease, according to the latest report from the World Health Organization.

Tuberculosis, an infectious disease that usually attacks the lungs, is both preventable and curable. It caused an estimated 1.3 million deaths in 2022 — a 19% drop from the year before, said the annual WHO report published last week.

However, there was a small increase in the number of global TB cases to an estimated 10.6 million. Some 40% of people living with TB are undiagnosed and untreated.

The disease is just behind COVID-19 as the world’s deadliest infectious illness, with India, Indonesia and the Philippines particularly affected.

COVID disruption

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, saw health services overwhelmed in many parts of the world. TB diagnosis and treatment levels plummeted, said Dr. Lucica Ditiu, the executive director of the Geneva-based Stop TB Partnership.

“Unfortunately, the incidence of TB is growing. We used to have a decline of 2% per year. And then due to COVID, we have now an increase for the last two years — 2021 and 2022 — of almost 4%,” she told VOA.

The World Health Organization estimates COVID-related disruptions resulted in almost half a million excess deaths from TB in the three years from 2020 to 2022.

Childhood TB

The report also reveals a concerning lack of progress in some areas, according to Ditiu.

“We see … a pretty difficult situation for people with drug-resistant TB as well as childhood TB. So [with] drug-resistant TB, just short of 200,000 were diagnosed and put in treatment,” she said. “And exactly as the WHO said, two out of five people with drug-resistant TB had access to drug-resistant TB treatment. It’s actually the access to diagnosis which is limiting that.”

Ditiu said there are an estimated 1.3 million children with TB, about 12% of the world total. Children make up 16% of those who die from TB, she said.

Improved diagnosis

However, the focus on fighting tuberculosis appears to be getting back on track. The total number of cases diagnosed globally last year was 7.5 million, the highest ever recorded.

“This shows that the countries buckled up to recover after COVID – and even jump above the level before COVID,” Ditiu said.

Vaccine hopes

A promising TB vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline, known as M72, is currently in the final stage of trials. Sixteen other vaccines are undergoing earlier stages of testing.

“We need a vaccine. So that will be the game changer,” said Ditiu.

The 19% fall in deaths from TB from 2018 to 2022 is still far short of the World Health Organization’s target of a 75% reduction by 2025.

Funding also fell short, reaching less than half of the WHO target of at least $13 billion on TB diagnosis, treatment and prevention services in 2022.

Governments committed to spending $22 billion a year on TB by 2027 at a special U.N. meeting in September.
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The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration — NOAA — reports the U.S. has seen 25 separate weather or climate “disasters” — events causing damage or losses exceeding $1 billion — so far this year, the highest number since the agency began tracking such events 43 years ago.  

In a report issued this week, NOAA said severe thunderstorms moving through Oklahoma and other southern Plains states September 23 and 24 brought high winds and large hail, causing enough damage to rank as the 25th weather disaster so far in 2023. 

The agency said disasters through October of this year included 19 severe storms, two flooding events, a winter storm in the northeastern U.S., a drought and heat wave in the central and southern states, one wildfire (on Maui in August), and one tropical cyclone (Hurricane Idalia in Florida). 

NOAA said these events took the lives of 464 people and had a severe economic impact on the regions where they occurred. The total cost in damages from these events was more than $73 billion. The year-to-date tally exceeds 2020, which saw 19 disasters through October.  

NOAA reports the annual average number of such disaster events between 1980 and 2022 was 8.1 per year. The agency reports the annual average jumped in the most recent five years (2018-2022) to 18 disasters per year. 

Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 373 separate weather and climate events resulting in overall damages or costs reaching or exceeding $1 billion, according to NOAA. The total cost of these 373 events exceeds $2.645 trillion. 
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U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said talks this week with his Chinese counterpart resulted in “some agreement” on climate issues that leave him optimistic about the U.N. climate summit scheduled for later this month in Dubai. 

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, Kerry said Friday that he met for four days this week with Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in California. He described their talks as “productive” and, without providing details, said they had reached “some agreement on reducing emissions and the direction we have to go.” 

Kerry said, “I am hopeful about that,” adding that details of the agreements would be released soon. 

The U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, is scheduled for the end of this month. The climate conference seeks to meet and expand on climate goals established during the Paris agreement of 2015, in which some 200 nations agreed to limit the rise of global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or about pre-industrial age levels. 

Kerry said the goal, as in the previous climate conferences, “is to open up the opportunity to keep 1.5 degrees alive.” 

Any agreements between the United States and China — the world’s two largest polluters — would be integral to the success of the conference. 

The U.S. climate envoy said the use of fossil fuels — coal in particular — is likely to be a central part of the discussion at the conference. China is the world’s largest user of fossil fuels and relies on coal for most of its energy production. 

In comments at the Singapore forum Friday, Kerry said, “It is irresponsible to be funding or building a coal-fired power plant anywhere in the world. And who is allowed to get away with doing that, when it is not the only option for what we could be doing.” 

Reuters reports Xie told a diplomatic climate forum in September that phasing out fossil fuels is “unrealistic” for China. 

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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Warmer ocean temperatures are hurting coral reefs off the U.S. state of Florida. For VOA, Genia Dulot took a look at what’s happening underwater.
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Rain in New Delhi and its suburbs brought relief Friday morning to the Indian capital, where authorities were mulling seeding clouds to improve the toxic air gripping the city.

New Delhi, which was the most polluted in the world until Thursday, saw its air quality index (AQI) improve to 127 early Friday – a welcome change from the “hazardous” 400-500 level seen during the past week, according to the Swiss group IQAir.

India’s weather department has forecast intermittent rain over the city and adjoining areas until early noon on Friday. Light showers are also expected in neighboring states like Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan.

On Friday morning, New Delhi was the 10th most polluted city in the world, while Kolkata, in India’s east, topped the global chart with an AQI of 303.

Meanwhile, air in the financial capital of Mumbai has markedly improved due to showers in nearby coastal areas.

This year, attention on the worsening air quality has cast a shadow over the cricket World Cup hosted by India.

Scientists and authorities were planning to seed clouds in New Delhi around Nov. 20 to trigger heavy rain, the first such attempt to clean the air.

A thick layer of smog envelops the city every year ahead of winter as heavy, cold air traps dust, vehicle emissions and smoke from burning crop stubble in Punjab and Haryana.

Friday’s rain comes two days before the Diwali festival, when many people defy a ban on firecrackers, causing a spike in air pollution.

The local government of the city of 20 million people, spread over roughly 1,500 square kilometers, has already closed all schools, stopped construction activities, and said it will impose restrictions on vehicle use to control pollution.
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Surgeons have performed the world’s first transplant of an entire human eye, an extraordinary addition to a face transplant — although it’s far too soon to know if the man will ever see through his new left eye. 

An accident with high-voltage power lines destroyed most of Aaron James’ face and one eye. His right eye still works. But surgeons at NYU Langone Health hoped replacing the missing one would yield better cosmetic results for his new face, because it would support the transplanted eye socket and lid. 

The NYU team announced Thursday that so far, it’s doing just that. James is recovering well from the dual transplant last May, and the donated eye looks remarkably healthy. 

“It feels good. I still don’t have any movement in it yet. My eyelid, I can’t blink yet. But I’m getting sensation now,” James told The Associated Press as doctors examined his progress recently. 

“You got to start somewhere, there’s got to be a first person somewhere,” said James, 46, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. “Maybe you’ll learn something from it that will help the next person.” 

Today, transplants of the cornea — the clear tissue in front of the eye — are common to treat certain types of vision loss. But transplanting the whole eye — the eyeball, its blood supply and the critical optic nerve that must connect it to the brain — is considered a moonshot in the quest to cure blindness. 

Whatever happens next, James’ surgery offers scientists an unprecedented window into how the human eye tries to heal. 

“We’re not claiming that we are going to restore sight,” said Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez, NYU’s plastic surgery chief, who led the transplant. “But there’s no doubt in my mind we are one step closer.” 

Some specialists had feared the eye would quickly shrivel like a raisin. Instead, when Rodriguez propped open James’ left eyelid last month, the donated hazel-colored eye was as plump and full of fluid as his own blue eye. Doctors see good blood flow and no sign of rejection. 

Now researchers have begun analyzing scans of James’ brain that detected some puzzling signals from that all-important but injured optic nerve. 

One scientist who has long studied how to make eye transplants a reality called the surgery exciting. 

“It’s an amazing validation” of animal experiments that have kept transplanted eyes alive, said Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg, chair of ophthalmology at Stanford University. 

The hurdle is how to regrow the optic nerve, although animal studies are making strides, Goldberg said. He praised the NYU team’s “audacity” in even aiming for optic nerve repair and said he hopes the transplant will spur more research. 

“We’re really on the precipice of being able to do this,” Goldberg said. 

James was working for a power line company in June 2021 when he was shocked by a live wire. He nearly died. Ultimately, he lost his left arm, requiring a prosthetic. His damaged left eye was so painful it had to be removed. Multiple reconstructive surgeries couldn’t repair extensive facial injuries including his missing nose and lips. 

James pushed through physical therapy until he was strong enough to escort his daughter Allie to a high school homecoming ceremony, wearing a face mask and eye patch. Still, he required breathing and feeding tubes, and he longed to smell, taste and eat solid food again. 

“In his mind and his heart, it’s him — so I didn’t care that, you know, he didn’t have a nose. But I did care that it bothered him,” said his wife, Meagan James. 

Face transplants remain rare and risky. James’ is only the 19th in the United States, the fifth Rodriguez has performed. The eye experiment added even more complexity. But James figured he’d be no worse off if the donated eye failed. 

Three months after James was placed on the national transplant waiting list, a matching donor was found. Kidneys, a liver and pancreas from the donor, a man in his 30s, saved three other people. 

During James’ 21-hour operation, surgeons added another experimental twist: When they spliced together the donated optic nerve to what remained of James’ original, they injected special stem cells from the donor in hopes of spurring its repair. 

Last month, tingles heralded healing facial nerves. James can’t yet open the eyelid and wears a patch to protect it. But as Rodriguez pushed on the closed eye, James felt a sensation — although on his nose rather than his eyelid, presumably until slow-growing nerves get reoriented. The surgeon also detected subtle movements beginning in muscles around the eye. 

Then came a closer look. NYU ophthalmologist Dr. Vaidehi Dedania ran a battery of tests. She found expected damage in the light-sensing retina in the back of the eye. But she said it appears to have enough special cells called photoreceptors to do the job of converting light to electrical signals, one step in creating vision. 

Normally, the optic nerve then would send those signals to the brain to be interpreted. James’ optic nerve clearly hasn’t healed. Yet when light was flashed into the donated eye during an MRI, the scan recorded some sort of brain signaling. 

That both excited and baffled researchers, although it wasn’t the right type for vision and may simply be a fluke, cautioned Dr. Steven Galetta, NYU’s neurology chair. Only time and more study may tell. 

As for James, “we’re just taking it one day at a time,” he said. 
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