Here we go again: COVID-19 hospital admissions have inched upward in the United States since early July in a small-scale echo of the three previous summers.

With an updated vaccine still months away, this summer bump in new hospitalizations might be concerning, but the number of patients is far lower than before. A look at what we know:

How bad is the spike?

For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week.

But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022.

“It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It’s likely that infections are rising too, but the data is scant. Federal authorities ended the public health emergency in May, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states no longer track the number of positive test results.

What about deaths?

Since early June, about 500 to 600 people have died each week. The number of deaths appears to be stable this summer, although past increases in deaths have lagged behind hospitalizations.

How are we tracking the virus?

The amount of the COVID-19 virus in sewage water has been rising since late June across the nation. In the coming weeks, health officials say they’ll keep a close eye on wastewater levels as people return from summer travel and students go back to school.

Higher levels of COVID-19 in wastewater concentrations are being found in the Northeast and South, said Cristin Young, an epidemiologist at Biobot Analytics, the CDC’s wastewater surveillance contractor.

“It’s important to remember right now the concentrations are still fairly low,” Young said, adding it’s about 2.5 times lower than last summer.

And while one version of omicron — EG.5 — is appearing more frequently, no particular variant of the virus is dominant. The variant has been dubbed “eris” but it’s an unofficial nickname and scientists aren’t using it.

“There are a couple that we’re watching, but we’re not seeing anything like delta or omicron,” Young said, referencing variants that fueled previous surges.

And mutations in the virus don’t necessarily make it more dangerous.

“Just because we have a new subvariant doesn’t mean that we are destined to have an increase in bad outcomes,” Dowdy said.

When is the new vaccine coming?

This fall, officials expect to see updated COVID-19 vaccines that contain one version of the omicron strain, called XBB.1.5. It’s an important change from today’s combination shots, which mix the original coronavirus strain with last year’s most common omicron variants.

It’s not clear exactly when people can start rolling up their sleeves for what officials hope is an annual fall COVID-19 shot. Pfizer, Moderna and smaller manufacturer Novavax all are brewing doses of the XBB update but the Food and Drug Administration will have to sign off on each, and the CDC must then issue recommendations for their use.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new CDC director, said she expects people will get their COVID-19 shots where they get their flu shots — at pharmacies and at work — rather than at dedicated locations that were set up early in the pandemic as part of the emergency response.

“This is going to be our first fall and winter season coming out of the public health emergency, and I think we are all recognizing that we are living with COVID, flu, and RSV,” Cohen told The Associated Press last week. “But the good news is we have more tools than ever before.”
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Leaders of eight South American nations that share the Amazon rainforest convene a two-day summit in Brazil Tuesday to reach a broad agreement on preserving the critical region.

The meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Belem, capital of the Amazon state of Para, takes place as more than ten percent of the rainforest has been lost in recent decades due to unregulated cattle ranching and farming, illegal mining and logging and oil drilling.  Much of the loss is in Brazil, which is home to two-thirds of the rainforest.  

The Amazon region has been described as a “carbon sink” that can easily absorb pollution from emissions, making it a vital resource in reducing the effects of climate change. Scientists say the loss of between 20% and 25% of the Amazon region would be a “tipping point” that would transform it into a source of carbon emissions.  

The ACTO member nations, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela and host, Brazil, are expected to announce a pledge Tuesday  

to end deforestation by 2030 and a joint effort to crack down on illegal mining and logging.

The summit – the first since 2009 for the 28-year-old organization – was part of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s campaign platform last year in which he pledged that “Brazil is back” in the fight against climate change after a period of surging destruction in the Amazon under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. 

The meeting will also serve as something of a dress rehearsal for the COP30 U.N. climate talks, which will be held in Belem in 2025. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse.
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Now that July’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin.  

July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.  

“These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia. Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.  

Days in July have been hotter than previously recorded from July 2 on. It’s been so extra warm that Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization made the unusual early announcement that it was likely the hottest month days before it ended. Tuesday’s calculations made it official.  

The month was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. In 2015, the nations of the world agreed to try to prevent long-term warming — not individual months or even years, but decades — that is 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times.  

Last month was so hot, it was .7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the average July from 1991 to 2020, Copernicus said. The worlds oceans were half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous 30 years and the North Atlantic was 1.05 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than average. Antarctica set record lows for sea ice, 15% below average for this time of year.  

Copernicus’ records go back to 1940. That temperature would be hotter than any month the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recorded and their records go back to 1850. But scientists say it’s actually the hottest in a far longer time period.  

“It’s a stunning record and makes it quite clearly the warmest month on Earth in ten thousand years,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. He wasn’t part of the Copernicus team.  

Rahmstorf cited studies that use tree rings and other proxies that show present times are the warmest since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, about 10,000 years ago. And before the Holocene started there was an ice age, so it would be logical to even say this is the warmest record for 120,000 years, he said.  

“We should not care about July because it’s a record, but because it won’t be a record for long,” said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto. “It’s an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.”
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Indigenous leaders from across South America called Monday for bold steps to protect the Amazon and their ancestral lands, ahead of a summit on saving the world’s biggest rainforest.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will host fellow regional leaders Tuesday and Wednesday for the first summit in 14 years of the eight-nation Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, seeking a roadmap to stop the destruction of one of Earth’s crucial buffers against climate change.

Native leaders who took part in pre-summit talks last weekend in the host city, Belem, called on Lula and his counterparts to create new Indigenous reservations — one of the best ways to protect nature, according to experts — and rethink the way the world views the rainforest.

“The forest isn’t an oil well, it’s not a gold mine. It’s our temple,” said Nemo Guiquita, head of Ecuadoran Indigenous confederation CONFENIAE, which represents 1,500 Amazon communities.

“We hope our views will be included in the [summit’s] final statement,” she told Agence France-Press, saying politicians should not be the only ones deciding the future of the Amazon.

“We’re calling on world leaders to work hard to promote conservation. Our struggle isn’t just for Indigenous peoples, it’s for the entire world, so future generations can survive on this planet.”

Brazilian Indigenous Affairs Minister Sonia Guajajara called the summit a “historic moment” for Indigenous peoples.

“We’re not just thinking about the next four years, we’re thinking about the next 40,” she told AFP.

The participating countries — Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela — are due to discuss strategies to fight deforestation and organized crime in the Amazon and seek sustainable development for the region.

Colombian Indigenous leader Dario Mejia, a member of the Zenu people and representative on a United Nations panel on Indigenous issues, urged world leaders to fundamentally rethink the idea of “economic development.”

“There have been many different names for the market economy. First, ‘progress.’ Then. ‘development.’ Now, ‘the bioeconomy’ or ‘transition economy,'” he said.

“But if we don’t overcome the values of cut-throat competition, of permanent war on nature, it’s going to be very difficult to overcome the environmental crisis. … I want to hope [the summit] will prove an important step for us all.” 
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Raging waters that ate away at riverbanks, destroyed at least two buildings and undermined others were receding Monday in Alaska’s capital city after a glacial dam outburst last weekend, authorities said. 

Levels along the Mendenhall River had started falling by Sunday, but the city said the riverbanks remained unstable. Onlookers gathered on a bridge over the river and along the banks of the swollen Mendenhall Lake to take photos and videos Sunday. A home was propped precariously along the eroded riverbank as milky-colored water whisked past. 

There were no reports of any injuries or deaths. The city said it was working to assess the damage. 

Such floods occur when glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes. A study released earlier this year found such floods pose a risk to about 15 million people worldwide, more than half of them in India, Pakistan, Peru and China. 

Suicide Basin — a side basin of the Mendenhall Glacier — has released water that has caused sporadic flooding along the Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River since 2011, according to the National Weather Service. However, the maximum water level in the lake Saturday night exceeded the previous record flood stage set in July 2016, the weather service reported. 

Nicole Ferrin, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that while it’s not uncommon for these types of floods to happen, this one was extreme. 

“The amount of erosion that happened from the fast-moving water was unprecedented,” she said. 

Water levels crested late Saturday night. Video posted on social media showed a home teetering at the edge of the riverbank collapsing into the river. 

The Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, but the awe-inspiring glacier continues to recede amid global warming. 
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U.S. scientists have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time since December, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said on Sunday.

Scientists at the California-based lab repeated the fusion ignition breakthrough in an experiment in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on July 30 that produced a higher energy yield than in December, a Lawrence Livermore spokesperson said.

Final results are still being analyzed, the spokesperson added.

Lawrence Livermore achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers on Dec. 5, 2022. The scientists focused a laser on a target of fuel to fuse two light atoms into a denser one, releasing the energy.

That experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target, the Energy Department said.

In other words, it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it, the department said.

The Energy Department called it “a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.”

Scientists have known for about a century that fusion powers the sun and have pursued developing fusion on Earth for decades. Such a breakthrough could one day help curb climate change if companies can scale up the technology to a commercial level in the coming decades.
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Nigeria’s unreliable power grid is not only slowing down the country’s economic growth, but health workers say it can lead to unwanted hospital shutdowns at night. But one startup is giving hospitals hope. Alhassan Bala has this report, narrated by Haruna Shehu.
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During Europe’s heat wave last month, Floriana Peroni’s vintage clothing store had to close for a week. A truck of rented generators blocked her door as they fed power to the central Roman neighborhood hit by a blackout as temperatures surged. The main culprit: air conditioning. 

The period — in which temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) — coincided with peak electricity use that came close to Italy’s all-time high, hitting a peak load of more than 59 gigawatts on July 19. That neared a July 2015 record. 

Intensive electricity use knocked out the network not only near the central Campo de Fiori neighborhood, where Peroni operates her shop, but elsewhere in the Italian capital. Demand in that second July week surged 30%, correlating to a heat wave that had persisted already for weeks, according to the capital’s electricity company ARETI. 

Like many Romans, Peroni herself does not have AC either in her home or her shop. Rome once could count on a Mediterranean breeze to bring down nighttime temperatures, but that has become an intermittent relief at best. 

“At most, we turn on fans,” Peroni said. “We think that is enough. We tolerate the heat, as it has always been tolerated.” 

In Europe, though, that is starting to change. 

Air conditioning is less a part of the culture in Europe 

Despite holdouts like Peroni, rising global temperatures are dropping air conditioning from luxury to a necessity in many parts of Europe, which long has had a conflicted relationship with energy-sucking cooling systems deemed by many to be an American indulgence. 

Europeans look with disdain at overcooled U.S. buildings, kept to near meat-locker temperatures, where a blast of cold air can shoot across city sidewalks as people come and go, and where extended indoor appointments necessitate a sweater even in the height of summer. 

By contrast, event organizers in Europe may offer hand fans if events are expected to overheat. Shoppers can expect to sweat in under-cooled grocery stores, and movie theaters are not guaranteed to be climate-controlled. Evening diners have typically opted for outside tables to avoid stuffy restaurants, which rarely offer AC. 

To deal with the heat, Italy and Spain typically shut down for several hours after lunch, for a riposo or siesta, and most vacation in August, when many businesses shut down completely so families can enjoy a holiday at the seaside or in the mountains. Italians in particular are happy to abandon overheated art cities to foreign tourists, which reduces the urgency for a home AC investment. 

Still, European AC penetration has picked up from 10% in 2000 to 19% last year, according to the International Energy Agency. That is still well shy of the United States, at around 90%. Many in Europe resist due to cost, concern about environmental impact and even suspicions of adverse health impacts from cold air currents, including colds, a stiff neck, or worse. 

Cooling systems remain rare in Nordic countries and even Germany, where temperatures can nudge above 30 degrees (into the 90s Fahrenheit) for extended periods. 

But even those temperate climates may cross the threshold of discomfort if temperatures increase beyond 1.5 degrees C to 2 degrees C, according to a new study by the University of Cambridge. In that scenario, people living in northern climes like Britain, Norway, Finland and Switzerland will face the greatest relative increase in uncomfortably hot days. 

Nicole Miranda, one of the study’s authors, said their estimate, which would mean surpassing the international goal of limiting future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, are conservative. 

“They don’t take into account the urban island effects,” she said, when cities are unable to cool at night and surfaces become radiators. “From a scientific point of view, if we all run to the go-to solution, which is air conditioning, we are going to get into a different type of problem, because there is high energy consumption and high carbon emissions related to air conditioning.” 

Cities should consider less intensive solutions, like shading buildings, and incorporating cooling bodies of water, she said. She also advocated a trend toward cooling individuals, instead of spaces, using personal devices like ice packs in jackets or high-tech textiles that dissipate body heat more efficiently. 

Growing — if reluctant — demand 

In Italy, sales of air conditioning units grew from 865,000 a year in 2012 to 1.92 million in 2022, mostly for business and not residential use, with growth reported in the first quarter of this year, according to the industry association Assoclima. Most are split heat air pump systems, which can heat spaces in the winter, which Assoclima said can reduce gas consumption as prices spike during the war in Ukraine. That dual use attracts consumers. 

France, with a slightly larger population, is showing more resistance, selling 1 million units a year. Air conditioning was rare in France until a 2003 heat wave killed thousands, mainly among the elderly. Still, most private homes and apartments there aren’t air conditioned, and many restaurants and other businesses aren’t either. Businesses with AC will often advertise to attract customers on hot days. 

AC aversion persists, both among French conservatives who see it as a frivolous American import and French people on the left who see it as environmentally irresponsible. 

Cécile de Munck and Aude Lemonsu, meteorologists at France’s national weather service, warned this summer that if the number of AC units doubles in Paris by 2030, the city temperature would rise by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) because of heat released by the pump systems. 

Despite the concerns over energy costs, air conditioning is rapidly conquering homes in Spain, a country that traditionally bent towards the use of fans and drawing heavy blinds, a very Spanish fixture. A study by Ca’ Foscari University projects that half of Spanish households will have AC by 2040, up from just 5% in 1990. 

With the cooler indoor air come disputes as neighbors complain about noise from external units. That means problems for Spain’s real estate managers. “Some people can’t open a window because they get a puff of fire,” said Pablo Abascal, president of Spain’s council of real estate managers. “With the increase of AC systems in homes, many buildings will soon have nowhere to place the devices.” 

Air conditioning and cooling was found to be key for older populations in extreme heat, reducing strain on cardiovascular functions in a heat wave of 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a study at the University of Ottawa in Canada. But even in countries like Cyprus, where heat waves of 40 degree Celsius have become the norm, the sustained use of AC isn’t an affordable option for many elderly people living on fixed incomes. 

Many on the Mediterranean island nation restrict usage to the hottest times of day, sometimes confining themselves to a single room. 

“Undoubtedly, this scenario significantly impacts their mental well-being as well,” said Demos Antoniou, director of the Cyprus Third Age Observatory, a seniors-rights group. “The prevailing fear is that refraining from using air conditioners could potentially lead to heat stroke.” 

At 83, Angeliki Vassiliou thinks both about her energy bill and future generations before she hits the “on” button. 

“There’s no sense in wasting energy. Waste is unfair,” Vassiliou said. “Waste of any resource is wrong, because what would happen to our planet because of all this waste?” 
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India’s latest space mission entered the moon’s orbit on Saturday ahead of the country’s second attempted lunar landing, as its space program seeks to reach new heights.

The world’s most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace program that is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers.

Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface.

The Indian Space Research Organization confirmed that Chandrayaan-3, which means moon craft in Sanskrit, had been “successfully inserted into the lunar orbit,” more than three weeks after its launch.

If the rest of the current mission goes to plan, the mission will safely touch down near the moon’s little-explored south pole between Aug. 23 and 24.

India’s last attempt to do so ended in failure four years ago, when ground control lost contact moments before landing.

Developed by ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 includes a lander module named Vikram, which means valor in Sanskrit, and a rover named Pragyan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.

The mission comes with a price tag of $74.6 million, far smaller than those of other countries, and a testament to India’s frugal space engineering.

Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing space technology. It also has an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages.

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has taken much longer to reach the moon than the manned Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.

The Indian rocket used is much less powerful than the United States’ Saturn V. Instead, the probe orbited Earth five or six times elliptically to gain speed, before being sent on a monthlong lunar trajectory.

If the landing is successful, the rover will roll off Vikram and explore the nearby lunar area, gathering images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.

The rover has a mission life of one lunar day or 14 Earth days.

ISRO chief S. Somanath has said his engineers carefully studied data from the last failed mission and have worked to fix the glitches.

India’s space program has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the moon in 2008.

In 2014, it became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars, and three years later, the ISRO launched 104 satellites in a single mission.

The ISRO’s Gaganyaan (“Skycraft”) program is slated to launch a three-day manned mission into Earth’s orbit by next year.

India is also working to boost its 2% share of the global commercial space market by sending private payloads into orbit for a fraction of the cost of competitors. 
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The World Bank is aiming to help fund construction of 1,000 mini solar power grids in Africa’s biggest economy Nigeria in partnership with the government and private sector, the lender’s president Ajay Banga said Saturday.

Nigeria, with a population of more than 200 million people, has installed power generation capacity of 12,500 megawatts, or MW, but it produces a fraction of that, leaving millions of households and businesses reliant on petrol and diesel generators.

Mini grids, made up of small-scale electricity generating units, typically range in size from a few kilowatts to up to 10 MW, enough to power about 200 households.

Speaking during a visit to a mini grid site on the outskirts of the capital Abuja, Banga told reporters that nearly 150 mini grids had been built, partly funded by the World Bank, to bring power to communities without access to electricity.

“We are putting another 300 in, but our ambition with the government is to go all the way to 1,000. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that are being invested,” said Banga, without giving a timeline.

“Now the idea is not for the World Bank to be the only person putting the money. We put part of the money like a subsidy.”

World Bank data shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, 568 million people still lack access to electricity. Globally, nearly 8 out of 10 people without electricity live in Africa.
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Somalia reopened the National Blood Bank Saturday for the first time in more than 30 years, in a significant move to address the shortage of blood supplies and save lives.

Somalia Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, who inaugurated the fresh start for the center in Mogadishu, said it’s a crucial achievement for his nation, which has been grappling with frequent disasters and violent incidents that require adequate blood supplies.

The country’s health minister, Dr. Ali Haji Adam, told VOA the revival of the center signifies a turning point in the country’s health care system.

“With the reopening of the national blood bank, we can now adequately address the overwhelming demand for blood in emergency situations and enhance the chances of saving precious lives.” Adam said.

The minister said the center will have the capacity to store hundreds of thousands of blood donations, all made by the public.

“In the past, when tragic accidents like the Zobe 1 and Zobe 2 explosions occurred in 2017 and in 2022, the public rushed to donate blood, but unfortunately there was no adequate storage facility to store the donated blood. Today that changes,” Adam explained.

The health minister highlighted the critical impact of the lack of access to safe blood in Somalia, particularly in connection with child mortality.

“The second cause of maternal death during childbirth is bleeding, but with the reopening of [the] blood bank, mothers will have access to this lifesaving resource,” Adam said.

Hospitals across Somalia have faced immense challenges in obtaining sufficient blood supplies.

Medical officials say they are optimistic that the blood bank will not only serve the immediate needs of people injured in accidents and disasters but will also prove beneficial for anemic children in Somalia.

Established in 1976, the national blood bank had not been operating for nearly three decades due to conflicts, leaving the war-torn nation without a reliable source of blood for critical medical emergencies.
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Rhonda Hicks could have kept working into her 60s. She loved teaching and loved her students in Philadelphia’s public schools. As a Black woman, she took pride in being a role model for many children of color.

But other aspects of the job deteriorated, such as growing demands from administrators over what and how to teach. And when she retires in a few weeks, she will join a disproportionately high number of Black and Hispanic teachers in her state who are leaving the profession.

“I enjoy actually teaching, that part I’ve always enjoyed,” said Hicks, 59. “Sometimes it’s a little stressful. Sometimes the kids can be difficult. But it’s the higher-ups: ‘Do it this way or don’t do it at all.'”

Teachers are leaving jobs in growing numbers, state reports show. The turnover in some cases is highest among teachers of color. A major culprit: stress — from pandemic-era burnout, low pay and the intrusion of politics into classrooms. But the burdens can be heavier in schools serving high-poverty communities that also have higher numbers of teachers of color.

In Philadelphia, a city with one of the highest concentrations of Black residents in the U.S., the proportion of Black teachers has been sliding. Two decades ago, it was about one-third. Last fall, it fell to below 23%, according to district figures.

In the school buildings where Hicks taught, most teachers were white. She said she and other teachers of color were expected to give more of themselves in a district where half the students are Black.

“A lot of times when you see teachers that are saving Black and brown kids on TV, it’s always the white ones,” Hicks said. “There are Black teachers and Hispanic teachers out there that do the same thing in real life, all the time.”

Nationally, about 80% of American public school teachers are white, even though white students no longer represent a majority in public schools. Having teachers who reflect the race of their students is important, researchers say, to provide students with role models who have insight into their culture and life experience.

The departures are undoing some recent success that schools have had in bringing on more Black and Hispanic teachers. Turnover is higher among newer teachers. And researchers have found that teachers of color, who tend to have less seniority, often are affected disproportionately by layoffs.

In Pennsylvania, Black teachers were more than twice as likely to leave the profession as white teachers after the 2021-22 school year, according to a data analysis by Ed Fuller, an education professor at Penn State. Hispanic and multiracial teachers had a similar ratio, of around twice as likely.

Black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to be uncertified or teaching in an underfunded district, all of which is associated with someone leaving the profession at a higher rate, Fuller said.

“They’re in more precarious teaching positions, meaning you’re in a position with less resources and worse working conditions, so you’re more likely to quit no matter who you are,” Fuller said.

Sharif El-Mekki, a former Philadelphia teacher who leads the Center for Black Educator Development, said schools around the country come to him seeking help in recruiting teachers of color. But they don’t have plans to retain them, such as providing opportunities to help shape policies and curricula.

To address the problem, schools can start by ensuring students of color have better experiences in school themselves and offering them opportunities to consider teaching, El-Mekki said. Black teachers also are more likely stay on in school systems that have Black leaders, he said, as well as a culture and approaches to teaching that are anti-racist.

“We need to think about, ‘How are they experiencing my school?'” he said. “If they are having a better experience with us, they are more likely to stay.”

Attrition by teachers of color can vary greatly by state or region. Overall, it has been higher compared with white teachers for two decades, since around the time federal policies began encouraging the closure of schools with low test scores, said Travis Bristol, a professor of teacher education and education policy at the University of California-Berkeley.

In underfunded schools with large populations of Black and Hispanic children, teachers say they can expect more responsibilities, fewer resources and more children troubled by poverty and violence.

“I’m still in the classroom because this is my version of resistance and pushing back on a system that was not designed for folks that look like me and kids that look like me,” said Sofia Gonzalez, a 14-year teacher of Puerto Rican heritage in Chicago-area public schools. “We as teachers of color have to find so much inner strength inside of us to sustain our careers in education.”

The last few years have been a trying stretch for teachers everywhere. They’ve had to navigate COVID-19, a pivot to distance learning and the struggles with misbehavior and mental health that accompanied students’ return to classrooms.

Then there’s the pay: Educators’ salaries have been falling behind their college-educated peers in other professions.

Teachers unions have warned of flagging morale, and there are signs lately that more educators are heading for the exits. Data from at least a handful of states — including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas and Washington — is showing an increase in teacher attrition.

Black teachers reported significantly higher rates of burnout and being significantly more likely to leave their job than white teachers, according to research sponsored by two national teachers unions and published in June by the Rand Corp. think tank.

Chantle Simpson, 36, taught her last day of school this spring in Frisco, Texas, ending her 11-year career as a teacher.

She described an exodus of her fellow teachers of color from the profession amid growing expectations from administrators, who put more work on teachers by repeatedly appeasing demands from parents.

Administrators — including those who are Black or Hispanic — put more pressure on Black and Hispanic teachers, she said.

“They believe we can handle more,” Simpson said. “Because we develop relationships better, the kids understand us more, so they’re more likely to behave for us or do what we ask them to. So we get fitted with the children who are more challenging or have more requirements. It’s crazy.”

That leaves those teachers with less time for the rest of their better-behaved students, Simpson said.

“I always was conflicted by it,” Simpson said. “It’s mixed with praise, but it’s a punishment. ‘Oh, you’re so great at building relationships, the kids really appreciate being with you, they respond to you.’ But at the same time, you’re increasing my workload, you’re increasing the amount of attention I have to give to one child versus my whole class.”
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Federal health officials have approved the first pill specifically intended to treat severe depression after childbirth, a condition that affects thousands of new mothers in the U.S. each year.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted approval of the drug, Zurzuvae, for adults experiencing severe depression related to childbirth or pregnancy. The pill is taken once a day for 14 days.

“Having access to an oral medication will be a beneficial option for many of these women coping with extreme, and sometimes life-threatening, feelings,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, FDA’s director of psychiatric drugs, in a statement.

Postpartum depression affects an estimated 400,000 people a year, and while it often ends on its own within a couple weeks, it can continue for months or even years. Standard treatment includes counseling or antidepressants, which can take weeks to work and don’t help everyone.

The new pill is from Sage Therapeutics, which has a similar infused drug that’s given intravenously over three days in a medical facility. The FDA approved that drug in 2019, though it isn’t widely used because of its $34,000 price tag and the logistics of administering it.

The FDA’s pill approval is based on two company studies that showed women who took Zurzuvae had fewer signs of depression over a four- to six-week period when compared with those who received a dummy pill. The benefits, measured using a psychiatric test, appeared within three days for many patients.

Sahar McMahon, 39, had never experienced depression until after the birth of her second daughter in late 2021. She agreed to enroll in a study of the drug, known chemically as zuranolone, after realizing she no longer wanted to spend time with her children.

“I planned my pregnancies, I knew I wanted those kids, but I didn’t want to interact with them,” said McMahon, who lives in New York City. She says her mood and outlook started improving within days of taking the first pills.

“It was a quick transition for me just waking up and starting to feel like myself again,” she said.

Dr. Kimberly Yonkers of Yale University said the Zurzuvae effect is “strong,” and the drug likely will be prescribed for women who haven’t responded to antidepressants. She wasn’t involved in testing the drug.

Still, she said, the FDA should have required Sage to submit more follow-up data on how women fared after additional months.

“The problem is we don’t know what happens after 45 days,” said Yonkers, a psychiatrist who specializes in postpartum depression. “It could be that people are well or it could be that they relapse.”

Sage did not immediately announce how it would price the pill, and Yonkers said that’ll be a key factor in how widely it’s prescribed.

Side effects with the new drug are milder than the IV version and include drowsiness and dizziness. The drug was co-developed with fellow Massachusetts pharmaceutical company Biogen.

Both the pill and IV forms mimic a derivative of progesterone, the naturally occurring female hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. Levels of the hormone can plunge after childbirth.

Sage’s drugs are part of an emerging class of medications dubbed neurosteroids. These stimulate a different brain pathway than older antidepressants that target serotonin, the chemical linked to mood and emotions. 
…

NASA has succeeded in reestablishing full contact with Voyager 2 by using its highest-power transmitter to send an “interstellar shout” that righted the distant probe’s antenna orientation, the space agency said Friday.

Launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets and serve as a beacon of humanity to the wider universe, it is currently more than 19.9 billion kilometers from our planet — well beyond the solar system. 

A series of planned commands sent to the spaceship on July 21 mistakenly caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth, compromising its ability to send and receive signals and endangering its mission.

The situation was not expected to be resolved until at least Oct. 15 when Voyager 2 was scheduled to carry out an automated realignment maneuver.

But Tuesday, engineers enlisted the help of multiple Earth observatories that form the Deep Space Network to detect a carrier or “heartbeat” wave from Voyager 2, though the signal was still too faint to read the data it carried.

In an update on Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which built and operates the probe, said it had succeeded in a longshot effort to send instructions that righted the craft.

“The Deep Space Network used the highest-power transmitter to send the command (the 100-kw S-band uplink from the Canberra site) and timed it to be sent during the best conditions during the antenna tracking pass in order to maximize possible receipt of the command by the spacecraft,” Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd told AFP.

This so-called “interstellar shout” required 18.5 hours traveling at light speed to reach Voyager, and it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked, JPL said in a statement.

The probe began returning science and telemetry data at 12:29 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, “indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory,” JPL added.

‘Golden records’

Voyager 2 left the protective magnetic bubble provided by the sun, called the heliosphere, in December 2018, and is currently traveling through the space between the stars.

Before leaving our solar system, it explored Jupiter and Saturn, and became the first and so far only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune.

Voyager 2’s twin, Voyager 1, was mankind’s first spacecraft to enter the interstellar medium, in 2012, and is currently almost 24 billion kilometers from Earth.

Both carry “Golden Records” — 30-centimeter, gold-plated copper disks intended to convey the story of our world to extraterrestrials.

These include a map of our solar system, a piece of uranium that serves as a radioactive clock allowing recipients to date the spaceship’s launch, and symbols that convey how to play the record.

The contents of the discs, selected for NASA by a committee chaired by legendary astronomer Carl Sagan, include encoded images of life on Earth, as well as music and sounds that can be played using an included stylus.

For now, the Voyagers continue to transmit scientific data to Earth, though their power banks are expected to eventually be depleted sometime after 2025.

They will then continue to wander the Milky Way, potentially for eternity, in silence. 
…

The world’s oceans set a temperature record this week, raising concerns about the effects that could have on the planet’s climate, marine life and coastal communities. 

The temperature of the oceans’ surface rose to 20.96 degrees Celsius (69.7 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 30, according to European Union climate observatory data.  

The previous record was 20.95 C in March 2016, a spokeswoman for the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service told AFP on Friday. 

The samples tested excluded polar regions. 

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which uses a different database, has also recorded a similar trend in recent months. 

It said the average sea surface temperature record was reached on April 4 this year at 21.06 C, overtaking the previous high of 21.01 C in March 2016. On August 1, average temperatures were 21.03 C, it said. 

Oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat produced by human activity since the dawn of the industrial age, according to scientists.  

This excess heat continues to accumulate as greenhouse gases, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal, build up in the Earth’s atmosphere. 

Globally, the average ocean temperature has been topping seasonal heat records regularly since April. 

‘Immediate threat’ 

“The ocean heat wave is an immediate threat to some marine life,” said Piers Forster of the International Center for Climate at Britain’s University of Leeds.  

“We are already seeing coral bleaching in Florida as a direct result, and I expect more impacts will surface,” Forster said.  

The overheating of the oceans is predicted to have other effects on marine plant and animal life, including on the migration of certain species and the spread of invasive species. 

This could threaten fish stocks and thus undermine food security in certain parts of the globe.  

Warmer oceans are also less capable of absorbing carbon dioxide, reinforcing the vicious cycle of global warming.  

And higher temperatures are likely to come, since the El Niño phenomenon, which tends to warm waters up, has only just begun.  

Scientists expect the worst effects of the current El Niño to be felt at the end of 2023 and continue into subsequent years. 

Like bath water 

The latest figures follow a string of record highs around the world.  

Last month, temperatures of 38.3 C — as hot as water in a hot tub — were recorded off the Florida coast, which could be a world-record high for a point measurement if the figure is confirmed.  

The surface waters of the North Atlantic rose to a record-high average temperature of 24.9 C last week, according to provisional data from NOAA.  

The North Atlantic usually reaches its peak temperature in September. 

Since March, the month when the North Atlantic begins to warm up after winter, temperatures have been higher than in previous years and the gap with past records has continued to widen in recent weeks.  

The region has become a key point for observing the heating of the world’s oceans. 

In July, the Mediterranean Sea broke its daily heat record, with a median temperature of 28.71 C, according to Spain’s leading maritime research center.  

Marine heat waves have become twice as frequent since 1982, according to a 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

By 2100, they could be 10 times more intense than they were at the beginning of the 20th century if pollutant emissions are not reduced.  
…

When Clarisse Agbégnénou won her sixth world judo title, confirming the reigning Olympic champion as one of the athletes to watch at next year’s Paris Games, the French star’s smallest but greatest fan was less wild about her mother’s newest gold medal than she was about her breast milk.

After a peckish day of few feeds — because Mom had been busy putting opponents through the wringer — 10-month-old Athéna made amends that night.

“She didn’t let my boobs out of her mouth,” Agbégnénou said. “I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ I think it was really something for her.”

Breastfeeding and high-performance sports were long an almost impossible combination for top female athletes, torn for decades between careers or motherhood, because having both was so tough.

But that’s becoming less true ahead of the 2024 Olympics, where women will take another step forward in their long march for equality, competing in equal numbers with men for the first time, and with pioneering mothers like Agbégnénou showing that it is possible to breastfeed and be competitive.

They don’t pretend that late-night feeds, broken sleep, pumping milk and having to eat for two people are easy. But some female athletes are also discovering that juggling their careers with the rigors of motherhood can pay off with powerful emotional well-being.

Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Agbégnénou said she stunned even herself by coming back so quickly from childbirth to win at the worlds in May, with Athéna in tow and expecting to be fed every few hours.

In training, Agbégnénou would stop for quick feeds when Athéna needed milk, nestling her hungry baby in the folds of her kimono, while other athletes in the judo hall paid them no mind, carrying on with their bouts.

“I was sweating on her, poor baby,” she said. “But she didn’t pay attention. She just wanted to eat.”

Women who have breastfed and carried on competing say that support from coaches and sports administrators is essential. Agbégnénou credits the International Judo Federation for allowing her to take Athéna to competitions. IJF officials sounded out other competitors and coaches about whether the baby was a nuisance for them and were told, “‘No, she was really perfect, we didn’t hear the baby,'” she said.

“It’s amazing,” she said of her peers’ acceptance and support. “They are part of my fight and I am really proud of them.”

As well as Agbégnénou, three other women also asked and were allowed to nurse their babies at IJF World Tour competitions in the past six years, with arrangements made each time that enabled the moms “to care for the child and to not disturb other athletes’ preparation,” said the governing body’s secretary general, Lisa Allan. She says the IJF is now drawing up specific policies for judokas who are pregnant or postpartum because “more and more athletes are continuing their careers whilst balancing having a family.”

The Paris Olympics’ chief organizer, Tony Estanguet, said they’re also exploring the possibility of providing facilities for nursing athletes at the Games.

“They should have access to their children — for the well-being of the mothers and the children,” he said in an AP interview. “The status of athletes who are young mothers needs to evolve a bit. We need to find solutions to perhaps make it easier for these athletes to bring babies” into the Olympic village where athletes are housed.

For some breastfeeding athletes, being a pioneer is part of the kick.

Two-time Olympic rowing champion Helen Glover, now aiming for her fourth Summer Games, gave birth to twins at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, breastfed them and then came out of what she’d intended to be retirement to compete at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021.

Glover was the first rower to compete for Britain at the Olympics as a mother.

Glover’s eldest, Logan, lost interest in her milk about the time of his first birthday, but twins Kit and Willow kept feeding to 14 months old. She says that mixing her punishing rowing training with long feeds for two babies was “very draining. It was taking every calorie I had.”

“But I could do it because it was my own time and my own choice,” she said.

“Everyone should have the choice,” Glover added. “Our bodies … are sometimes very changed through childbirth and pregnancy and breastfeeding. So the answers are never going to be one-size-fits-all. But I think it’s really exciting that these conversations are even being had.”

For some athletes, Milk Stork has also been a help. The U.S.-based transporter ships working moms’ milk when they’re separated from their babies. It says it shipped milk pumped by athletes who competed at the 2021 Paralympic Games in Tokyo and also transported 21 gallons (80 liters) of milk from coaches, trainers and other support staff at the Olympics that year.

The daughter of British archery athlete Naomi Folkard was just 5½ months old and breastfeeding exclusively when her mother traveled to Tokyo for her fifth and final Olympic Games.

Nursing mothers successfully pushed to be able to take babies to those Olympics, held with social distancing and without full crowds because of the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than put her daughter, Emily, through the ordeal of having to live apart from her, in a Tokyo hotel outside of the athletes’ village, Folkard reluctantly left her behind with a large stock of frozen milk. She built that up over months, pumping into the night so Emily wouldn’t go hungry while she was in Japan.

But that created another problem: Because Folkard’s breasts had become so good at making milk, she had to pump regularly at the Games to stop them from becoming painfully swollen. She threw that milk away.

“I was having to get up in the night and pump just because my supply was so much,” she said. “It wasn’t great for performance preparation really. But I did what I had to do to be there.”

And with each drop, progress.

“There’s still a long way to go, but people are talking about it now. Women aren’t retiring to have children. They’re still competing,” Folkard said.

“I feel like things are changing.”
…

A cyberattack disrupted hospital computer systems in several states, forcing some emergency rooms to close and ambulances to be diverted. Many primary care services remained closed Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it.

The “data security incident” began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.

“Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists,” the company said in a statement Friday. “While our investigation continues, we are focused on addressing the pressing needs of our patients as we work diligently to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.”

In Connecticut, the emergency departments at Manchester Memorial and Rockville General hospitals were closed for much of Thursday. Patients were diverted to other nearby medical centers.

“We have a national Prospect team working and evaluating the impact of the attack on all of the organizations,” Jillian Menzel, chief operating officer for the Eastern Connecticut Health Network, said in a statement.

The FBI in Connecticut issued a statement saying it is working with “law enforcement partners and the victim entities” but could not comment further on an ongoing investigation.

Elective surgeries, outpatient appointments, blood drives and other services were suspended, and while the emergency departments reopened late Thursday, many primary care services were closed on Friday, according to the Eastern Connecticut Health Network, which runs the facilities. Patients were being contacted individually, according to the network’s website.

Similar disruptions were reported at other facilities systemwide.

“Waterbury Hospital is following downtime procedures, including the use of paper records, until the situation is resolved,” spokeswoman Lauresha Xhihani said in a statement. “We are working closely with IT security experts to resolve it as quickly as possible.”

In Pennsylvania, the attack affected services at facilities including the Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park, Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill and Springfield Hospital in Springfield, according the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In California, the company has seven hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties, including two behavioral health facilities and a 130-bed acute care hospital in Los Angeles, according to Prospect’s website. Messages sent to representatives for these hospitals were not immediately returned.
…

Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a tree-lined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. “Another big brown,” she said with a sigh.

It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged on summer nights in the southern Michigan countryside. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season, sheltering behind peeling bark of dead trees.

The scientists had yet to spot either species this year as they embarked on a netting mission.

“It’s a bad suggestion if we do not catch one. It doesn’t look good,” said Allen Kurta, an Eastern Michigan University professor who has studied bats for more than 40 years.

The two bat varieties are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock U.S. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. Enacted in 1973 amid fear for iconic creatures such as the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, it extends legal protection to 1,683 domestic species.

More than 99% of those listed as “endangered” — on the verge of extinction — or the less severe “threatened” have survived.

“The Endangered Species Act has been very successful,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an Associated Press interview. “And I believe very strongly that we’re in a better place for it.”

Fifty years after the law took effect, environmental advocates and scientists say it’s as essential as ever. Habitat loss, pollution, climate change and disease are putting an estimated 1 million species worldwide at risk.

Yet the law has become so controversial that Congress hasn’t updated it since 1992 — and some worry it won’t last another half-century.

Conservative administrations and lawmakers have stepped up efforts to weaken it, backed by landowner and industry groups that contend the act stifles property rights and economic growth. Members of Congress try increasingly to overrule government experts on protecting individual species.

The act is “well-intentioned but entirely outdated … twisted and morphed by radical litigants into a political firefight rather than an important piece of conservation law,” said Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, who in July announced a group of GOP lawmakers would propose changes.

Environmentalists accuse regulators of slow-walking new listings to appease critics and say Congress provides too little funding to fulfill the act’s mission.

“Its biggest challenge is it’s starving,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife.

Some experts say the law’s survival depends on rebuilding bipartisan support, no easy task in polarized times.

“The Endangered Species Act is our best tool to address biodiversity loss in the United States,” Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Tom Carper said during a May floor debate over whether the northern long-eared bat should keep its protection status granted in 2022.

“And we know that biodiversity is worth preserving for many reasons, whether it be to protect human health or because of a moral imperative to be good stewards of our one and only planet.”

Despite the Delaware Democrat’s plea, the Senate voted to nullify the bat’s endangered designation after opponents said disease, not economic development, was primarily responsible for the population decline.

That’s an ominous sign, said Kurta the Michigan scientist, donning waders to slosh across the mucky river bottom for the bat netting project in mid-June.

“Its population has dropped 90% in a very short period of time,” he said. “If that doesn’t make you go on the endangered species list, what’s going to?”

Turbulent history

It’s “nothing short of astounding” how attitudes toward the law have changed, largely because few realized at first how far it would reach, said Holly Doremus, a University of California, Berkeley law professor.

Attention 50 years ago was riveted on iconic animals like the American alligator, Florida panther and California condor. Some had been pushed to the brink by habitat destruction or pollutants such as the pesticide DDT. People over-harvested other species or targeted them as nuisances.

The 1973 measure made it illegal to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect” listed animals and plants or ruin their habitats.

It ordered federal agencies not to authorize or fund actions likely to jeopardize their existence, although amendments later allowed permits for limited “take” — incidental killing — resulting from otherwise legal projects.

The act cleared Congress with what in hindsight appears stunning ease: unanimous Senate approval and a 390-12 House vote. President Richard Nixon, a Republican, signed it into law.

“It was not created by a bunch of hippies,” said Rebecca Hardin, a University of Michigan environmental anthropologist. “We had a sense as a country that we had done damage and we needed to heal.”

But backlash emerged as the statute spurred regulation of oil and gas development, logging, ranching and other industries. The endangered list grew to include little-known creatures — from the frosted flatwoods salamander to the tooth cave spider — and nearly 1,000 plants.

“It’s easy to get everybody to sign on with protecting whales and grizzly bears,” Doremus said. “But people didn’t anticipate that things they wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t think beautiful, would need protection in ways that would block some economic activity.”

An early battle involved the snail darter, a tiny Southeastern fish that delayed construction of a Tennessee dam on a river then considered its only remaining home.

The northern spotted owl’s listing as threatened in 1990 sparked years of feuding between conservationists and the timber industry over management of Pacific Northwest forestland.

Rappaport Clark, who headed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton, said there were still enough GOP moderates to help Democrats fend off sweeping changes sought by hardline congressional Republicans.

“Fast-forward to today, and support has declined pretty dramatically,” she said. “The atmosphere is incredibly partisan. A slim Democratic majority in the Senate is the difference between keeping the law on life support and blowing it up.”

The Trump administration ended blanket protection for animals newly deemed threatened. It let federal authorities consider economic costs of protecting species and disregard habitat impacts from climate change.

A federal judge blocked some of Trump’s moves. The Biden administration repealed or announced plans to rewrite others.

But with a couple of Democratic defections, the Senate voted narrowly this spring to undo protections for a rare grouse known as the lesser prairie chicken as well as the northern long-eared bat. The House did likewise in July.

President Joe Biden threatened vetoes. But to wildlife advocates, the votes illustrate the act’s vulnerability — if not to repeal, then to sapping its strength through legislative, agency or court actions.

One pending bill would prohibit additional listings expected to cause “significant” economic harm. Another would remove most gray wolves and grizzly bears — subjects of decades-old legal and political struggles — from the protected list and bar courts from returning them.

“Science is supposed to be the fundamental principle of managing endangered species,” said Mike Leahy, a senior director of the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s getting increasingly overruled by politics. This is every wildlife conservationist’s worst nightmare.”

Elusive middle ground

Federal regulators are caught in a crossfire over how many species the act should protect and for how long — and how to balance that with interests of property owners and industry.

Since the law took effect, 64 of roughly 1,780 listed U.S. species have rebounded enough to be removed, while 64 have improved from endangered to threatened. Eleven have been declared extinct, a label proposed for 23 others, including the ivory-billed woodpecker.

That’s a poor showing, said Jonathan Wood, vice president of law and policy with the Property and Environment Research Center, which represents landowners.

The act was supposed to function like a hospital emergency room, providing lifesaving but short-term treatment, Wood said. Instead, it resembles perpetual hospice care for too many species.

But species typically need at least a half-century to recover and most haven’t been listed that long, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

And they often languish a decade or more awaiting listing decisions, worsening their condition and prolonging their recovery, he said. The Fish and Wildlife Service has more than 300 under consideration.

The service “is not getting the job done,” Greenwald said. “Part is lack of funding but it’s mixed with timidity, fear of the backlash.”

Agency officials acknowledge struggling to keep up with listing proposals and strategies for restoring species. The work is complex; budgets are tight. Petitions and lawsuits abound. Congress provides millions to rescue popular animals such as Pacific salmon and steelhead trout while many species get a few thousand dollars annually.

To address the problem and mollify federal government critics, supporters of the act propose steering more conservation money to state and tribal programs. A bill to provide $1.4 billion annually cleared the House with bipartisan backing in 2022 but fell short in the Senate. Sponsors are trying again.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is using funds from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to improve strategies for getting species off the list sooner, Director Martha Williams told a House subcommittee in July.

It’s also seeking accommodation on another thorny issue: providing enough space where imperiled species can feed, shelter and reproduce.

The act empowers the government to identify “critical habitat” where economic development can be limited. Many early supporters believed public lands and waters — state and national parks and wildlife refuges — would meet the need, said Doremus, the California-Berkeley professor.

But now about two-thirds of listed species occupy private property. And many require permanent care. For example, removing the Kirtland’s warbler from the endangered list in 2019 was contingent on continued harvesting and replanting of Michigan jack pines where the tiny songbird nests.

Meeting the rising demand will require more deals with property owners instead of critical habitat designations, which lower property values and breed resentment, said Wood of the landowners group. Incentives could include paying owners or easing restrictions on timber cutting and other development as troubled species improve.

“You can’t police your way” to cooperation, he said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed regulatory changes this year to encourage voluntary efforts, hoping they’ll keep more species healthy enough to reduce listings. But environmentalists insist voluntary action is no substitute for legally enforceable protections.

“Did the makers of DDT voluntarily stop making it? No,” said Greenwald, arguing few landowners or businesses will sacrifice profits to help the environment. “We have to have strong laws and regulations if we want to address the climate and extinction crises and leave a livable planet for future generations.”

Grim prospects

Stars and fireflies provided the only natural light on the June night after Michigan biologists Kurta and Wilson extended fine nylon mesh over smoothly flowing River Raisin, 90 minutes west of Detroit. Frogs croaked; crickets chirped. Mayflies — tasty morsels for bats — swarmed in the humid air.

Long feared by people, bats increasingly are valued for gobbling crop-destroying insects and pollinating fruit, giving U.S. agriculture a yearly $3 billion boost.

“The next time you have some tequila, thank the bat that pollinated the agave plant from which that tequila was made,” Kurta said, tinkering with an electronic device that detects bats as they swoop overhead.

Hour after hour crept by. Eight bats fluttered into the nets. The scientists took measurements, then freed them. None were the endangered species they sought.

A month later, Kurta reported that 16 nights of netting at eight sites had yielded 177 bats — but just one Indiana and no northern long-eared specimens.

“Disappointing,” he said, “but expected.”
…

MEXICO CITY — An ancient flamingo fossil egg between 8,000 and 12,000 years old was uncovered at a busy construction site for a new airport in Mexico, officials from the Latin American country said Wednesday.

The remarkably preserved egg from the Pleistocene period is incredibly rare. It is the first discovery of its kind from the Phoenicopteridae flamingo family in the Americas and only the second in the world, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH.

The Pleistocene geological epoch, the most recent Ice Age, began 2.6 million years ago and ended around 11,700 years ago.

The flamingo egg fossil was found at a depth of 31 centimeters (12.2 inches) amid clay and shale during construction at the new Felipe Angeles airport in the state of Mexico, INAH said.

The fossil egg implies the area was the site of a shallow lake between 8,000 and 33,000 years ago, according to Mexican scientists, and that flamingos once thrived in central Mexico.

Today’s American flamingo species, known for its bright pink feathers, is mainly found in South America, the Caribbean, the Yucatan peninsula and the southeast coast of the United States.
…

Mexican officials met Tuesday with U.S. and Canadian officials in Mexico to talk about combating the trafficking of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. To get a better understanding of the problem, VOA visited addicts and a counselor from a harm reduction center in Washington. Júlia Riera has the story.
…

At least 108 people were treated for heat-related illnesses at the World Scout Jamboree being held in South Korea, which is having one of its hottest summers in years.

Most of them have recovered but at least two remain in treatment at an on-site hospital as of Thursday morning, said Choi Chang-haeng, secretary-general of the Jamboree’s organizing committee.

The committee, which plans to proceed with the event while adding dozens more medical staff to prepare for further emergencies, did not confirm the ages and other personal details of those who were injured.

Wednesday night’s opening ceremony of the Jamboree brought more than 40,000 scouts, mostly teens, to a campsite built on land reclaimed from the sea in the southwestern town of Buan. The temperature there reached 35 degrees Celsius Wednesday.

Lee Sang-min, South Korea’s Minister of the Interior and Safety, during an emergency meeting instructed officials to explore “all possible measures” to protect the participants, including adjusting the event’s outdoor activities, adding more emergency vehicles and medical posts, and also adding more shade structures and air-conditioning. He said the goal is to prevent “even one serious illness or death,” according to comments shared by the ministry.

There had been concerns about holding the Jamboree in a vast, treeless area lacking refuge from the heat.

Choi insisted that the event was safe enough to continue and similar situations could have occurred if the Jamboree was held elsewhere.

“The participants came from afar and hadn’t yet adjusted (to the weather),” Choi said in a news briefing. He said the large number patients could be linked to a K-pop performance during the opening ceremony, which he said left many of the teens “exhausted after actively releasing their energy.”

South Korea this week raised its hot weather warning to the highest “serious” level for the first time in four years as temperatures nationwide hovered between 33 and 38 degrees Celsius.

The Safety Ministry said at least 16 people have died because of heat-related illnesses since May 20, including two on Tuesday. 
…

There could be a new contender for heaviest animal to ever live. While today’s blue whale has long held the title, scientists have dug up fossils from an ancient giant that could tip the scales.

Researchers described the new species — named Perucetus colossus, or “the colossal whale from Peru” — in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Each vertebra weighs more than 100 kilograms, and its ribs measure nearly 1.4 meters long.

“It’s just exciting to see such a giant animal that’s so different from anything we know,” said Hans Thewissen, a paleontologist at Northeast Ohio Medical University who had no role in the research.

The bones were first discovered more than a decade ago by Mario Urbina from the University of San Marcos’ Natural History Museum in Lima. An international team spent years digging them out from the side of a steep, rocky slope in the Ica desert, a region in Peru that was once underwater and is known for its rich marine fossils. The results: 13 vertebrae from the whale’s backbone, four ribs and a hip bone.

The massive fossils, which are 39 million years old, “are unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said study author Alberto Collareta, a paleontologist at Italy’s University of Pisa.

After the excavations, the researchers used 3D scanners to study the surface of the bones and drilled into them to peek inside. They used the huge — but incomplete — skeleton to estimate the whale’s size and weight, using modern marine mammals for comparison, said study author Eli Amson, a paleontologist at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany.

They calculated that the ancient giant weighed somewhere between 85 and 340 metric tons. The biggest blue whales found have been within that range — at around 180 metric tons.

Its body stretched to around 20 meters long. Blue whales can be longer — with some growing to more than 30 meters in length.

This means the newly discovered whale was “possibly the heaviest animal ever,” Collareta said, but “it was most likely not the longest animal ever.”

It weighs more in part because its bones are much denser and heavier than a blue whale’s, Amson explained.

Those super-dense bones suggest that the whale may have spent its time in shallow, coastal waters, the authors said. Other coastal dwellers, like manatees, have heavy bones to help them stay close to the seafloor.

Without the skull, it’s hard to know what the whale was eating to sustain such a huge body, Amson said.

It’s possible that P. colossus was scavenging for food along the seafloor, researchers said, or eating up tons of krill and other tiny sea creatures in the water.

But “I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing actually fed in a totally different way that we would never imagine,” Thewissen added. 
…

The State Department launched a new bureau Tuesday aimed at making the battle against global outbreaks a lasting priority of U.S. foreign policy, even as one of its key elements – a widely acclaimed HIV program – has become caught up in the political battle over abortion.

The bureau is to include the 20-year-old initiative known as the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The program is relatively unknown to Americans but has succeeded beyond most early expectations in addressing the AIDS crisis and is credited with saving up to 25 million lives worldwide.

The bureau will be led by a public health official integral to PEPFAR, John Nkengasong. Born in Cameroon, Nkengasong was a founder of U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention operations in Africa. He helped set up some of the sub-Saharan’s first sophisticated labs for work with HIV and AIDS.

President George W. Bush started PEPFAR in Africa in 2003. The program retains bipartisan support. But anti-abortion groups and some House Republicans, including Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, are pushing to attach abortion-related limits on U.S. health support overseas to the reauthorizing legislation They are also seeking yearly votes on PEPFAR’s continuance.

While the Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to try to squash any such GOP conditions on the HIV program, the skirmish signals the PEPFAR program is now likely a captive of U.S. abortion politics going forward.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a ceremony for the new Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, made only a passing reference to the abortion fight threatening PEPFAR’s normally assured support from lawmakers, saying he hoped Congress approved the program for another five years, without amendments.

The $100 billion in U.S. support for the PEPFAR program over 20 years is credited with lasting improvements in health care systems globally.

Nkengasong helped establish one of the first local government-run HIV drug programs, in Ivory Coast at a time that HIV and AIDS medications were too scarce and too costly for most people in the sub-Saharan

The lessons learned from the U.S. HIV program “are applied daily” in dealing with other threats, he said Tuesday.

The success of the PEPFAR program as it grew across Africa and around the world over decades made it “the single greatest health achievement in history,” said Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Power cited the economic and human toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, and pointed to estimates that the warming climate and other changing conditions make for a 40% increase in the chances that another pandemic on the same scale as COVID will happen in our lifetimes.

Creation of the new bureau is meant to raise health security as a global priority, build up the capacity of U.S. diplomats and local health systems globally to better curb outbreaks, and get the most out of U.S. assistance to health systems globally, Blinken said.
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A customer goes into a store in the United States that is popular for trendy and cheap clothes — known as “fast fashion” — for an impulsive wardrobe addition.

The person buying those clothes may be planning to keep them for only a short time, and then throwing them out when a new fashion trend arrives.

Fast fashion refers to the mass-produced and low-cost clothing items that manufacturers churn out by the millions each day, especially in China, but also in countries such as India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Turkey.

But what most people don’t realize is that most of the clothes are made from materials that are bad for the environment and end up in landfills.

“Fast fashion has huge implications for the environment,” said Eliot Metzger, director of sustainable business and innovation at the World Resources Institute in Washington. “Not many people realize how much water and energy it takes to create a T-shirt. And if that T-shirt is going to the landfill, replaced by another T-shirt, that is going to multiply what is already an unsustainable pattern.”

Global issue

Fast fashion is not only a problem in the United States but in poorer countries where donated clothes arrive and are then resold by vendors.

“Kenya and Ghana import quite a lot of fast fashion clothing that is causing a huge amount of pollution,” explained Erica Cirino, communications manager for the Plastic Pollution Coalition in Washington. “The landfills are so overwhelmed by textile waste that they begin flowing into the surrounding waterways.

 

From stylish to disastrous

When retailers first introduced fast fashion apparel in the 1990s, the inexpensive and trendy clothing appealed to consumers. Today, its omnipresence in stores and on the internet in the U.S. and other wealthy countries, has made the fast fashion industry a disaster for the environment.

The clothes are often made from synthetic plastic fabrics, such as polyester, nylon and acrylic, which are produced from petroleum-based products — fossil fuels that are causing global warming.

“The heavy reliance by brands on polyester, nylon, acrylic is only increasing,” said Cirino, “so a great majority of clothing today is made out of plastic that is much less expensive than natural materials.”

Researchers have found microfibers from clothing in a wide range of land and aquatic ecosystems — from mountains to ocean floors.

“We call this a global microplastic cycle, where tiny microfibers and other microplastics can move thousands of miles from urban areas, where there are tons of people wearing synthetic clothing, to the most remote corners of the planet, including the top of Mount Everest,” said Britta Baechler, associate director of oceans plastics research with the Ocean Conservancy in Portland, Oregon.

Each year, approximately 6.5 million metric tons of microfibers are released into the environment worldwide, according to the Journal of Hazardous Materials. That’s equivalent to more than 32 billion T-shirts.

“As you’re walking, the material is rubbing together and that that causes fibers to break loose that shed directly into the air and make their way into the waterways,” Baechler told VOA.

Microfibers in washing machines

However, experts say, the biggest source of environmental microfiber is washing machines in the U.S. that do not have filters to catch the tiny fibers.

Wastewater treatment plants filter out the majority of microfibers, but because they are so small, some still get into the waterways. They harm small aquatic organisms that ingest them by creating blockages that hinder their absorption of nutrients from food.

 

It is not yet clear what the effect of microfibers is on humans.

“When we wear this clothing, we’re inhaling and potentially absorbing these plastic particles and their toxic chemical additives through our skin, so we’re exposed at all times,” said Cirino.

Unlike some materials, there is currently no widespread system for recycling textiles.

There are facilities to recycle paper, glass and some plastics, there isn’t an easy way to recycle textiles by shredding them and making them into new textiles, explained Swarupa Ganguli, lead environmental protection specialist in the office of land and emergency management for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Fashionable options

Instead of buying fast fashions, environmental groups say people should think about purchasing clothes at second-hand shops or on the internet and rent outfits for special occasions.

The Patagonia outdoor clothing and gear company in Ventura, California, has a program called Worn Wear to try to keep its clothes out of landfills. The company rebuys some of its used clothing, which is cleaned and resold.

“Worn Wear is based on the premise that reducing the environmental impact of our products must be a shared responsibility between Patagonia and our customers,” said Corey Simpson, the communications manager for product and sport community. “We want to help you with responsible product care while you’re using your gear, and we want to buy it back from you when you no longer need it, whether it can be passed on to someone new or recycled into something new.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency favors what is being called a circular economy approach. This includes redesigning clothes and encouraging the reuse and recycling of clothing.

“The idea is to shift the consumer mindset from using clothing quickly and then throwing it away, and instead to reuse, reduce and recirculate it back into the economy,” Ganguli told VOA.

While “the circular economy for textiles has huge potential,” said Metzger with the World Resources Institute, “I don’t think you can say it is working until the circular economy for textiles is slowing and reversing the consumption.”
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