The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has opened an investigation into the implosion of the Titan, the underwater sea vessel that imploded with five people onboard as it was traveling to the wreckage of the Titanic, the British ocean liner that sank in the North Atlantic in 1912 after striking an iceberg.

The submersible vessel was the property of OceanGate Expeditions, a U.S.-based company. Its support ship, Polar Prince, however, is a Canadian-flagged ship.

“The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) is launching an investigation into the fatal occurrence involving the Canadian-flagged vessel Polar Prince and the privately operated submersible Titan,” the board said in a statement Friday, raising questions about the safety of the ill-fated excursion. The board said a team of investigators has been sent to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to gather information and conduct interviews.

U.S. officials said they too, were opening an investigation.

“The U.S. Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a major marine casualty and will lead the investigation. The NTSB has joined the investigation and will contribute to their efforts. The USCG is handling all media inquiries related to this investigation,” the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Friday in a tweet.

The Polar Prince lost contact with the Titan an hour and 45 minutes after the submersible began its descent Sunday.

Responders rushed equipment to where remains of the Titan were found. Five major fragments of the 6.7-meter Titan were located in the debris field left from its disintegration, including the vessel’s tail cone and two sections of the pressure hull, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. No mention was made of whether human remains were sighted.

OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement the five people on the vessel were company CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Since the submersible went missing with an approximately four-day air supply, questions about it its safety have grown.

“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger of the First Coast Guard District. “Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now.”

According to an Associated Press report, David Lochridge, a former OceanGate director of marine operations, raised questions in 2018 about the methods the company used to insure the structural viability of the hull.

Filmmaker James Cameron, who directed the 1997 Academy Award-winning film Titanic and who has made several dives to the ocean liner’s wreckage aboard other deep-sea submersibles, said in an interview with the BBC that he was sure an “extreme catastrophic event” had happened when he heard the submersible had lost communication and navigation.

“For me, there was no doubt,” he said.

He told the BBC the news about the air supply and underwater noises were a “prolonged and nightmarish charade” to provide false hope to the families of the passengers. Cameron said that once a remotely operated vehicle reached the depth of the vessel, it was likely to be found “within hours … probably within minutes.”

Arthur Loibl, a passenger on the Titan two years ago, described his trip to the Titanic as a “kamikaze operation.” The retired German businessman said, “Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other.”

Scientist and journalist Michael Guillen, who survived an expedition in 2000 that ran into some challenges, said, “We need to stop, pause and ask this question, why do you want to go to the Titanic and how do you get there safely?”

Some information is from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

In May, the World Health Organization certified that the countries of Benin and Mali eliminated trachoma as a public health problem, the fifth and sixth African countries to do so. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, while the Carter Center is celebrating the milestone in Mali, its work in eliminating and eradicating trachoma in Ethiopia, Niger, South Sudan and Sudan continues.
…

The Carter Center was already a decade into its fight against Guinea worm globally when former President Jimmy Carter and his nonprofit took on another neglected tropical disease in the African nation of Mali.

“From 1996 to 1998, it was estimated about 85,000 to 90,000 people would go blind from trachoma,” said Kelly Callahan, director of the Carter Center’s trachoma control program. “Twenty-five[%] to 50% of the children between the ages of 1 and 9, in all areas of Mali, suffered from the beginning stages of this disease.”

It was a statistic Callahan said troubled Carter.

“The Hilton Foundation asked President Carter and the Carter Center if we would be willing to consider working on sanitation and water to combat this disease called trachoma in Mali and Niger,” she said. The nonprofit foundation has been working to prevent avoidable blindness for more than 20 years.

The Carter Center set a goal of eliminating the disease in both countries. Trachoma can be transmitted through infected discharge from the eyes and nose.

“This disease is preventable,” Callahan explained to VOA during a recent Skype interview. It is “a bacterial infection that stems from access, or lack of access, to water and sanitation, poor living conditions, socioeconomically stressed populations.”

Since 1998, the Carter Center and its partners have funded and staffed programs with host nations to develop widespread strategies to treat and prevent infections, even during Mali’s recent armed conflict and continuing instability.

In May, the World Health Organization certified that the countries of Benin and Mali had eliminated trachoma as a public health problem. Six countries in Africa have reached that milestone.

The Carter Center believes its program in Mali has helped avert blindness in more than 5 million people, and the antibiotics used to combat trachoma also help prevent infant mortality, the center said.

“The elimination of trachoma as a public health problem is no less than Herculean,” Callahan told VOA.

Sadi Moussa, the Carter Center’s senior representative in Mali who spoke to VOA via Skype, said he believed the success of his organization’s program to eliminate trachoma could boost efforts to combat other neglected tropical diseases, like Guinea worm.

“Working in an unstable country like this is really challenging for everyone,” Moussa said. “This will also help us with donors to show them that we are serious in what we are doing, and we can convince them to get more resources.”

While Carter has retired from public life and is receiving hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, Callahan said the center keeps him up to date on the status of its health programs, including recent developments in Mali.

“We heard that President Carter was thrilled beyond belief, so we’re very excited that he knows,” Callahan said, adding that while Mali’s elimination milestone is important, the Carter Center’s work in Africa is far from over.

“Currently, we work in five countries, including Mali. Those countries have the worst known trachoma in the world and are also areas of severe challenges and insecurity and are areas of conflict,” she said.

The World Health Organization said trachoma remains in 23 countries throughout Africa, with approximately 105 million people on the continent living in areas at high risk for infection.
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One year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court rescinded a five-decade-old right to abortion, prompting a seismic shift in debates about politics, values, freedom and fairness.

Twenty-five million women of childbearing age now live in states where the law makes abortions harder to get than they were before the ruling.

Decisions about the law are largely in the hands of state lawmakers and courts. Most Republican-led states have restricted abortion. Fourteen ban abortion in most cases at any point in pregnancy. Twenty Democratic-leaning states have protected access.

Here’s a look at what’s changed since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.

Laws enacted in 25 states to ban or restrict abortion access

Last summer, as women and medical providers began to navigate a landscape without legal protection for abortion, Nancy Davis’ doctors advised her to terminate her pregnancy because the fetus she was carrying was expected to die soon after birth.

But doctors in Louisiana, where Davis lived, would not provide the abortion due to a new law banning it throughout pregnancy in most cases.

At the same time, abortion opponents who worked for decades to abolish a practice they see as murder cheered the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. Anti-abortion groups said the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide was undemocratic because it prevented states from enacting bans.

“The Dobbs decision was a democratic victory for life that generations fought for,” said E.V. Osment, a spokeswoman for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a major anti-abortion group.

While some states scrambled to pass new restrictions, others already had enacted laws that were designed to take effect if the court overturned Roe.

More than 25 million women ages 15 to 44, or about 2 in 5 nationally, now live in states where there are more restrictions on abortion access than there were before Dobbs.

Davis received help from a fund that raises money for women to travel for abortions and went to New York for a procedure. The whole experience was heartbreaking, she said.

“A mother’s love starts as soon as she knows she’s pregnant. That attachment starts instantly,” she said. “It was days I couldn’t sleep. It was days I couldn’t eat.”

Abortion access has been protected in 20 states

As some states restricted abortion, others locked in access. In 25 states, abortion remains generally legal up to at least 24 weeks of pregnancy. Twenty of them have solidified abortion rights through constitutional amendments or laws.

CHOICES Center for Reproductive Health had for decades treated patients seeking abortions in Memphis, Tennessee. After Tennessee’s abortion ban kicked in last year, the clinic opened an outpost three hours away, in Carbondale, Illinois.

“They’re coming from Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and even Texas,” said CEO Jennifer Pepper. “But now they’re having to travel much farther.”

Number of abortions is not clear

With lags and gaps in official reporting, the impact of the Dobbs ruling on the number of abortions is not clear.

A survey conducted for the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit organization that promotes research and supports abortion access, has found that the number has fallen to nearly zero in states with bans and risen in neighboring states with fewer restrictions. On balance the number of abortions is declining. But the survey does not capture self-managed abortions outside the traditional medical system, usually done with through a two-pill regimen.

Before the Dobbs ruling, pills were already the most common method of abortion in the U.S. Now, there are more networks to provide access to pills in states with abortion bans.

Some abortion opponents are calling for the abortion drug mifepristone to lose its government approval. The Supreme Court has preserved access for now.

Lawsuits abound

More than 50 lawsuits have been filed over abortion policy since the Dobbs ruling. Many challenges rely on arguments about the rights to personal autonomy or religious freedom. A Texas lawsuit alleges women were denied abortions even when their lives were at risk.

Bans or restrictions are on hold in at least six states while judges sort out their long-term fate. The only states where the top court has permanently rejected restrictions since the Dobbs ruling are Iowa and South Carolina.

Criminal courts have not been busy with abortion cases

There’s little evidence that doctors, women, or those who help them get abortions are being prosecuted.

The Mississippi attorney general’s office says no charges have been brought under a new law that calls for up to 10 years in prison for anyone who provides or attempts to provide an abortion in cases where it wasn’t to save the woman’s life or to end a pregnancy caused by rape or incest.

Progressive prosecutors across the country, including in states with bans, have said that they would not pursue abortion-related cases, or that they would make them a low priority.

Abortion remains a dominant political issue

The political table has been reset, with Republicans entering a new election season weighing how to balance the interests of a base that wants the strictest bans possible against the desires of the broader electorate.

Polling has consistently found that most Americans think abortions should be available early in a pregnancy, but that most also favor restrictions later in a pregnancy.

Last year, voters sided with abortion-rights advocates in all six states with abortion-related ballot measures. The issue was also a major factor in why Democrats performed better than expected in 2022 elections.

It has emerged as a key issue in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
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Evidence is growing about the many ways that traveling in the microgravity environment of space tampers with the human body, with new research showing how it dials down the activity of genes in white blood cells crucial to the immune system.

A study involving 14 astronauts who spent 4½ to 6½ months aboard the International Space Station found that gene expression in these cells, also called leukocytes, quickly decreased when they reached space and then returned to normal not long after returning to Earth, researchers said Thursday.

The findings offer insight into why astronauts are more susceptible to infections during flights, showing how the body’s system for fighting off pathogens is weakened in space.

“A weaker immunity increases the risk of infectious diseases limiting astronauts’ ability to perform their very demanding work in space. If an infection or an immune-related condition was to evolve to a severe state requiring medical care, astronauts while in space would have limited access to care and medication,” said molecular biologist Odette Laneuville of the University of Ottawa in Canada, lead author of the research published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

Leukocytes are produced in the bone marrow and travel through the bloodstream and tissues. Once they detect bodily invaders like a virus or bacterium, they produce antibody proteins to attack the pathogen. Specific genes govern the release of such proteins.

The researchers examined leukocytes isolated in blood drawn from astronauts — 11 men and three women — from the Canadian Space Agency and U.S. space agency NASA, once before the flight, four times aboard the space station and five times after returning to Earth.

Gene expression in 247 genes in leukocytes was at about one third the normal levels while in space, the study found. This occurred within the first few days in space, but then remained at a stable level. The genes typically returned to normal behavior within about a month of an astronaut’s return to Earth.

“White blood cells are very sensitive to the environment of space. They trade their specialized immune functions to take care of cell maintenance or housekeeping roles. Before this paper, we knew of immune dysfunction but not of the mechanisms,” said study co-author Guy Trudel, an Ottawa Hospital rehabilitation medicine specialist.

Discovering altered gene behavior in leukocytes is “a significant step toward understanding human immune dysregulation in space,” Trudel added.

This altered behavior, the researchers said, may result from a phenomenon called “fluid shift” in which blood in the absence of Earth’s gravitational pull is redistributed from the lower to the upper part of the body. It is unlikely that greater solar radiation exposure in space was the culprit, they added.

“New and specific countermeasures will be needed,” Trudel said.

Scientists previously documented astronauts experiencing immune dysfunction in space. This has included reactivation of latent viruses such as: Epstein-Barr, responsible for infectious mononucleosis; varicella-zoster, responsible for shingles; and herpes simplex 1, responsible for cold sores.

It also has been shown that astronauts in space shed more viral particles in their biological fluids — saliva and urine — increasing the risk of spreading pathogens to other astronauts whose own immune systems may be weakened.

The study, funded by the Canadian Space Agency, follows NASA-funded research published June 8 that detailed brain changes in astronauts — expansion of spaces in the brain containing fluid that cushions it to protect against sudden impact and remove waste products.

Other documented effects of space travel include bone and muscle atrophy, cardiovascular changes, issues with the balance system in the inner ear and a syndrome involving the eyes.

Cancer risk from greater radiation exposure is another concern.
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A panel of advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday recommended that new vaccines from Pfizer and GSK to prevent severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections be available to older adults in the U.S. but stopped short of saying all of them should get the shots.

In two separate votes, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) said that people aged 60 and older may receive the RSV shots after consulting with a health care provider.

It was not the strongest recommendation that the ACIP could have made for the shots. Some committee members wanted a broader recommendation, but others had concerns that there was not enough data about how effective the vaccines are in people over age 75 and other high-risk groups.

“Those who are at high risk for disease and for high risk for hospitalizations and death were actually not included in the trials,” said committee member Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot. “The patient population that participated in the study were younger and healthier and had fewer comorbid conditions, were not immunocompromised and were not living in nursing homes.”

The CDC’s director needs to sign off on the recommendation before the vaccines can be made available. Both drugmakers have said they expected to be able to supply the shots ahead of the RSV season later this year.

RSV usually causes mild cold-like symptoms but can also lead to serious illness and hospitalization. It is estimated to be responsible for 14,000 deaths annually in adults aged 65 and older in the United States, according to government data.

During the meeting, the companies presented data on whether one inoculation could remain effective over the course of two RSV seasons compared with protection seen with an annual shot.

In older adults, the efficacy of Pfizer’s vaccine in preventing lower respiratory tract disease with three or more symptoms fell from 88.9% at the end of the first season to 78.6% through the middle of a second RSV season. Efficacy fell to 48.9% from about 65% for less severe forms of the disease in that age group.

With the GSK vaccine, efficacy in preventing severe disease defined by three or more symptoms fell to 84.6% through the middle of the second RSV season, from about 94% at the end of first in older adults. Efficacy of the vaccine in preventing lower respiratory tract disease fell to 77.3% from 82.6% at the end of the first season in older adults.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month approved the first RSV vaccine from GSK, branded as Arexvy, and later Pfizer’s Abrysvo for people aged 60 and older to protect them from lower respiratory tract disease caused by the virus.

Pfizer and GSK have said they expect RSV vaccines to eventually become multibillion-dollar sellers.

For this year, GSK has said it expects the U.S. market to be in the range of 10 million to 15 million people, a small fraction of the size of the expected flu or COVID-19 market for 2023.

At the meeting, GSK said it expects to price its shot between $200 and $295 a dose. Pfizer provided the CDC with a price range of $180 to $270 per dose but would not guarantee that its final price would fall within that range, saying it was in the middle of competitive price negotiations on the shots.
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In astronomical terms, summer begins Wednesday with the arrival of the summer solstice, which marks the longest day of the year for everyone north of the equator. 

This year, the summer solstice falls at exactly 10:57 a.m. EDT, when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer. South of the equator, the same time marks the astronomical start of winter. 

On two moments each year, Earth’s axis tilts the most toward the sun. The hemisphere that tilts closer to the sun experiences its longest day, whereas the hemisphere that tilts away from the sun experiences its longest night. 

The summer solstice takes place between June 20 and 22 each year. By meteorological standards, summer for the Northern Hemisphere begins on June 1. 

This year, the winter solstice will take place on December 21, marking the shortest day of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. 

On the summer solstice, the amount of sunlight people experience depends on how far north they are. The northernmost latitudes experience a full 24 hours of sunlight. By comparison, most of the United States will experience between 14 and 16 hours of sunlight. 

The word solstice comes from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).

Nowadays, the summer solstice comes and goes with little significance to many. 

But for millennia, people around the world celebrated the summer solstice in various ways. Some still take part in festivities. 

The most well-known celebration takes place at 5,000-year-old Stonehenge in England.

Crowds of about 10,000 people — including druids and pagans — often gather at Stonehenge to watch as the rising sun aligns perfectly with the complex’s Heel Stone, which stands outside the main circle. 

In Scandinavian countries, Midsummer festivals mark the summer solstice. In Sweden, people dance around a maypole and feast on herring and vodka. 

Some Alaskans celebrate with midnight baseball, and in Iceland, some celebrate with late-night hiking and golf.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, celebrations honor John the Baptist, known as Ivan Kupala. 

This year, astronomical summer concludes with the autumn equinox on September 23. 
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For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and, eventually, supermarket shelves. 

The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates. 

The move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste. 

“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat. 

The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products. 

Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside’s case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays. 

But don’t look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at University of California Berkeley. 

The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés. 

Company officials are quick to note the products are meat, not substitutes like the Impossible Burger or offerings from Beyond Meat, which are made from plant proteins and other ingredients. 

Globally, more than 150 companies are focusing on meat from cells, not only chicken but pork, lamb, fish and beef, which scientists say has the biggest impact on the environment. 

Upside, based in Berkeley, operates a 70,000-square-foot building in nearby Emeryville. On a recent Tuesday, visitors entered a gleaming commercial kitchen where chef Jess Weaver was sauteeing a cultivated chicken filet in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions. 

The finished chicken breast product was slightly paler than the grocery store version. Otherwise it looked, cooked, smelled and tasted like any other pan-fried poultry. 

“The most common response we get is, ‘Oh, it tastes like chicken,'” said Amy Chen, Upside’s chief operating officer. 

Good Meat, based in Alameda, operates a 100,000-square-foot plant, where chef Zach Tyndall dished up a smoked chicken salad on a sunny June afternoon. He followed it with a chicken “thigh” served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace and tiny purple cauliflower florets. The Good Meat chicken product will come pre-cooked, requiring only heating to use in a range of dishes. 

‘Ick factor’

Chen acknowledged that many consumers are skeptical, even squeamish, about the thought of eating chicken grown from cells. 

“We call it the ‘ick factor,'” she said. 

The sentiment was echoed in a recent poll conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Half of U.S. adults said that they are unlikely to try meat grown using cells from animals. When asked to choose from a list of reasons for their reluctance, most who said they’d be unlikely to try it said “it just sounds weird.” About half said they don’t think it would be safe. 

But once people understand how the meat is made, they’re more accepting, Chen said. And once they taste it, they’re usually sold. 

“It is the meat that you’ve always known and loved,” she said. 

Cultivated meat begins with cells. Upside experts take cells from live animals, choosing those most likely to taste good and to reproduce quickly and consistently, forming high-quality meat, Chen said. Good Meat products are created from a master cell bank formed from a commercially available chicken cell line. 

Once the cell lines are selected, they’re combined with a broth-like mixture that includes the amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, salts, vitamins and other elements cells need to grow. Inside the tanks, called cultivators, the cells grow, proliferating quickly. At Upside, muscle and connective tissue cells grow together, forming large sheets. After about three weeks, the sheets of poultry cells are removed from the tanks and formed into cutlets, sausages or other foods. Good Meat cells grow into large masses, which are shaped into a range of meat products. 

Challenges

Both firms emphasized that initial production will be limited. The Emeryville facility can produce up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated meat products a year, though the goal is to expand to 400,000 pounds per year, Upside officials said. Good Meat officials wouldn’t estimate a production goal. 

By comparison, the U.S. produces about 50 billion pounds of chicken per year. 

It could take a few years before consumers see the products in more restaurants and seven to 10 years before they hit the wider market, said Sebastian Bohn, who specializes in cell-based foods at CRB, a Missouri firm that designs and builds facilities for pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies. 

Cost will be another sticking point. Neither Upside nor Good Meat officials would reveal the price of a single chicken cutlet, saying only that it’s been reduced by orders of magnitude since the firms began offering demonstrations. Eventually, the price is expected to mirror high-end organic chicken, which sells for up to $20 per pound. 

San Martin said he’s concerned that cultivated meat may wind up being an alternative to traditional meat for rich people, but will do little for the environment if it remains a niche product. 

“If some high-end or affluent people want to eat this instead of a chicken, it’s good,” he said. “Will that mean you will feed chicken to poor people? I honestly don’t see it.” 

Tetrick said he shares critics’ concerns about the challenges of producing an affordable, novel meat product for the world. But he emphasized that traditional meat production is so damaging to the planet it requires an alternative — preferably one that doesn’t require giving up meat all together. 

“I miss meat,” said Tetrick, who grew up in Alabama eating chicken wings and barbecue. “There should be a different way that people can enjoy chicken and beef and pork with their families.” 
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Australia’s annual whale migration has started with researchers documenting an unusually high number of humpbacks off the coast. Scientists say the surge is a sign that whale populations are recovering. From Sydney, Phil Mercer reports.
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As the world mark Sickle Cell Day on Monday, Nigeria accounts for about 33% of the 300,000 children diagnosed every year with the disease.

The World Health Organization and Nigeria’s Health Ministry say 25% of the country’s total population are carriers of mutant genes that give rise to the genetic disorder. In 2011, Nigeria’s Health Ministry initiated mandatory screening for newborns to help detect the condition early, but many Nigerian hospitals have yet to comply with the directive.

Anna Ochigbo of Nigeria has lost two siblings to sickle cell anemia. In May 2022, Ochigbo launched the nonprofit Hoplites Sickle Cell Foundation in memory of her siblings. 

“We don’t just create awareness on the importance of genotype testing before marriage,” she said. “We go as far as conducting free genotype testing in certain communities, and we also try as much as possible to educate young people.”

About 50 million people are estimated to be living with sickle cell disease globally, but Nigeria has the highest burden. Every year, an estimated 100,000 kids are diagnosed with the condition in Nigeria, according to the Health Ministry, and up to 80% die before they turn five. 

Hoplites Foundation holds periodic hangouts for sickle cell warriors to meet and share their experiences.

“The participation has been really, really massive,” Ochigbo said. “A lot of sickle cell warriors are coming out now. They want to connect. They want to network. They want to go to a place where they feel loved and appreciated.”

Nigerian authorities in 2011 initiated universal screening for newborns at hospitals to help detect the condition early. However, the Health Ministry’s sickle cell program manager, Alayo Sopekan, said many health centers have yet to adopt the measure.

“Every single child born in Nigeria should be screened at birth. Now, we have a much more refined technology. We have started training health workers,” Sopekan said.

Experts say apart from screening newborns, authorities need to intensify community genotype testing to help create awareness about the disease, and to dispel myths and misinformation about the condition, including that the disease is a spiritual attack on the body.

Nigerian musician Excel Praiseworth has been living with sickle cell disease for 29 years. 

Last year, he started a nonprofit called The Sickle Sound, where he uses his music to debunk misinformation about the condition.

“We’ve been writing songs. We have the sickle sound, which has gone far and wide, and it’s beautiful to know that warriors can listen to these songs and have solace,” Praiseworth said. “Nigeria and the world at large should just get rid of unnecessary stereotypes.”

In 2021, Nigerian lawmakers introduced a bill to screen couples before they get married, but the bill was suspended due to rights issues.

As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark World Sickle Cell Day, advocates are urging authorities to take interventions about the condition more seriously in order for the negative trend to improve. 
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Members of the United Nations adopted the first-ever treaty to protect marine life in the high seas on Monday, with the U.N.’s chief hailing the historic agreement as giving the ocean “a fighting chance.”

Delegates from the 193 member nations burst into applause and then stood up in a sustained standing ovation when Singapore’s ambassador on ocean issues, Rena Lee, who presided over the negotiations, banged her gavel after hearing no objections to the treaty’s approval.

The treaty to protect biodiversity in waters outside national boundaries, known as the high seas, covering nearly half of earth’s surface, had been under discussion for more than 20 years as efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. But in March delegates to an intergovernmental conference established by the U.N. General Assembly in December 2017 agreed on a treaty.

The new treaty is under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. It will be opened for signatures on Sept. 20, during the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly, and it will take effect once it is ratified by 60 countries.

The treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas. It also establishes ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told delegates that the adoption of the treaty comes at a critical time, with the oceans under threat on many fronts.

Climate change is disrupting weather patterns and ocean currents, raising sea temperatures, “and altering marine ecosystems and the species living there,” he said, and marine biodiversity “is under attack from overfishing, over-exploitation and ocean acidification.”

“Over one-third of fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels,” the U.N. chief said. “And we are polluting our coastal waters with chemicals, plastics and human waste.”

Guterres said the treaty is vital to address these threats and he urged all countries to spare no efforts to ensure that it is signed and ratified as soon as possible, stressing that “this is critical to addressing the threats facing the ocean.”

 
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Malawi is emerging victorious in its battle against the deadliest cholera outbreak in the country’s history, which has killed nearly 2,000 people since its onset in March of last year. Health authorities say the country has seen a steady decline in the death rate, with no new cases or hospitalizations for the past two weeks.

A cholera report, which Malawi’s health ministry released Sunday, shows that the outbreak has been fully controlled in 21 districts. These include Chitipa, Dowa, Kasungu, Likoma, Mzimba South, Mzimba North, Mwanza, Nkhata Bay, Ntchisi, Phalombe and Lilongwe, which reported most of the cases.

Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda said in a statement that a few areas are still reporting cases. These areas include Balaka, Blantyre, Chikwawa, Machinga, Nsanje, Ntcheu, Salima and Zomba.

George Mbotwa, spokesperson of the health office in Nsanje district, said the district is recording an average of one or two cases per day, but that number is lower than the average of about 30 daily cases during the peak of the outbreak.

“We have continued to record cases because about 50 percent of Nsanje is bordered by Mozambique. And these cases are coming from across the borders,” he said. “We still have some local transmission but very minimal. And this is coming in because the adoption of hygiene behavior has been very slow.”

Mbotwa said the cross-border cases largely happen because most Mozambican nationals stay away from their country’s health facilities and seek medical assistance at Malawian hospitals.

He said, however, that efforts are being made to contain the cross-border cholera infections.

“We have done coordination meetings with Mozambican officials recently. … That’s the only activity that we have done but we find it very important because we are able to share prevention measures that we are implementing as countries,” Mbotwa said.

Malawi registered the first cholera case in March of last year.

Statistics from the Public Health Institute of Malawi show that the country has recorded 58,870 cumulative confirmed cases and 1,761 deaths.

Malawi, however, has now seen a steady decline in the death rate, with no new cases or hospitalizations in most districts for the past two weeks.

Health authorities attribute the success story to various anti-cholera interventions, including the nationwide vaccination campaign the government and World Health Organization rolled out in May of last year.

Also this past February, President Lazarus Chakwera launched a national campaign against cholera which saw authorities ban the sale of already cooked foods in open places.

Health experts, however, have warned Malawians against relaxing the prevention measures.

“We should remember that we have had cholera cases throughout dry season. Which should be a reason that we can have cholera cases any time not only during the rainy season. Therefore, we encourage Malawians to continue observing prevention measures,” said George Jobe, executive director for the Malawi Health Equity Network.

Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with bacteria. The disease affects both children and adults and, if untreated, can kill within hours.

The health ministry has advised people with signs and symptoms of cholera to promptly go to the nearest treatment unit. 
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Getting vaccinated is an effective way to prevent infection from human papillomavirus, also known as HPV, a virus that can lead to cervical cancer in women and other cancers in men. But the vaccine is neither available nor affordable to many in Venezuela. For Adriana Nunez Rabascall in Caracas, Venezuela, Cristina Caicedo Smit narrates the story. Camera – Jackson Vodopija.
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In early June, sporadic but serious service disruptions plagued Microsoft’s flagship office suite — including the Outlook email and OneDrive file-sharing apps — and cloud computing platform. A shadowy hacktivist group claimed responsibility, saying it flooded the sites with junk traffic in distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Initially reticent to name the cause, Microsoft has now disclosed that DDoS attacks by the murky upstart were indeed to blame.

But the software giant has offered few details — and did not immediately comment on how many customers were affected and whether the impact was global. A spokeswoman confirmed that the group that calls itself Anonymous Sudan was behind the attacks. It claimed responsibility on its Telegram social media channel at the time. Some security researchers believe the group to be Russian.

Microsoft’s explanation in a blog post Friday evening followed a request by The Associated Press two days earlier. Slim on details, the post said the attacks “temporarily impacted availability” of some services. It said the attackers were focused on “disruption and publicity” and likely used rented cloud infrastructure and virtual private networks to bombard Microsoft servers from so-called botnets of zombie computers around the globe.

Microsoft said there was no evidence any customer data was accessed or compromised.

While DDoS attacks are mainly a nuisance — making websites unreachable without penetrating them — security experts say they can disrupt the work of millions if they successfully interrupt the services of a software service giant like Microsoft on which so much global commerce depends.

It’s not clear if that’s what happened here.

“We really have no way to measure the impact if Microsoft doesn’t provide that info,” said Jake Williams, a prominent cybersecurity researcher and a former National Security Agency offensive hacker. Williams said he was not aware of Outlook previously being attacked at this scale.

“We know some resources were inaccessible for some, but not others. This often happens with DDoS of globally distributed systems,” Williams added. He said Microsoft’s apparent unwillingness to provide an objective measure of customer impact “probably speaks to the magnitude.”

Microsoft dubbed the attackers Storm-1359, using a designator it assigns to groups whose affiliation it has not yet established. Cybersecurity sleuthing tends to take time — and even then can be a challenge if the adversary is skilled.

Pro-Russian hacking groups including Killnet — which the cybersecurity firm Mandiant says is Kremlin-affiliated — have been bombarding government and other websites of Ukraine’s allies with DDoS attacks. In October, some U.S. airport sites were hit. Analyst Alexander Leslie of the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said it’s unlikely Anonymous Sudan is located as it claims in Sudan, an African country. The group works closely with Killnet and other pro-Kremlin groups to spread pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation, he said.

Edward Amoroso, NYU professor and CEO of TAG Cyber, said the Microsoft incident highlights how DDoS attacks remain “a significant risk that we all just agree to avoid talking about. It’s not controversial to call this an unsolved problem.”

He said Microsoft’s difficulties fending of this particular attack suggest “a single point of failure.” The best defense against these attacks is to distribute a service massively, on a content distribution network for example.

Indeed, the techniques the attackers used are not old, said U.K. security researcher Kevin Beaumont. “One dates back to 2009,” he said.

Serious impacts from the Microsoft 365 office suite interruptions were reported on Monday June 5, peaking at 18,000 outage and problem reports on the tracker Downdetector shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern time.

On Twitter that day, Microsoft said Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business were affected.

Attacks continued through the week, with Microsoft confirming on June 9 that its Azure cloud computing platform had been affected.

On June 8, the computer security news site BleepingComputer.com reported that cloud-based OneDrive file-hosting was down globally for a time.

Microsoft said at the time that desktop OneDrive clients were not affected, BleepingComputer reported.
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Nestled among the bustling city streets of Washington is a hidden oasis that many Americans don’t know exists. Congress established the U.S. National Arboretum in 1927. Vital scientific research is under way at the sprawling 183-hectare compound. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports on the arboretum’s critical government mission. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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New harmful illicit drugs are inundating a flourishing market for traffickers amid violence and corruption hurting local communities across Europe, the EU’s agency monitoring drugs and addiction said Friday.

The grim finding was part of the agency’s annual report. It also said that drug users in Europe are now exposed to a wider range of substances of high purity as drug trafficking and use across the region have quickly returned to pre-COVID 19 pandemic levels.

Cannabis remains the most-used illicit substance in Europe, the agency found, with some 22.6 million Europeans over the age of 15 having used it in the last year. Cocaine seizures are “historically high” and new synthetic drugs whose effects on health are not well documented are worrying officials.

In 2022, 41 new drugs were reported for the first time by the agency.

“I summarize this with the phrase: ‘everywhere, everything, everyone,'” said European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction Director Alexis Goosdeel.

“Established illicit drugs are now widely accessible and potent new substances continue to emerge,” Goosdeel added. “Almost everything with psychoactive properties can appear on the drug market.”

Among the new popular substances, ketamine and nitrous oxide — so-called laughing gas — are raising concern over reported cases of bladder problems, nerve damage and lung injuries associated with users. Alongside the high availability of heroin on the continent, synthetic opioids are on the rise and have been linked to deaths by overdose in Baltic countries.

The report said the opioids situation in Europe is not comparable with the dramatic picture in North America, where overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids have fueled a drug crisis. But the agency warned that this group of drugs is a threat for the future, with a total of 74 new synthetic opioids identified on the market since 2009.

“We must make sure America’s present does not become Europe’s future,” said Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs.

New cannabis products such as the cannabinoid HHC produce strong psychoactive effects and pose another source of concern, especially since they can be found legally in several countries from the 27-nation bloc due to legislation loopholes. France, for instance, only added it to the list of prohibited substances earlier this week.

Meanwhile, record amounts of cocaine are being seized in Europe, with 303 tons stopped by EU member countries in 2021. According to the report, 75% of that quantity was seized in Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, with the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam now the main gateways for Latin American cocaine cartels into the continent.

The EMCDDA said the quantity of cocaine seized in Antwerp, Europe’s second largest seaport, rose to 110 tons from 91 in 2021, according to preliminary data.

In addition, EU countries reported the destruction of 34 cocaine labs as well as large seizures of a precursor necessary to produce cocaine, confirming that “large-scale cocaine production steps take place in the European Union.”

The expansion of the cocaine market has been accompanied by a rise in violence and corruption in the EU, with fierce competition between traffickers leading to a rise in homicides and intimidation.

In Belgium, federal authorities say drug trafficking is penetrating society at quick speed as foreign criminal organizations have built deep roots in the country, bringing along their violent and ruthless operations.

“Criminals use the profits from drug trafficking to buy people, buy police officers, and to buy murder,” Johansson said. “Violence is growing in scale and brutality. In the past, criminals shot people in the leg as a warning, now they shoot them in the head.”

In the Netherlands, killings hit ever more prominent people, while trafficking in Antwerp has led to a surge of violence in recent years, with gun battles and grenade attacks taking place regularly. In Brussels, the justice minister was put under strict protection last year following the arrest of four alleged drug criminals suspected of taking part in a plot to kidnap him.

“It’s time to realize organized crime is as big a threat towards our society as terrorism,” Johansson said.
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Researchers have been exploring the presence of cancer in animals from elephants to mollusks to learn about cancer in wild animals. They also hope their research will help with human cancers.

“Studying wildlife cancer, and more generally the evolution of cancer across the tree of life, is extremely promising to develop innovative therapies to treat cancer in humans,” Mathieu Giraudeau, a researcher at France’s La Rochelle University who has been focusing on cancer in wild animals since 2018, told VOA.

“The idea behind this is that some species have evolved some mechanisms to limit cancer initiation and progression,” he said. “If we identify and understand these mechanisms, then the goal is to use them as a source of inspiration to develop new therapies.”

Cancer affects both humans and animals but its impact on wild animals has been difficult to uncover.

“There are no basic blood tests to detect cancer in the wild animals,” Giraudeau told VOA, “so most of the studies have to use necropsies [post-mortem examinations of animals] to detect cancer cases in wild animals. That’s why using zoo animals is a fantastic opportunity, since a necropsy is performed for most of the animals dying in zoos.”

Researchers say there are more questions than answers regarding cancer in wild animals, which are hard to study in their natural habitat because they move around and are therefore difficult to observe over time.

“We don’t really know much about the different kinds of animals species that get cancer or how much,” biologist Carlo Maley, director of the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center at Arizona State University, where he is studying cancer in wild animals, told VOA.

“We’ve been focusing on collecting data to find which species are super susceptible or super resistant to cancer,” he said, “and we’re looking at questions such as how has nature figured out how to prevent cancer and then, can we translate that to humans.

It seems large and long-lived species “have evolved some powerful mechanisms to fight against cancer, and we now need to understand these mechanisms,” Giraudeau said.

They include elephants and whales.

“Elephant cells are super sensitive to DNA damage, and even with just a little DNA damage, the cell will commit suicide and not risk getting mutations,” Maley said. “So it seems to be a strategy for avoiding cancer by killing off a potentially dangerous cell, rather than risk getting a mutation that could lead to cancer.”

In Australia, however, that has not been the case for a much smaller animal, the Tasmanian devil. The carnivorous marsupials have been nearly wiped out from cancerous tumors growing in and around their mouths.

“Devils bite each other, particularly around the face, as part of their normal behavior,” Cambridge University veterinary medicine professor Elizabeth Murchison told VOA.

Murchison, a researcher on the genetics and evolution of transmissible cancers, added, “Tasmanian Devils have a transmissible cancer that spreads between the animals by the transfer of living cancer cells. There are, in fact, two independent transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils, which was a surprise, and both are spread during biting, and result in fatal facial tumors.”

Murchison, who grew up in Tasmania, “passionately” hopes the endangered species can be saved.

“There is currently no way to control the disease,” she said. “Research directed towards developing a vaccine is ongoing, but it will be a long road to developing an effective protective vaccine.”

Even much smaller creatures, like shellfish, are dying from cancer.

On Whidbey Island in Washington state, a massive die-off of cockles, a type of bivalve mollusk, were found on the beach. It turns out the cockles had a leukemia-like contagious cancer that affects the cells that live in their hemolymph, the equivalent of blood.

It is another transmissible cancer, found in many shellfish species worldwide, but first discovered in these cockles in 2018. The cancer cells in the sea can float to enter nearby cockles, spreading the disease.

“The whole cell of the cancer moves from one animal to the next,” unlike conventional human cancer that arises due to cell mutations that don’t move from one person to another, said Michael Metzger, assistant investigator at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle, Washington.

Researchers are working to find the cause of the contagious cancer and using genetic analysis, to learn how the disease evolves.

It’s not clear how the cockles first got the disease.

It’s possible it could have been brought to the area by a boat carrying diseased shellfish, he said. He also said environmental stressors may have played a part, including global warming.

Scientists say there is a long way to go before cancer in wild animals is widely understood and how that may help battle human cancers in the future. Besides genetics, they are also looking at the effect of viruses, pesticides, habitat destruction and pollution.

Human cancers are short-lived, from an evolutionary perspective,” Murchison said. “Our work gives us insight into how cancers evolve over long time-periods.”

“I think the main benefit is going to be preventing cancer as opposed to curing it,” said Maley. But there’s some possibility that the mechanisms that prevent cancer could also be translated into potential therapies.”
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Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday unanimously recommended that updated COVID-19 shots being developed for a fall vaccination campaign target one of the currently dominant XBB coronavirus variants. 

The panel voted 21-0 in favor of XBB-targeted shots and the committee’s discussion indicated that the XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant would be preferred. 

COVID vaccine makers Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax are developing versions of their respective vaccines targeting XBB.1.5 and other currently circulating subvariants. Preclinical data was presented at the meeting.  

If XBB.1.5 is chosen as the target for this year’s campaign, it would be especially helpful to Novavax, as their protein-based vaccine takes longer to manufacture than rival mRNA-based shots. If the FDA chose a different target, Novavax could again find itself playing catch up to rivals. 

FDA staff reviewers in documents released this week said available evidence suggests this year’s shots should target an XBB subvariant. XBB and its offshoots, which now account for most U.S. infections, are descendants of the omicron variant that caused COVID cases to surge to record levels early last year. 

U.S. regulators are looking to bring the next COVID shots more closely in line with the circulating virus.  

A so-called monovalent vaccine would be a change from the most recent bivalent COVID boosters that targeted both the original strain of the coronavirus and omicron.  

The FDA takes recommendations from its outside experts into consideration before making a final decision on composition of the shots. 
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The long hunt for extraterrestrials just got a big boost.

Scientists have discovered that phosphorus, a key building block of life, lies in the ocean beneath the icy surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

The finding was based on a review of data collected by NASA’s Cassini probe, and it was published Wednesday in the prestigious journal Nature.

Cassini started exploring Saturn and its rings and moons in 2004, before burning up in the gas giant’s atmosphere when its mission ended in 2017.

“This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology,” said Christopher Glein of the Southwest Research Institute, one of the paper’s co-authors, noting: “We have found abundant phosphorus in plume ice samples spraying out of the subsurface ocean.”

Geysers on Enceladus’ south pole spew icy particles through cracks on the surface out into space, feeding Saturn’s E ring — the faint ring outside the brighter main rings. 

Scientists previously found other minerals and organic compounds in the ejected ice grains, but not phosphorus, which is an essential building block for DNA and RNA. It also is found in the bones and teeth of people, animals, and even ocean plankton.

Simply put, life as we know it would not be possible without phosphorus.

While geochemical modeling had previously found it was likely phosphorus would also be present, and this prediction was published in an earlier paper, it is one thing to forecast something and another to confirm, said Glein.

“It’s the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth,” added first author Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at Freie Universitat Berlin, in a NASA statement.

To make the new discovery, authors combed through data collected by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument, and confirmed the findings by carrying out laboratory experiments to show that Enceladus’ ocean has phosphorus bound inside different water-soluble forms.  

Over the past 25 years, planetary scientists have discovered that worlds with oceans beneath a surface layer of ice are common in our solar system.

These include Jupiter’s moon Europa, Saturn’s largest moon Titan, but even the more distant body, Pluto.

While planets like Earth that have surface oceans need to reside within a narrow window of distance from their host star to maintain the right temperatures for life, the discovery of worlds with subsurface oceans expands the number of habitable bodies that might exist.  

“With this finding, the ocean of Enceladus is now known to satisfy what is generally considered to be the strictest requirement for life,” said Glein.

“The next step is clear — we need to go back to Enceladus to see if the habitable ocean is actually inhabited.”
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Six percent of all maternal deaths around the world are caused by obstructed labor, according to the World Health Organization. That’s when a baby can’t move through the birth canal. It can also lead to obstetric fistula, a condition that can have a long-term impact on a woman’s health, especially in developing countries. Reporter Idd Uwesu has more from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in this report narrated by Omary Kaseko. Video:
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When peanuts are dropped into a pint of beer, they sink to the bottom before floating up and “dancing” in the glass. 

Scientists have dug deep to investigate this phenomenon in a study published on Wednesday, saying it has implications for understanding mineral extraction or bubbling magma in the Earth’s crust. 

Brazilian researcher Luiz Pereira, the study’s lead author, told AFP he first had the idea when passing through Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires to learn Spanish.  

It was a “bartender thing” in the city to take a few peanuts and pop them into beers, Pereira said. 

Because the peanuts are denser than the beer, they first sink down to the bottom of the glass. 

Then each peanut becomes what is called a “nucleation site.” Hundreds of tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide form on their surface, acting as buoys to drag them upward. 

“The bubbles prefer to form on the peanuts rather than on the glass walls,” said Pereira, a researcher at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. 

When the bubbles reach the surface, they burst. 

The peanuts sink again before being propelled up anew by freshly formed bubbles, in a dance that continues until the carbon dioxide runs out, or someone interrupts it by drinking the beer. 

In a series of experiments, the team of researchers in Germany, Britain and France examined how roasted, shelled peanuts fared in a lager-style beer. 

‘Beer-gas-peanut system’

The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, describes two key factors in what the researchers dubbed the “beer-gas-peanut system.” 

They found that the larger the “contact angle” between the curve of an individual bubble and the surface of the peanut was, the more likely it was to form and grow.  

But it cannot grow too much — a radius of less than 1.3 millimeters is ideal, the study said. 

Pereira said he hoped that “by deeply researching this simple system, which everyone can grasp, we can understand a system” that would be useful for industry or explaining natural phenomena. 

For example, he said the floatation process was similar to the one used to separate iron from ore. 

Air is injected, in a controlled way, into a mixture in which a mineral, such as iron, “will rise because bubbles attach themselves more easily to it, while other (minerals) sink to the bottom,” he said. 

The same process could also explain why volcanologists find that the mineral magnetite rises to higher layers in the crystalized magma of the Earth’s crust than would be expected. 

Like peanuts, magnetite is denser, so should sit at the bottom. But because of a high contact angle, the researchers theorize, the mineral rises through the magma with help from gas bubbles. 

Of course, science is never settled, particularly when beer is involved. 

Hoping to create a better model of the dancing peanut phenomenon, Pereira said the scientists will continue to “play with the characteristics of different peanuts and different beers.” 
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Blood banks in Cameroon are usually close to empty due to widely held taboos against blood donation. Officials in the central African country are trying to convince people to move past those beliefs amid an increased demand for blood and blood products in hospitals and on the front lines where soldiers are fighting separatists and Islamist militants. The effort comes ahead of World Blood Donor Day, observed on June 14. 

Illustrating the shortages is the story of a woman who told nurses at the Yaounde military hospital that she has not found anyone to donate blood to save the life of her two-year-old son. 

Hospital workers said the 34-year-old fruit seller’s blood was infected and that it could not be transfused to her son.

Medical staff members have requested blood from government hospitals to save the child’s life, the hospital said, adding that the blood bank at the military hospital is empty.

Celestin Ayangma, head of the laboratory that is in charge of the hospital’s blood bank, said that since January of this year, the Yaounde military hospital had been able to provide only six of the 20 units of blood it needs every day. Ayangma added that patients eventually die if they do not have relatives, friends or other donors to give the blood that the patients need.

By midday on Tuesday, the baby was still waiting for blood. 

Cameroon’s public health ministry reported that in 2022, hospitals in the country were able to collect a little more than 120,000 pints of blood from voluntary donors, family members and friends of sick patients. 

But each year, Cameroon needs at least 600,000 pints of blood for both private and government-owned hospitals.

The government says blood donation needs in Cameroon are increasing due to the separatist conflict in the country’s western regions and fighting with Boko Haram militants on the northern border with Nigeria. 

This year, government officials, health workers and aid agencies took to the streets ahead of World Blood Donor Day, trying to convince people to donate blood and save lives.

Ruth Abeng of the Cameroon Medical Council, an association of Cameroonian doctors, took part in the campaign. She sayid there are very few voluntary blood donors in Cameroon as some people are compelled to donate blood only when they see their sick relatives and friends in need of blood and dying. She said it is disheartening to see patients dying because some of their relatives believe that a blood donation is mystical.

Some Cameroonians believe that if they give blood, the recipient will receive any good luck and success they’ve had in life. Others say God will punish them if they donate blood to an evil person. 

The government says such beliefs are unfounded and people should not be afraid to donate blood. 

The Ministry of Health also says donated blood is not sold as some people erroneously believe. Blood that is donated is stored in banks and transfused to people in need, the government says. 

Hospitals say patients pay a fee of about $50 for the hospital to test donated blood and make sure it is safe to use. 

The government gives donors about $10 in a bid to encourage more donations. 

Cameroon says it expects to raise about 20,000 pints of blood by June 14. 

Hospitals say the amount will not be enough to meet the country’s needs but that it will reduce suffering and prevent some people from dying.
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In the United States, women’s access to legal abortion depends on where they live. The Western U.S. state of Idaho has some of the toughest laws against abortion, and that may be having an impact on women who are trying to have babies. Deborah Bloom has our story.  
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Singapore was the first country in the world to greenlight the sale of lab-grown meat, but even after nearly 2½ years, the fledgling industry is still struggling with supply issues and hurdles such as public acceptance, experts say.

Lab-grown or cultivated meat is meat grown in a lab by extracting cells from animals and growing the muscles to eventually have the texture, nutrition and taste of meat from real-life animals.

The product has long been touted as a potential solution to multiple issues, including burgeoning food insecurity brought by human-caused climate change, degrading soil and biodiversity, and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.

Southeast Asia is at the forefront of the impact of climate change impacts, with recent heatwaves sweeping across the region and food security has become a priority in the region’s agenda. In land-scarce Singapore, the issue is even more acute where its citizens import 90% of the food they consume.

Turning to more sustainable meat is one of the city-state’s food strategies. Its so-called “30 by 30” goal aims to produce 30% of Singapore’s nutritional needs locally by 2030, and COVID-19’s impacts on food exports was another wake-up call for the country. Chicken rice is Singapore’s de-facto national dish, but its neighbor, Malaysia, banned its exports of chicken to Singapore last year due to a global feed shortage.

“We [Singapore] had to scramble to try and find chicken supplies from other countries,” Andre Huber, executive director of Huber’s Butchery and Bistro, the only restaurant in Singapore that serves cultivated chicken dishes, told VOA News.

“I think the government’s decision to try and grow some of our own produce … we don’t have land or animals roaming around. I think this [lab-grown chicken] can be grown in high rise buildings.”

Singapore gave its green light to the sale of lab-grown chicken in December 2020 but so far, the product from U.S. cultivated meat provider GOOD Meat is only available in Huber’s and remains in limited supply.

Asked why the supply of cultivated chicken remains limited after over two years of gaining approval, Jun Chong, GOOD Meat’s associate product developer said money has been an issue.

“It was after two years when we have enough fundings and investment of money, and then we started to build our own facility,” Chong said. “It’s slowly getting into place.”

The new facility Chong mentioned is set to become the largest cultivated meat production center in Asia when it opens later this year in Singapore’s Bedok town and will provide “tens of thousands of pounds of meat from cells,” according to a statement from GOOD Meat.

In addition to infrastructure, another controversy connected to cultivated meat is the use of fetal bovine serum, which is often made from killing cows when they are pregnant. A recent study showed that over 2 million bovine fetuses are used globally to produce around 800,000 liters of such serum, sparking ethical debates in the industry. The use of such serum also goes against the feature of lab-grown meat being slaughter-free.

Chong said GOOD Meat has just gained approval to use a new plant-based serum that will be able to replace the fetus bovine serum. He added that the firm will start using the new serum to grow the muscles of chicken meat after the Bedok facility starts operating.

Meanwhile, Alfredo Franco-Obregon, associate professor at the National University of Singapore, found a way to grow cell-based meat with a magnet that can potentially replace fetus bovine serum.

“We found that we are just as good as fetal bovine serum in sustaining muscle growth, which makes sense because these [meat] factors are coming from muscles, either from a fetus or in a dish,” he told VOA News in a video interview.

The muscle growth expert said if lab-grown meat can be scaled up, the inhumane livestock farms can hopefully be wiped out.

“You have to keep the animal alive for two years [before it’s ready to be made into meat], and it would be good if you could do it in a way that’s humane, but a lot of these systems aren’t very humane.”

Franco-Obregon added that while lab-grown meat cannot completely replace real meat, “there’s a way of improving … the livestock industry. It’s more efficient, less greenhouse emissions, higher productivity and cell-based meat will be a supplement. … We are going to run out of food. That’s the honest truth. And like it or not, we’re going to have to find alternatives, otherwise people will start to starve.”

Huang Dejian, deputy head of NUS’ Department of Food Science and Technology, echoed Franco-Obrego’s view. Huang pioneered extraction of plant-based cells to develop edible 3D-printed scaffolds to replace the current plastic scaffolds used in the production process.

“In a decade or two … maybe 50% of all the meat we found in our market is hybrid meat [lab-grown meat with animal cells and plant-based cells],” Huang told VOA.

Asked if lab-grown meat with many tech-heavy processes might involve more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional meat from livestock farms — as suggested by a preprint study at the University of California, Davis — Huang said, “I feel it’s unfair to calculate, you know, the footprint because it [the product] is too early. If you take advantage of technology to a level and the cost of production is lowered, it might also reduce the energy input and efficiency.”

Consumer acceptance of lab-grown meat could be a bigger challenge for the industry, he added, but he remained optimistic about the future of cultivated meat.

“A lot of the groundwork has already been laid. And we can see, I think in the next five years or so, people may be able to have a chance to taste [lab-grown meat]. The future to me is quite bright.”
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