Four years ago, high school and college students in the class of 2023 had just entered their first year when the coronavirus pandemic hit. They were thrust into an academic world of uncertainty when in-person classes stopped and were moved to online platforms.

Now recent graduates, they are the last undergraduate class with memories of what it was like to be students when the pandemic began. 

“It was shocking and confusing because we didn’t know what was going to happen with our studies,” said Sarabeth McClain, 22, who just received her undergraduate diploma in economics and political science at Rhode Island University. 

When the World Health Organization declared COVID a global pandemic in March 2020, in-person classes stopped in the United States, forcing students to learn online.  

“It was chaotic. I was taking classes that quickly went virtual, and I started to feel more distant from my professors,” said Rachel Buxbaum, who was in a doctoral degree program in clinical psychology at Long Island University in New York. “Plus, I began seeing psychotherapy patients online, and it all felt overwhelming.”

COVID-19 changed everything, including the college experience. 

“It was a resilience test for these students and impacted their ability to focus on education,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. 

According to a 2021 Best Colleges survey, 9 out of 10 college students said they struggled with isolation, anxiety and a lack of focus during the pandemic.

For much of two years, the lives of both college and high school students were turned upside down with uncertainty and the unease of not spending time with their classmates in person. 

“The quarantine led to an increase in social anxiety for them,” explained Caroline Clauss-Ehlers, a psychology professor in the School of Health Professions at Long Island University.  “Interacting with their peers is important to them, and with the quarantine that was lost, including some social skills.”

“I was struggling,” said high school student Jessica Hernandez, who graduated from Mount Vernon High School in Alexandria, Virginia, “because I couldn’t socialize with anyone since everyone was stuck behind a screen.” 

Besides social isolation, another Best Colleges study, in 2022, found the transition to remote learning caused significant stress from an increase in distractions and a loss of academic resources such as academic advisers.

“I felt neglected because the teacher wasn’t there to help me in person,” Hernandez told VOA, “and there were many distractions at home with my phone and TV easy to get to all the time, while I’m watching online classes from my bed.”

However, another high school student called her online learning “super easy.”

“It was such a quick transition during COVID that the teachers didn’t have much time to figure out online learning,” said Reda Adkins, a graduate of Perry High School in Perry, Ohio, “and so they were laid back and there was no pressure on the students to study and learn.”

According to a 2021 Frontiers in Psychology survey, 33% of college students were concerned about their academic futures due to the pandemic.

“I don’t feel there are many advantages to taking classes online,” said Sam Lodge, a graduate in economics at the University of Wisconsin. “It hurt me academically because it was harder to learn and process the information.”

“I didn’t like online learning and missed the structure of going to class, including classroom discussions,” said McClain.

“The professors prepared me academically,” said Matthew Shea, who received his diploma from Pennsylvania State University. “However, it was hard to pay attention during the lectures when you’re not in the classroom. I was also more hesitant to ask questions online rather than in-person, where I am more comfortable raising my hand.”

However, other students adapted to learning virtually, Pasquerella noted.

“Most students were skeptical about learning online during the pandemic, but after in-person college classes resumed, many wanted to have more online courses, especially for the flexibility.”

According to a new survey by TimelyCare, a virtual health and well-being program for students in higher education, about 80% of graduating seniors say the pandemic affected their workforce preparedness.

“I’m looking for employment right now,” Lodge told VOA. “During COVID, the lack of being social, including talking to new people, has had an impact on my reaching out to people who are hiring.”

Despite a disrupted college experience and trepidation about entering the workforce, nearly all of this year’s college graduates are hopeful for their future, TimelyCare said.

“I’m looking forward to my work as a clinical psychologist in primary health care at a hospital in New York,” said Buxbaum, who completed her doctoral degree.

“I feel like I’m regaining my mental energy, and I’m going to a local community college in northern Virginia to study to become a nurse,” said high school graduate Hernandez. 
…

The idea of the American Dream can conjure up images of tidy suburban homes with immaculate green lawns, but achieving and maintaining that lush carpet of grass can seem like a nightmare.

“Most people don’t install lawns, they get them when they buy the house. They’re stuck,” says Paul Robbins, author of Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are.

“That’s the first thing we learned in our research is that most people would prefer not to have them, but they feel that they need to have them, or that they can’t do anything about it. And the need to have them is that they feel an obligation to their neighbors,” Robbins said.

Conforming to the neighbors can be timely, expensive and unhealthy, due to the chemicals used to keep the lawn perfect. But not conforming can also be costly. Janet and Jeffrey Crouch, a Maryland couple who live about 45 minutes outside of Washington, learned this lesson when they decided to forgo a lawn to plant native plants that are wildlife-friendly.

“We started planting native plants and the butterflies and bees and birds started coming immediately when we stopped using pesticides and fertilizers,” Janet Crouch says.

But their next-door neighbor complained to the homeowners association, which like a typical HOA, oversees the management of some residential communities and is usually run by a board of volunteer homeowners. The Crouches were ordered to pull out their native plants and replace them with grass. They refused.

“We were not using pesticides or fertilizers. We knew we were doing things that were beneficial for the environment,” Janet Crouch says. “So, it just seemed fundamentally wrong to tear out this piece of paradise that we’ve created and put in turf grass, which is an environmental dead zone.”

Lawns are considered environmental dead zones in part because they provide no food or shelter for wildlife, including pollinators like birds, bees and butterflies, which are among the wildlife whose numbers are decreasing at a rapid rate due to habitat destruction and other human-related actions. One million species worldwide face extinction, many within decades, due to the loss of biodiversity.

“The fundamental ecological fact about turf grass is that it’s not native to North America, with maybe one exception. And to plant a crop which is not native to the continent, and then try to engineer it into a state of absolute perfection, is like pushing a boulder up the hill,” says Ted Steinberg, author of American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.

An industry report suggests Americans spend almost $100 billion on lawn care yearly, with each household, on average, spending $503 on lawn care and gardening.

“Super-green monoculture is an ecological boondoggle,” Steinberg adds. “It uses a lot of chemical inputs, a lot of water — you water a lot — and leaches nutrients from the soil, and that sends people back to the store for more chemical inputs, especially fertilizer.”

Chemicals used to maintain lawns include glyphosate and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, known as 2,4-D, which are suspected of causing cancer and other health ailments and can contaminate groundwater. Some states already ban the use of certain chemicals on lawns. Others, particularly in the arid West, have restrictions on how often or if people can water their grass.

“There’s more than 40 million acres across the country of turf,” says Nancy Lawson, author of The Humane Gardener and Wildscapes. Lawson is also Janet Crouch’s sister and the person who encouraged the Crouches to install native plants. “Turf is the No. 1 irrigated crop, so it’s taking up a lot of water.”

Lawson has created a wildlife oasis of native plants surrounding her house. She lives in an area of Maryland that is not governed by HOAs.

“I think the future of the lawn, as it is now, is doomed,” Lawson says. “So, what’s the alternative? Well, it shouldn’t be rock or something like that because you’re heating up the planet even more. So, the alternative is plants, and it’s native plants that know how to grow in your soil conditions, in your sun conditions, in the weather of your region.”

The Crouches’ battle against their HOA took three years. The couple says they spent $60,000 fighting to keep their natural garden. They won and as a result of their efforts, the state of Maryland passed a law that allows people to grow native plants instead of grass, no matter what their HOA wants.

Robbins, who is also an environmental studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes lawns will always be around, but not in the state they are in now.

“They’re going to be targeted in places where they’re most appropriate, where you’ve got kids and you want them to have a place to run around,” Robbins says. “There’s going to be fewer of them, and they’re going to live alongside much more biodiverse options.”
…

The Dutch government said on Tuesday it would hold U.S. industrial group 3M Co. liable for polluting the Western Scheldt river with potentially harmful substances known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals.” 

3M said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters that it had received a letter from the Dutch government’s legal representative on Tuesday and was studying its contents. 

The Netherlands said it would hold the company responsible for pollution in the Dutch part of the river, allegedly caused by its nearby Belgian plant. 

Higher than acceptable pollutant levels have resulted in financial damages for the fishing fleet and the government, the Netherlands said. 

“I think polluters should pay … Holding 3M liable is in line with that basic position,” Dutch Infrastructure and Water Management Minister Mark Harbers said in a statement. 

3M said it had already invited the Dutch authorities to have a meeting about the PFAS situation in the Western Scheldt. 

“(We) welcome the opportunity for conversation with the Dutch government and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management,” it said in its statement. 

3M’s website shows it has a plant that makes products that contain PFAS on the Belgian side of the Scheldt river, which originates in France. 

Last December 3M set itself a 2025 deadline to stop producing PFAS. The European Union is considering a ban on the chemicals. 

Perfluoralkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) do not break down quickly and have in recent years been found in dangerous concentrations in drinking water, soils and foods. 

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias

The chemicals have been used in everything from cars to medical gear and nonstick pans due to their long-term resistance to extreme temperature and corrosion. 

But they have also been linked to health risks including cancer, hormonal dysfunction and a weakened immune system as well as environmental damage. 

The Dutch government said there would be an assessment of how much of the alleged PFAS damages 3M could be held liable for. 
…

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is exploring ways artificial intelligence can help detect fentanyl and prevent it from entering the country. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
…

A growing number of health emergencies around the world, from COVID-19 to cholera, have left the World Health Organization’s response “overstretched,” a senior advisor said on Tuesday.  

Speaking at the U.N. agency’s annual meeting, Professor Walid Ammar, chairman of a committee reviewing the WHO’s emergency response, said funding and staffing gaps were widening in the face of ever-increasing demands.  

“[The] program is overstretched as demands have only grown with the multiplicity and complexity of emergencies,” he said.  

As of March, the WHO was responding to 53 high-level emergencies, a report by the committee said. These included diseases like COVID-19, cholera and a Marburg outbreak in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania, as well as humanitarian emergencies like the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and floods in Pakistan.  

The report also noted that climate change was increasing the frequency of events like floods and cyclones, all of which have health consequences.  

However, the emergency program’s core budget for 2022-2023 is only about 53% funded, the report found, calling for more stable financing.  

The WHO and member states are trying to reform how the agency — and countries — respond to health emergencies, as well as shoring up the WHO’s funding. On Monday, member states approved a new budget including a 20% hike in their mandatory fees. 

The report also called on the WHO to look for more efficiencies: for example, in Malawi, four different emergency teams were responding to cholera, COVID-19, polio, and flooding, in ways that may have overlapped, it said.  
…

Brazil declared a state of animal health emergency for 180 days in response to the country’s first detection of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus in wild birds, in a document signed Monday by Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro.  

Infection by the H5N1 subtype of avian flu in wild birds does not trigger trade bans, based on guidelines of the World Organization for Animal Health. However, a case of bird flu on a farm usually results in the entire flock being killed and can trigger trade restrictions from importing countries. 

Brazil, the world’s biggest chicken meat exporter with $9.7 billion in sales last year, has so far confirmed eight cases of the H5N1 in wild birds, including seven in Espirito Santo state and one in Rio de Janeiro state.  

The country’s agriculture ministry said later Monday it has created an emergency operations center to coordinate, plan and evaluate “national actions related to avian influenza.”  

Though Brazil’s main meat producing states are in the south, the government is on alert after the confirmed cases, as avian flu in wild birds has been followed by transmission to commercial flocks in some countries. 

Over the weekend, the Health Ministry said samples of 33 suspected cases of avian influenza in humans in Espirito Santo, where Brazil confirmed the first cases in wild birds last week, came back negative for the H5N1 subtype.  
…

Arizona, Nevada and California said Monday they’re willing to cut back on their use of the dwindling Colorado River in exchange for money from the federal government — and to avoid forced cuts as drought threatens the key water supply for the U.S. West.

The $1.2 billion plan, a potential breakthrough in a year-long stalemate, would conserve an additional 3 million acre-feet of water through 2026, when current guidelines for how the river is shared expire. About half the cuts would come by the end of 2024.

That’s less than what federal officials said last year would be needed to stave off crisis in the river but still marks a notable step in long and difficult negotiations between the three states.

The 2,334-kilometer river provides water to 40 million people in seven U.S. states, parts of Mexico and more than two dozen Native American tribes. It produces hydropower and supplies water to farms that grow most of the nation’s winter vegetables.

In exchange for temporarily using less water, cities, irrigation districts and Native American tribes in the three states will be paid. The federal government plans to spend $1.2 billion, said Lauren Wodarski, a spokesperson to U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat.

Though adoption of the plan isn’t certain, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton called it an “important step forward.” She said the bureau will pull back its proposal from last month that could have resulted in sidestepping the existing water priority system to force cuts while it analyzes the three-state plan. The bureau’s earlier proposal, if adopted, could have led to a messy legal battle.

“At least they’re still talking. But money helps you keep talking,” said Terry Fulp, former regional director of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Basin region. He noted the agreement is a “short-term, three-year deal” and that because the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming didn’t face immediate cuts, they were not part of the pact.

The three Lower Basin states are entitled to 7.5 million acre-feet of water altogether from the river. An acre-foot of water is roughly enough to serve two to three U.S. households annually.

California gets the most, based on a century-old water rights priority system. Most of that goes to farmers in the Imperial Irrigation District, though some also goes to smaller water districts and cities across Southern California. Arizona and Nevada have already faced cuts in recent years as key reservoir levels dropped based on prior agreements. But California has been spared.

Under the new proposal, California would give up about 1.6 million acre-feet of water through 2026 — a little more than half of the total. That’s roughly the same amount the state first offered six months ago. It wasn’t clear why the other states agreed to a deal now when California didn’t offer further cuts. Leaders in Arizona and Nevada didn’t immediately say how they’d divide the other 1.4 million acre-feet.

The Imperial Irrigation District would account for more than half of California’s cuts. J.B. Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California, said the district has already taken measures to improve water efficiency and will need to do more. He said the district is working on a pilot summer idling program where farmers would sign up to turn off their water for 60 days for forage crops. During that time of year, yields are already down and more water is required, he said.

Bill Hasencamp, manager of Colorado River resources for the Metropolitan Water District of California, which supplies water to 19 million people in southern California, said the wet winter means the state simply needs less water. His district is planning on leaving 250,000 acre-feet this year in Lake Mead and won’t withdraw it until after 2026.

The district will also turn over to the federal government a program that pays farmers to fallow land that typically nets them about 130,000 acre-feet of water a year, he said.

The Colorado River has been in crisis for years due to a multi-decade drought in the West intensified by climate change, rising demand and overuse. Water levels at key reservoirs dipped to unprecedented lows, though they have rebounded somewhat thanks to heavy precipitation this winter.

In recent years, the federal government has cut some water allocations and offered billions of dollars to pay farmers, cities and others to cut back. But key water officials didn’t see those efforts as enough to prevent the system from collapsing.

Michael Cohen, a senior researcher at the Pacific Institute focused on the Colorado River, called the amount of cuts the three states have proposed a “huge, huge lift” and a significant step forward.

“It does buy us a little additional time,” he said. But if more dry years are ahead, “this agreement will not solve that problem.”
…

As the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula approaches Tuesday, scores of women who have been treated for the medical condition are encouraging their peers in northern Cameroon to get help.

Many sufferers of obstetric fistula — characterized by urinary and fecal incontinence — believe the disease is a curse for wrongdoing. Now former patients and aid groups are telling families fistula can be treated.

The network of women who have been successfully operated on for obstetric fistula in Cameroon’s northern region say they are educating communities that it is a disease that can be treated.

Hospital workers say obstetric fistula is a hole between the birth canal and bladder or rectum, caused by prolonged, obstructed labor without access to timely, high-quality medical treatment. The disease leaves women and girls leaking urine, feces or both, and often leads to chronic medical problems, depression, social isolation and deepening poverty, medical staff members say.

Catherine Debong, 31, is the spokesperson for Women in Maroua, a group of women who have been operated on for obstetric fistula. Maroua is a town in Cameroon’s far north that shares a border with Chad and Nigeria. 

Debong said she is urging parents, husbands, clerics, community leaders and traditional rulers to educate others that obstetric fistula is not a curse or divine punishment for wrongdoing. She said she wants communities to encourage women who have gone into hiding due to the disease to seek treatment.

Debong said a Roman Catholic priest took her to the hospital in 2012 after she had lived with fistula for six years. She is now committed to saving the lives of other women with fistula whom she said are dying without medical help. 

Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health says between 350 and 1,500 new cases of fistula are reported each year. Seventy-five percent of the cases are reported on Cameroon’s northern region, where more than 80% of civilians seek help from African traditional healers and seldom visit hospitals.

Cameroon reports that 60% of patients seeking help in hospitals have lived with obstetric fistula for more than 5 years. Eighty percent of patients have no formal education and 90% were teenagers when they had their first baby.

Many sufferers are accused of witchcraft and abandoned by their relatives.

The Cameron government is trying to end the stigma and discrimination attached to the condition through education programs.

Boyo Maurine is with the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services program, a nonprofit group that works with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The group educates communities about obstetric fistula and encourages women to seek treatment.

“Generally, the individuals perceive that people will not want to associate with them because of the odor that comes from them and from the embarrassment that will come from constantly being wet without any form of control,” Boyo said. “They already feel that they do not belong to society, and this leaves them sometimes with some negative emotions like sadness, depression, anger and aggression, which is as a result of this condition.”

In 2020, the U.N. launched a global commitment to fistula prevention and treatment, including surgical repair and social reintegration. The campaign hopes to end fistula by 2030, while transforming the lives of thousands of women and girls.

The International Day to End Obstetric Fistula draws attention to the condition, which affects tens of thousands of women globally. 
…

The World Health Organization on Monday won basic approval for a $6.83 billion budget over the next two years, including a 20% hike in mandatory membership fees.

As the U.N. health agency kicked off its annual decision-making assembly, member states in a key committee approved the budget without objection.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the move as “historic and a big milestone.”

The budget still needs to be approved by all the member states at the end of the 10-day event, but the approval procedure is basically a formality.

The decision comes after last year’s assembly agreed to a dramatic overhaul of WHO funding.

Shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic, countries agreed on the need to provide more reliable and stable funding.

The WHO is largely financed by its 194 member states.

The portion of funding from mandatory membership fees — “assessed contributions” calculated according to wealth and population — had dwindled to below one-fifth, with the rest coming from “voluntary contributions.”

This left WHO with limited leeway to respond to crises such as COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and other health emergencies.

Last year’s assembly agreed to gradually increase the membership fee portion to 50% by the 2030-31 budget cycle at the latest.

The 2024-25 budget cycle marks the first incremental increase, with countries agreeing to hike their assessed contributions by 20% from the 2022-23 budget.

In return for the funding shift, WHO has begun implementing 96 reforms, including towards more transparency on its financing and hiring and broader accountability.

Tedros told the assembly earlier Monday that WHO so far had implemented 42 of the requested reforms “and 54 are ongoing.”
…

Saudi Arabia’s first astronauts in decades rocketed toward the International Space Station on a chartered multimillion-dollar flight Sunday. 

SpaceX launched the ticket-holding crew, led by a retired NASA astronaut now working for the company that arranged the trip from Kennedy Space Center. Also on board: a U.S. businessman who now owns a sports car racing team. 

The four should reach the space station in their capsule Monday morning; they’ll spend just more than a week there before returning home with a splashdown off the Florida coast. 

Sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government, Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem cell researcher, became the first woman from the kingdom to go to space. She was joined by Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot with the Royal Saudi Air Force. 

They’re the first from their country to ride a rocket since a Saudi prince launched aboard shuttle Discovery in 1985. In a quirk of timing, they’ll be greeted at the station by an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. 

“Hello from outer space! It feels amazing to be viewing Earth from this capsule,” Barnawi said after settling into orbit. 

Added al-Qarni: “As I look outside into space, I can’t help but think this is just the beginning of a great journey for all of us.” 

Rounding out the visiting crew: Knoxville, Tennessee’s John Shoffner, former driver and owner of a sports car racing team that competes in Europe, and chaperone Peggy Whitson, the station’s first female commander who holds the U.S. record for most accumulated time in space: 665 days and counting. 

“It was a phenomenal ride,” Whitson said after reaching orbit. Her crewmates clapped their hands in joy. 

It’s the second private flight to the space station organized by Houston-based Axiom Space. The first was last year by three businessmen, with another retired NASA astronaut. The company plans to start adding its own rooms to the station in another few years, eventually removing them to form a stand-alone outpost available for hire. 

Axiom won’t say how much Shoffner and Saudi Arabia are paying for the planned 10-day mission. The company had previously cited a ticket price of $55 million each. 

NASA’s latest price list shows per-person, per-day charges of $2,000 for food and up to $1,500 for sleeping bags and other gear. Need to get your stuff to the space station in advance? Figure roughly $10,000 per pound ($20,000 per kilogram), the same fee for trashing it afterward. Need your items back intact? Double the price. 

At least the email and video links are free. 

The guests will have access to most of the station as they conduct experiments, photograph Earth and chat with schoolchildren back home, demonstrating how kites fly in space when attached to a fan. 

After decades of shunning space tourism, NASA now embraces it with two private missions planned a year. The Russian Space Agency has been doing it, off and on, for decades. 

“Our job is to expand what we do in low-Earth orbit across the globe,” said NASA’s space station program manager Joel Montalbano. 

SpaceX’s first-stage booster landed back at Cape Canaveral eight minutes after liftoff — a special treat for the launch day crowd, which included about 60 Saudis. 

“It was a very, very exciting day,” said Axiom’s Matt Ondler. 
…

The provincial health department in the South African province of Gauteng on Sunday announced 19 new cases of Cholera in Hammanskraal, including 10 deaths.

South Africa reported its first cholera death in February, after the virus arrived in the country from Malawi.

It was unclear how many cholera cases there was nationally as of Sunday, but the most populous province of Gauteng, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are situated, has been hardest hit.

Cholera can cause acute diarrhea, vomiting and weakness and is mainly spread by contaminated food or water. It can kill within hours if untreated.

The last outbreak in South Africa was in 2008/2009 when about 12,000 cases were reported following an outbreak in neighboring Zimbabwe, which led to a surge of imported cases and subsequent local transmission.
…

Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano rumbled to life again this week, belching out towering clouds of ash that forced 11 villages to cancel school sessions.

The residents weren’t the only ones keeping a close eye on the towering peak. Every time there is a sigh, tic or heave in Popocatepetl, there are dozens of scientists, a network of sensors and cameras, and a roomful of powerful equipment watching its every move.

The 5,426-meter volcano, known affectionately as “El Popo,” has been spewing toxic fumes, ash and lumps of incandescent rock persistently for almost 30 years, since it awakened from a long slumber in 1994.

The volcano is 72 kilometers southeast of Mexico City, but looms much closer to the eastern fringes of the metropolitan area of 22 million people. The city also faces threats from earthquakes and sinking soil, but the volcano is the most visible potential danger — and the most closely watched. A severe eruption could cut off air traffic, or smother the city in clouds of choking ash.

Ringed around its summit are six cameras, a thermal imaging device and 12 seismological monitoring stations that operate 24 hours a day, all reporting back to an equipment-filled command center in Mexico City.

A total of 13 scientists from a multidisciplinary team take turns staffing the command center around the clock. Being able to warn of an impending ash cloud is key, because people can take precautions. Unlike earthquakes, warning times can be longer for the volcano and in general the peak is more predictable.

On a recent day, researcher Paulino Alonso made the rounds, checking the readings at the command center run by Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center, known by its initials as Cenapred. It is a complex task that involves seismographs that measure the volcano’s internal trembling, which could indicate hot rock and gas moving up the vents in the peak.

Monitoring gases in nearby springs and at the peak — and wind patterns that help determine where the ash could be blown — also play a role.

The forces inside are so great that they can temporarily deform the peak, so cameras and sensors must monitor the very shape of the volcano.

How do you explain all of this to 25 million non-experts living within a 62-mile (100-kilometer) radius who have grown so used to living near the volcano?

Authorities came up with the simple idea of a volcano “stoplight” with three colors: green for safety, yellow for alert and red for danger.

For most of the years since the stoplight was introduced, it has been stuck at some stage of “yellow.” The mountain sometimes quiets down, but not for long. It seldom shoots up molten lava: instead it’s more the “explosive” type, showering out hot rocks that tumble down its flanks and emitting bursts of gas and ash.

The center also has monitors in other states; Mexico is a country all too familiar with natural disasters.

For example, Mexico’s earthquake early alert system is also based at the command center. Because the city’s soil is so soft — it was built on a former lake bed — a quake hundreds of miles away on the Pacific coast can cause huge destruction in the capital, as happened in 1985 and 2017.

A system of seismic monitors along the coast sends messages that race faster than the quake’s shock waves. Once the sirens start blaring, it can give Mexico City residents up to half a minute to get to safety, usually on the streets outside.
…

The World Health Organization on Saturday launched a global network to help swiftly detect the threat from infectious diseases, like COVID-19, and share the information to prevent their spread.

The International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) will provide a platform for connecting countries and regions, improving systems for collecting and analyzing samples, the agency said.

The network aims to help ensure infectious disease threats are swiftly identified and tracked and the information shared and acted on to prevent catastrophes like the COVID pandemic.

The network will rely on pathogen genomics to analyze the genetic code of viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing organisms to understand how infectious and deadly they are and how they spread.

The data gathered will feed into a broader disease surveillance system used to identify and track diseases, in a bid to contain outbreaks and to develop treatments and vaccines.

‘Ambitious’ goals

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the “ambitious” goals of the new network, saying it could “play a vital role in health security.”

“As was so clearly demonstrated to us during the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is stronger when it stands together to fight shared health threats,” he said.

The IPSN, announced a day before the annual meeting of WHO member states begins in Geneva, will have a secretariat within the WHO’s Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.

It is the latest of several initiatives launched since COVID that aim to bolster the world’s ability to prevent and more effectively respond to pandemic threats.

The network will bring together experts on genomics and data analytics, drawn from governments, academia, the private sector and elsewhere.

“All share a common goal: to detect and respond to disease threats before they become epidemics and pandemics, and to optimize routine disease surveillance,” the agency said.

COVID highlighted the critical role pathogen genomics plays when responding to pandemic threats, with the WHO noting that without the rapid sequencing of the SARS CoV-2 virus, vaccines would not have been as effective and would not have become available as quickly.

New and more transmissible variants of the virus would also not have been identified as quickly.

“Genomics lies at the heart of effective epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response,” the agency said, adding that it was also vital for surveillance of a range of diseases, from influenza to HIV.

Many countries lack effective systems

While the pandemic spurred countries to scale up their genomics capacity, the agency warned that many still lack effective systems for collecting and analyzing samples.

The IPSN would help address such challenges, Tedros said, since it could “give every country access to pathogen genomic sequencing and analytics as part of its public health system.”
…

The U.S. space agency NASA announced Friday it has awarded the Jeff Bezos-owned aerospace company Blue Origin a contract to build a second lunar lander for the Artemis V moon mission, aiming to land a crew on the moon by 2029.

At a Washington news conference, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said under the $3.4 billion contract, Blue Origin will design, develop, test and verify its Blue Moon lander to meet NASA’s human landing system requirements for recurring astronaut expeditions to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crews will transfer in lunar orbit. 

Two years ago, Blue Origin made a bid on the contract NASA awarded to the Elon Musk-owned company SpaceX to build NASA’s initial human landing system to be used in the agency’s Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. In a release, the agency said it also directed SpaceX to evolve its design to meet the requirements for sustainable exploration on the moon.

Under its contract, Blue Origin will build a lander that meets the same sustainable requirements, including capabilities for a larger crew, longer missions and the delivery of more mass to the moon. NASA officials said the program is an important step toward their goal to establish “a regular cadence” of missions to the moon. 

And, NASA said, that competitive approach, using multiple providers, drives innovation, brings down costs and invests in commercial capabilities that will foster “a lunar economy.”

Nelson said Friday, “We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, which is made possible by NASA’s commercial and international partnerships. Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first astronauts on Mars.”

The agency said the Artemis V project is the next step between extended lunar exploration capabilities and establishing a base on the moon to support recurring complex missions that would lead, eventually, to moon-to-Mars exploration.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters. 
…

More than half of the world’s large lakes and reservoirs have shrunk since the early 1990s, chiefly because of climate change, intensifying concerns about water for agriculture, hydropower and human consumption, a study published Thursday found.

An international team of researchers reported that some of the world’s most important water sources — from the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia to South America’s Lake Titicaca — lost water at a cumulative rate of about 22 gigatonnes per year for nearly three decades. That’s about 17 times the volume of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States.

Fangfang Yao, a surface hydrologist at the University of Virginia who led the study in the journal Science, said 56% of the decline in natural lakes was driven by climate warming and human consumption, with warming “the larger share of that.”

Climate scientists generally think that the world’s arid areas will become drier under climate change and wet areas will get wetter, but the study found significant water loss even in humid regions. “This should not be overlooked,” Yao said.

Scientists assessed almost 2,000 large lakes using satellite measurements combined with climate and hydrological models.

They found that unsustainable human use, changes in rainfall and runoff, sedimentation, and rising temperatures have driven lake levels down globally, with 53% of lakes showing a decline from 1992 to 2020.

Nearly 2 billion people who live in drying lake basins are directly affected, and many regions have faced water shortages in recent years.

Scientists and campaigners have long said it is necessary to prevent global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. The world has already warmed about 1.1C (1.9F).

Thursday’s study found unsustainable human use dried up lakes such as the Aral Sea in Central Asia and the Dead Sea in the Middle East, while lakes in Afghanistan, Egypt and Mongolia were hit by rising temperatures, which can increase water loss to the atmosphere.

Water levels rose in a quarter of the lakes, often as a result of dam construction in remote areas such as the Inner Tibetan Plateau.
…

Mexican authorities said Thursday that they were trying to locate several hundred people, including U.S. nationals, potentially at risk of developing fungal meningitis after medical treatment near the border.

The announcement came a day after the United States warned that suspected fungal infections had led to severe illness and even death among U.S. residents returning from the Mexican city of Matamoros.

Around 400 people were being traced, including roughly 80 from the United States, according to the health minister of Tamaulipas state, home to Matamoros, which sits across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

“They’re going to be located to rule out that they are infected,” Vicente Joel Hernandez told AFP.

Two clinics, River Side Surgical Center and Clinica K-3, have been closed following the death of an American and the infection of seven other people, he said.

According to the U.S. government, the affected travelers had medical or surgical procedures, including liposuction, that involved injecting anesthetic into the area around the spinal column.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised canceling any procedure that involves an epidural injection in Matamoros until the problem is resolved.

It urged anyone experiencing symptoms of fungal meningitis after having such an injection in the city to go to a hospital emergency department immediately.

The symptoms include fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, confusion and sensitivity to light, it said, adding that fungal meningitis infections are not contagious or transmitted person-to-person.

Mexico is one of the world’s top medical tourism destinations, largely due to U.S. residents crossing the border for everything from dental work to cosmetic surgery and cancer treatment.
…

Shipwreck enthusiasts have cause for celebration because the Titanic ocean liner’s infamous wreck can now be visualized like never before.

Deep-sea researchers have completed the first full-size digital scan of the Titanic, showing the entire wreck in clarity and detail. Researchers say it is the “largest underwater scanning project in history.”

Unveiled on Wednesday, the 3D scan was the result of a six-week expedition to the North Atlantic wreck site in summer 2022, during which researchers used two remotely operated submersibles — named Romeo and Juliet — to map the entire shipwreck and the surrounding 3-mile debris field.

The researchers took more than 700,000 images from every angle to create a virtual, exact 3D reconstruction.

“It’s an absolutely one-to-one digital copy, a ‘twin,’ of the Titanic in every detail,” Anthony Geffen, head of documentary maker Atlantic Productions, told The Associated Press. Atlantic Productions is making a documentary about the project.

The scan, which enables the ship to be seen as if the water has been drained away, may also reveal more details about the ship’s ill-fated trip across the Atlantic in 1912.

An estimated 1,500 people died when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage from England to New York.

Richard Parkinson, founder of the deep-sea exploration firm Magellan, believes that the data amount to 10 times more than any underwater 3D model ever tried before.

Magellan carried out the scan project in partnership with Atlantic Productions.

“The depth of it, almost 4,000 meters, represents a challenge, and you have currents at the site, too — and we’re not allowed to touch anything so as not to damage the wreck,” Magellan’s Gerhard Seiffert, who led the planning for the expedition, told the BBC.

“And the other challenge is that you have to map every square centimeter — even uninteresting parts. Like on the debris field, you have to map mud, but you need this to fill in between all these interesting objects,” Seiffert said.

After the expedition in the North Atlantic, researchers spent seven months rendering the large amount of data they collected. A documentary about the project is set to come out next year.

Geffen said he hopes the scan will help researchers better understand what happened to the Titanic.

“All our assumptions about how it sank, and a lot of the details of the Titanic, come from speculation, because there is no model that you can reconstruct or work exact distances,” he told The Associated Press. “I’m excited because this quality of the scan will allow people in the future to walk through the Titanic themselves.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and the BBC.
…

Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. went up slightly last year after two big leaps during the pandemic. 

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the numbers plateaued for most of last year. Experts aren’t sure whether that means the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history is finally reaching a peak, or whether it’ll look like previous plateaus that were followed by new surges in deaths. 

“The fact that it does seem to be flattening out, at least at a national level, is encouraging,” said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University epidemiology professor whose research focuses on drug use. “But these numbers are still extraordinarily high. We shouldn’t suggest the crisis is in any way over.” 

An estimated 109,680 overdose deaths occurred last year, according to numbers posted Wednesday by the CDC. That’s about 2% more than the 107,622 U.S. overdose deaths in 2021, but nothing like the 30% increase seen in 2020, and 15% increase in 2021. 

While the overall national number was relatively static between 2021 and 2022, there were dramatic changes in a number of states: 23 reported fewer overdose deaths, one — Iowa — saw no change, and the rest continued to increase. 

Eight states — Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — reported sizable overdose death decreases of about 100 or more compared with the previous calendar year. 

Some of these states had some of the highest overdose death rates during the epidemic, which Keyes said might be a sign that years of concentrated work to address the problem is paying off. State officials cited various factors for the decline, like social media and health education campaigns to warn the public about the dangers of drug use; expanded addiction treatment — including telehealth — and wider distribution of the overdose-reversing medication naloxone. 

Plus, the stigma that kept drug users from seeking help — and some doctors and police officers from helping them — is waning, said Dr. Joseph Kanter, the state health officer for Louisiana, where overdose deaths fell 4% last year. 

“We’re catching up and the tide’s turning — slowly,” said Kanter, whose state has one of the nation’s highest overdose death rates. 

Beginning in the mid-1990s, abuse of prescription opioid painkillers was to blame for deaths before a gradual turn to heroin, which in 2015 caused more deaths than prescription painkillers or other drugs. A year later, the more lethal fentanyl and its close cousins became the biggest drug killer. 

Last year, most overdose deaths continued to be linked to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. About 75,000, up 4% from the year before. There also was an 11% increase in deaths involving cocaine and a 3% increase in deaths involving meth and other stimulants. 

Overdose deaths are often attributed to more than one drug; some people take multiple drugs and officials say inexpensive fentanyl is increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers’ knowledge. 

Research from Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a drug policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco, suggests “there appears to be some substitution going on,” with a number of people who use illicit drugs turning to methamphetamines or other options to try to stay away from fentanyl and fentanyl-tainted drugs. 

Ciccarone said he believes overdose deaths finally will trend down. He cited improvements in innovations in counseling and addiction treatment, better availability of naloxone and legal actions that led to more than $50 billion in proposed and finalized settlements — money that should be available to bolster overdose prevention. 

“We’ve thrown a lot at this 20-year opioid overdose problem,” he said. “We should be bending the curve downward.” 

But he also voiced some caution, saying “we have been here before.” 

Consider 2018, when overdose deaths dropped 4% from the previous year, to about 67,000. After those numbers came out, then-President Donald Trump declared “we are curbing the opioid epidemic.” 

But overdose deaths then rose to a record 71,000 in 2019, then soared during the COVID-19 pandemic to 92,000 in 2020 and 107,000 in 2021. 

Lockdowns and other pandemic-era restrictions isolated people with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get, experts said. 

Keyes believes that 2022’s numbers didn’t get any worse partly because isolation eased as the pandemic ebbed. But there may be issues ahead, others say, like increased detection of veterinary tranquilizer xylazine in the illicit drug supply and proposals to scale back things like prescribing addiction medications through telehealth. 

“What the past 20 years of this overdose crisis has taught us is that this really is a moving target,” Keyes said. “And when you think you’ve got a handle on it, sometimes the problem can shift in new and different ways.” 
…

“I remember my wife, Dora, coming home one day and telling me she had a problem while driving,” said Bill Collier, a marketing professional living near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “She said she stopped at an intersection and suddenly couldn’t remember where she was going.” 

That was in August of 2015. Then things got worse. Within months, Collier said Dora began experiencing nervous breakdowns and hallucinations on a nightly basis. 

“She freaked out at me, at the world, at God — you name it,” he told VOA. “Most nights we both ended up in tears because we didn’t know what was going on or why it was happening.” 

It wasn’t until nearly six years later, in February 2021, that Dora, now 57, was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive mental deterioration most commonly suffered by the elderly, but which can also strike middle-aged people. The disease, the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and the only one in the top 10 without a cure or potentially reversible treatment, causes brain cell connections and the cells themselves to degenerate and die.

The eventual result is the destruction of memory and other important mental functions. 

“The day we got the diagnosis felt like getting a death sentence,” Collier said. “Dora is still alive, but it’s been the eight toughest years of my life. Alzheimer’s is like a slow motion, everyday horror movie with a senseless plot that haunts my thoughts each hour I’m awake.” 

Diagnosing the disease

“Alzheimer’s disease is a public health crisis, and it’s growing at a rapid rate,” explained Ruby Dehkharghani, director of public policy at the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA).

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 6.5 million Americans live with the disease, including roughly one in nine senior citizens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) projects that number to more than double to 13.8 million people by 2060.

Family members of those with Alzheimer’s say one major problem is how long it can take to diagnose the issue and begin treatment.

“On one hand, it’s hard to get doctors and health care systems to take family members seriously during the early, undiagnosed stages of Alzheimer’s,” Collier said. “On the other hand, you have patients themselves avoiding getting tested and lying to the doctor because they don’t want to admit what amounts to a horrible truth.” 

This is what Krista Patrick-Brown, a school principal in New Orleans, Louisiana, experienced with her father.

“My dad was diagnosed in the fall of 2020, when it was obvious to the rest of us that something was going on and he needed to be tested,” Patrick-Brown told VOA. 

It was only when the family gained access to his medical records at the time of diagnosis that they learned he had expressed concern to his doctor three years earlier because he was struggling to perform his job. 

“I think he was scared to tell anyone, or maybe the realization that it could be something serious made him avoid learning more,” she continued. “Either way, he didn’t follow up until it was unavoidable, and I can’t help but imagine how starting his medicine years earlier might have slowed his deterioration.” 

Drugs have recently been developed that can slow but not stop the progression of Alzheimer’s, if administered in the early stages of the disease. Such treatments are expensive and can have side effects. While drugmakers race to develop and test what is hoped will be more effective treatments, there is no indication that a cure is on the horizon. 

“The current medications for Alzheimer’s have very, very modest benefits,” said Colleen Kenny, a nurse who works with dementia patients at a hospital outside of Chicago. “Families should temper their expectations for how well they should work.” 

A nightmare 

Patrick-Brown said her father’s loss of independence has been one of the more difficult aspects of the disease for him.

She said they tried to encourage him to stop driving on his own, for example, but he resisted. Once her father’s doctor reported his diagnosis to the state, he had to either pass a driver’s test or forfeit his license. 

“It was awful. He spent weeks trying to study for the test, but he couldn’t process the information,” Patrick-Brown remembered. “His anxiety increased and he didn’t seem to even completely grasp why he was being asked to take the test in the first place.” 

“I think that’s when our roles flipped indefinitely,” she said. “From then on, my father would always be child-like to me and my brother, and we are now his parents.” 

It’s common for patients with dementia — of which Alzheimer’s is the most common type — to exhibit behaviors found in younger children, such as mood swings, tantrums, irrationality, forgetfulness, vocabulary problems, fear, and extreme dependence on family members.

“They get angry, sensitive, and irrational,” said Margarita Hernandez, an aide for Alzheimer’s patients in Commack, New York, “but of course it’s not their fault. They didn’t choose this. They are innocent and we need to respond by giving them love, attention, and help.”

Life of a caregiver

Dehkharghani of the AFA notes that Alzheimer’s patients aren’t the only ones severely impacted by the disease.

“Many of the things that make it challenging for the person living with Alzheimer’s are what also make it challenging for family members providing care,” she said. “Caregivers will be expected to provide greater assistance to their loved ones as the disease progresses, and they’ll carry the emotional impact of watching their personalities change. It’s not something someone should be expected to do alone.”

Alexandra Magiera, who works in education in Chicago, Illinois, and is a volunteer for the Alzheimer’s Association, said she was just 15 years old when her mother, Lizzie, was diagnosed with the disease.

For Lizzie, it started with what appeared to be small things such as confusion about where she was supposed to be, but Magiera said it quickly got worse. 

“A year later she had trouble remembering my name, and a few years after that she no longer knew who I was,” she said. “That, plus there were times she was getting angry and combative. It was all heartbreaking.”

When Magiera left for college, the responsibility of caregiver for her mother fell even more squarely on her father’s shoulders.

“She was the love of my dad’s life and he cared for her as best as he could,” she said, “but the physical and emotional demand was too much and eventually he had to place her in a nursing home. I know it was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make.”

During the last two years of Lizzie’s life, Magiera’s dad couldn’t stand it anymore.

“He told a friend, ‘I’m bringing Lizzie home; I miss her too much,’ and that’s what he did,” Magiera said. “I think he relished every moment he was able to spend with her.”

Moving forward

According to the CDC, more than 11 million Americans care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. For many, it’s not possible to be the sole caregiver.

“I hate to say it, but unfortunately money is key,” explained Kenny. “In-home health aides aren’t often covered by insurance, and a decent nursing home for my father, who had dementia, cost $7,000 per month. There aren’t easy solutions.”

Magiera said her father had been retired for 20 years, but after her mother died in 2011, he had to go back to work to help pay for his wife’s medical bills.

“I can’t even imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t been on such solid financial footing to start,” Magiera said. 

The heartbreak this disease has caused so many Americans and their families has stirred Washington to action.

When the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease was released in 2011, initial funding totaled approximately $500 million a year, far below the $2 billion goal that leading scientists had estimated was necessary to find a treatment or cure by 2025. More recently, however, politicians have worked together to increase federal research investment to more than $3.4 billion last year.

“It’s encouraging to see such a bipartisan effort, but we’re not across the finish line yet,” said Dehkharghani. “There are still so many unanswered scientific questions when it comes to Alzheimer’s, but researchers are working very hard to discover answers and to hopefully find the breakthrough that will lead to the treatment and cure we’re all hoping for.”

In the meantime, things have been learned to stave off the effects of Alzheimer’s, including cardiovascular exercise, maintaining a healthy blood pressure, continuing a consistent level of socialization and, of course, early diagnosis.

“I sometimes wonder what we’d be doing right now if my wife had early treatment,” Collier told VOA. “Would we be traveling the world? Would we be checking items off her bucket list?”

“Instead, I go to her senior living facility every day,” he continued, “because I want the nurses to know this woman who has been reduced to shuffling and mumbling is still my Dora — she’s a Navy veteran and a very accomplished woman, and I want them to know her story.” 
…

Countries can reduce plastic pollution by 80% by 2040 using existing technologies and by making major policy changes, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a new report on Monday.

The Kenya-based U.N. body released its analysis of policy options to tackle the plastic waste crisis two weeks before countries convene in Paris for a second round of negotiations to craft a global treaty aimed at eliminating plastic waste.

The report focuses on three main market shifts needed to create a “circular” economy that keeps produced items in circulation as long as possible: reuse, recycling and reorientation of packaging from plastic to alternative materials.

“If we follow this road map, including in negotiations on the plastic pollution deal, we can deliver major economic, social and environmental wins,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP executive director.

The treaty negotiations, known as INC2, will be May 29 to June 2 and are expected to result in key inputs for the first treaty draft, which needs to be done before the third round of negotiations in Kenya in November.

UNEP estimates that government promotion of reuse options such as refillable bottle systems or deposit return schemes could reduce 30% of plastic waste by 2040.

It also says that recycling could achieve an additional 20% by that year if “it becomes a more stable and profitable venture” and fossil fuel subsidies are removed, and that the replacement of products such as plastics wraps and bags with compostable materials could yield an additional 17% reduction.

Countries have different approaches to tackling plastic waste. Some major plastic-producing countries such as the United States and Saudi Arabia prefer a system of national strategies.

A “High Ambition Coalition,” comprising Norway, Rwanda, New Zealand, the European Union and others, have called for top-down approach where global targets are set to reduce virgin plastic production and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, among other measures.

Some campaigners said the UNEP blueprint fell short of tackling the root of the pollution problem.

“A treaty that does not cap and reduce plastic production will fail to deliver what the people need, justice demands and the planet requires,” said Angel Pago, director of Greenpeace’s plastics campaign.
…

Edna Adan Ismail, a nurse-midwife, hospital founder, and health care advocate who for decades has combated female genital mutilation and strived to improve women’s health care in East Africa, was named Tuesday as winner of the 2023 Templeton Prize, one of the world’s largest annual individual awards.

“Rooted in her Muslim faith, she receives this year’s award in recognition of her extraordinary efforts to harness the power of the sciences to affirm the dignity of women and help them to flourish physically and spiritually,” said the announcement.

Among her achievements: the founding of a hospital and university which have significantly reduced maternal mortality in Somaliland.

The Templeton Prize, valued at nearly $1.4 million, was established in 1973 by philanthropist Sir John Templeton. It honors those “who harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.”

Ismail, the first African woman to win the prize, “has used the teachings of her faith, family, and scientific education to improve the health and opportunities of some of the world’s most vulnerable women and girls,” said Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation.

Ismail, 85, said she would donate some of her prize money to the U.S.-based Friends of Edna Maternity Hospital, for use in purchasing new equipment, hiring educators and “training the next generation of health care workers that East Africa so desperately needs.”

Ismail was born in 1937 in Hargeisa, the capital of what was then British Somaliland. Her father was a doctor; thanks to his influence, she was covertly tutored alongside her brothers until she was 15. A scholarship exam, normally reserved for boys, qualified her to study in Britain, where she received an education in nursing and midwifery.

She returned to her homeland as its first medically trained nurse-midwife. According to the prize announcement, she was the first woman to drive a car in her country and the first appointed to a position of political authority as director of the Ministry of Health.

She later joined the World Health Organization, serving as regional technical officer for maternal and child health from 1987-91 and WHO representative to Djibouti from 1991-97.

She left her international career to return home with a dream of building a hospital. After newly re-formed Somaliland declared its independence in 1991 — though it remains unrecognized by foreign powers — its government offered her a tract of land previously used as a garbage dump.

She sold her assets to build the hospital and raised more funds worldwide after a profile of her appeared in The New York Times. The Edna Adan Maternity Hospital opened in 2002.

While Somaliland’s health care system was in disarray, the hospital made great strides, dramatically reducing the maternal mortality. Its education program became Edna Adan University in 2010; it has trained more than 4,000 students to become doctors, nurses and other types of health professionals. More than 30,000 babies have been delivered at the hospital, where 80% of the staff and 70% of the students are women.

Despite its lack of international recognition, Somaliland remains self-governing in its territory in northern Somalia.

Ismail is an outspoken critic of female genital mutilation, a painful and sometimes life-threatening practice performed in some Muslim and non-Muslim societies. When she was 8, her mother subjected her to FGM without the knowledge of her father, who was outraged.

As a practicing midwife early in her career, she was confronted with grievous complications during childbirth from the FGM scarring. After attending a 1976 conference in Sudan at which participants from Muslim countries that practiced FGM spoke about its effects, she was inspired to raise the issue at home.

As a director in Somalia’s health ministry, Ismail began to speak out on FGM — initially shocking her audience and attracting threats, but also building widespread interest. She encouraged women to come forward and men to stand up for them.

“Islam forbids female circumcision,” Ismail said in a video filmed for the Templeton Prize. “Every day I’m reliving and remembering, I’m recalling that pain that happened to me when I was 7 or 8 years old. The wounds may heal but the pain never leaves you.”

While progress has been made, FGM is still practiced in several countries; cases have come to light in Britain, the United States and elsewhere. Ismail’s fight to end FGM continues through her international advocacy and at her hospital.
…

Climate change does not make cyclones, such as the one battering Bangladesh, more frequent, but it does render them more intense and destructive, according to climatologists and weather experts.

These immensely powerful natural phenomena have different labels according to the region they hit, but cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are all violent tropical storms that can generate 10 times as much energy as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

They are divided into different categories according to their maximum sustained wind strength and the scale of damage they can potentially inflict.

Cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons

“A cyclone is a low-pressure system that forms in the tropics in an area hot enough for it to develop,” Emmanuel Cloppet, from French weather office Meteo France, told AFP.

“It is characterized by rain/storm clouds that start rotating and generate intense rains and winds, and a storm surge created by the wind,” he added.

These huge weather phenomena — several hundreds of kilometers across — are made more dangerous by their ability to travel huge distances.

Tropical cyclones are categorized according to wind intensity, rising from tropical depression (under 63 kilometers per hour), through tropical storm (63-117 kph) to major hurricane (above that).

They are termed cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, hurricanes in the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific and typhoons in the Northwest Pacific.

Meteorological agencies monitoring these storms use different scales to categorize them, depending on the oceanic basin in which they occur.

The most well-known scale for measuring their intensity and destructive potential is the five-level Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

More powerful cyclones

“The overall number of tropical cyclones per year has not changed globally but climate change has increased the occurrence of the most intense and destructive storms,” according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a group of climate scientists and climate impact specialists whose goal is to demonstrate reliable links between global heating and certain weather phenomena.

The most violent cyclones — categories three to five on the Saffir-Simpson scale — that cause the most destruction have become more frequent, the WWA said.

Climate change caused by human activity influences tropical cyclones in three major ways — by warming the air and oceans and by triggering a rise in sea levels.

“Tropical cyclones are the most extreme rainfall events on the planet,” the WWA said in its publication Reporting Extreme Weather and Climate Change.

In addition, since the atmosphere is warmer, it can hold more water, so when it rains it pours.

“A rise in air temperature of three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) can potentially produce a 20% increase in the quantity of rain generated by a cyclonic event,” said Cloppet.

It is these intense torrential downpours that lead to sometimes fatal floods and mudslides, as was the case of Cyclone Freddy, which killed hundreds of people in Malawi and Mozambique earlier this year.

Climate change is also warming the oceans. This warm water fuels cyclones and gives them their strength.

“Climate change therefore creates the conditions in which more powerful storms can form, intensify rapidly and persist to reach land, while carrying more water,” the WWA said.

Shifting north

The fierce winds produced by cyclones generate storm surges that can cause coastal flooding.

These storm waves are higher now than in previous decades because of the sea level rise triggered by climate change.

Scientists also expect to see cyclones in places they have not happened before because global heating is expanding the regions where tropical sea water conditions occur.

“It’s as if the tropics were spreading,” Cloppet said. “Areas that aren’t really affected now could be hit much harder in future.”

The WWA agreed: “As ocean waters warm, it is reasonable to speculate that [tropical] storms will shift further away from the Equator.”

“A northward shift in cyclones in the western North Pacific, striking East and Southeast Asia, [is] a direct consequence of climate change,” it said.

As a result, cyclones could strike in relatively unprepared locations that have not, in the past, had reason to expect them.
…

Pacific Island leaders criticized rich countries Monday for not doing enough to control climate change despite being responsible for much of the problem, and for making money off loans provided to vulnerable nations to mitigate the effects.

Leaders and representatives from Pacific Island nations demanded at a U.N. climate change conference in Bangkok that the world make more effort to put aside differences in combating the environmental impact, especially as their countries emerge from the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Mark Brown of the Cook Islands said the finance model for combatting climate change — giving out loans to reduce the impact — is “not the way to go” for countries in his region with such small populations that produce “inconsequential amounts of carbon emissions” but suffer the most from the effects.

He encouraged a shift toward grants or interest-free loans to help ease the financial burden on poorer countries.

“All we’re doing is adding debt to countries that have come out of COVID with increased debt, and to me it is actually quite offensive that we would be required to borrow money to build resilience, and to borrow from the very countries that are causing climate change,” he told The Associated Press.

Brown said his country lost an estimated 41% of its GDP because of the pandemic, “a loss of a decade’s worth of prosperity.”

He said he will give this message to leaders when he represents his tiny South Pacific nation with a population of about 17,000 at a summit later this week of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations in Japan, where he hopes to be able to speak on a more equal footing to the leaders than as “a grateful recipient” to “benevolent donors.”

Palau President Surangel S. Whipps Jr. agreed that financing opportunities are “few and difficult,” and criticized wealthy countries for failing to commit to provide the financial help they had promised, which he said represents only a tiny portion of their prioritized expenditures such as the military.

“We didn’t cause the problem, but now they’re going to make money off of us by giving us a loan so we can pay back with interest,” he told The Associated Press. “So now you have to adapt, but we’ll give you money and make money off of you by giving you that money to adapt. That doesn’t make sense.”

Whipps said Palau’s economy relies heavily on tourism, which is greatly threatened by the impact of climate change. The country’s economic security is also a major issue in Palau’s negotiations with the U.S. on the “Compacts of Free Association,” a broader agreement that will govern its relations with Washington for the next two decades. Those ties grant the U.S. unique military and other security rights in the islands in return for substantial aid.

Whipps said the administration of President Joe Biden has promised approximately $900 million over the 20-year period. While the amount is “definitely less” than what his country would have wanted, Whipps said he is largely satisfied with the terms, renegotiated from what was achieved during the administration of former President Donald Trump.

While there are some concerns that the U.S. Congress will cut foreign aid and in turn affect this funding, Whipps said he expects Washington will honor the agreement, which he hopes can be signed by both sides in Papua New Guinea next week.

Brown said efforts to tackle climate change and build resilience to its impact, such as better infrastructure and greater water and food security, require lots of money, especially for island nations with small populations. He said $1.2 billion a year for the region to spend on climate adaptation and mitigation measures would be “a starter.”

“The fact remains that the underlying solution to assist countries that are facing the impacts of climate change is to build resilience, and building resilience takes money,” he said.
…

In South Africa, women make up only 13% of graduates with degrees in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In an effort to interest more young women in those fields, a retired US astronaut is visiting schools in South Africa. Zaheer Cassim reports from Johannesburg.
…