YCLOAK

The World Health Organization said Thursday that it was sure China had far more data that could shed light on the origins of COVID-19, demanding that Beijing immediately share all relevant information.

“Without full access to the information that China has … all hypotheses are on the table,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.

“That’s why we have been asking China to be cooperative on this,” he said, insisting that if Beijing does provide the missing data, “we will know what happened or how it started.”

More than three years after COVID-19 surfaced, heated debate still rages around the origins of the pandemic.

The issue has proved divisive for the scientific community and even different U.S. government agencies, which are split between one theory that the virus jumped naturally from animals to humans and another that the virus likely leaked from a Wuhan laboratory — a claim China has angrily denied.

Late last month, new evidence emerged that raccoon dogs, known to be able to carry and transmit viruses similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, were at a market in Wuhan when the disease was first detected in humans.

The researchers who unexpectedly stumbled over the genetic data say that those data support but cannot prove the theory that the virus originated in animals, possibly first jumping over to humans at the market.

‘Clues,’ not clarity

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, told journalists Thursday that the new information provided “clues” but no clear answers, insisting that the data “collected in January and February 2020, more than three years ago,” should have been shared long ago.

“Without information, without data to make a proper assessment, it’s very difficult for us to give a concrete answer,” she said. “And in the present time, we don’t have a concrete answer of how the pandemic began.”

But she voiced certainty that China’s “incredible scientists” had conducted far more studies and collected much more data that could be relevant in the search.

“We know there is more information that’s out there,” she said. “We need scientists, public health professionals and governments to share this information. This is not a game.”

‘A moral imperative’

In an editorial in Science magazine published Thursday, Van Kerkhove said she believed China had data that it had not shared, including on the wild and farmed animal trade at the Wuhan market, the testing of humans and animals in Wuhan and across China, and operations of labs in Wuhan working on coronaviruses.

“Lab audit data exist and have not been shared, for example,” she wrote, demanding that China share all data on the virus that causes COVID-19 “immediately.”

WHO chief Tedros stressed the vital importance of getting to the bottom of the mystery, pointing out that determining COVID-19’s origins could help avert future pandemics.

And with nearly 7 million deaths officially registered in the pandemic — with the real toll believed to be several times higher — he said there was a “moral imperative.”

“We need to know the answer, beyond reasonable doubt.”
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The last time humans were on the moon was in 1972. Now NASA is preparing to set foot back on the moon in 2025, if all goes as scheduled. VOA’s Alexander Kruglyakov spoke with the crew that will take part in the first of those missions: a planned flight around the Moon in November 2024.
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Climate ministers of the Group of Seven countries may make the case for new investments in natural gas supply, despite assessments that such investments would thwart globally agreed-upon climate change goals, according to a document seen by Reuters.

Climate change and energy ministers from G-7 countries will meet on April 15-16 in Sapporo, Japan, to discuss efforts to address climate change, now under pressure from turmoil in global energy markets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A draft of the G-7 statement said ministers would agree that new upstream investments in gas were needed, because of the energy fallout from Russia’s invasion. Russia slashed gas deliveries to Europe last year, causing a global supply squeeze and soaring prices in global markets.

“In this context, in this particular contingency, we recognize the need for necessary upstream investments in LNG [liquefied natural gas] and natural gas in line with our climate objectives and commitments,” the draft statement said.

The draft is still being negotiated by the G-7 countries, and it may change significantly before it is adopted.

Commitment on LNG investments, if kept in the final communique, would be a win for the G-7 meeting’s host Japan, which calls LNG a ‘transitional fuel’ to cleaner energy that it says could be needed for at least 10-15 years.

But such investments would run counter to assessments by global energy watchdog the International Energy Agency, which has said no new investments in fossil fuel supply can be made if the world is to stop global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius – the limit that would avoid its most severe impacts.

The world must substantially reduce fossil fuel energy use this decade to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change, the U.N.’s IPCC climate science panel has said. Projected CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel projects would blow the remaining carbon budget to meet the 1.5C goal, according to the IPCC.

G-7 climate ministers had said at a meeting last year that investment in the LNG sector was needed to respond to the energy crisis, but they had not explicitly endorsed upstream investments in gas supply.

The G-7 had previously pledged to end public support for overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.

The draft statement said the countries expect demand for LNG to “continue to grow” in countries that can afford to later replace gas with net zero emissions energy sources.

The document revealed pushback from some countries, including the European Union, which opposed the statement that LNG demand will increase. The 27-country EU attends G7 meetings.

Once major buyers of Russian pipeline gas, European countries are racing to diversify their energy sources – replacing Russian gas, in part, with more LNG.

The draft communique repeatedly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said the G-7 would work with ‘reliable partners’ to reduce dependence on Russia.

In another potential win for energy-poor Japan, the draft communique mentioned ammonia as a hydrogen derivative which could be an “effective emission reduction” tool.

Japan is testing coal co-firing with ammonia as a tool to reduce carbon emissions from thermal power generation and wants to expand the system to as many power plants in the country as possible.

An official dealing with international affairs at the Japanese industry ministry declined to comment on the draft.
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Cyclone Freddy killed hundreds of people in February and March as it pummeled Madagascar, Malawi, and Mozambique. While the long-running storm’s victims were mostly in Malawi, floodwaters in Mozambique have created a fresh threat there from cholera. Cases have nearly doubled in one week to 19,000 amid a shortage of facilities, many of which were badly damaged by the cyclone, especially in the worst-hit province of Zambezia.

The neighborhood of Icidua, on the outskirts of Quelimane city in Mozambique’s central Zambezia province, has reported the highest number of cholera cases.

Most here lived in flimsy huts made of mud or bamboo that were flattened by the cyclone’s up to 215 kilometer per hour winds.

The local health center’s building is no longer stable, so doctors and nurses work outside under the shade of trees.

Mothers lined up patiently this week with their children for cholera treatment in one of the few wards that survived the storm.

The clinic’s director José da Costa Silva says the staff are working at high risk as the roof could collapse at any minute.

“Cholera cases are increasing, and the health center does not have the capacity to treat everybody. Most patients are referred to the provincial hospital,” he said.

The outbreak is not confined to Quelimane city.

The U.N. says more than 19,000 cases have been confirmed across eight of Mozambique’s 10 provinces.

The World Health Organization’s office has called it the worst cholera outbreak in Mozambique for 20 years.

At Quelimane Provincial Hospital, the director general of Mozambique’s National Health Institute this week addressed health workers in a packed room under a torn roof with two gaping holes.

Eduardo Sam Gudo Jr. tells the workers the cholera outbreak is getting more serious by the day.

Confirmed cases in Quelimane district alone have reached about 600 a day, he says, but the real number could be as high as 1,000.

“The disease is not localized to one neighborhood, it’s everywhere,” he said.” It can only be fought with a local chlorine water treatment product called ‘Certeza,’ but supplies are stretched and there aren’t enough people to distribute the bottles.”

Every day, volunteers collect crates of Certeza from outside the hospital and drive to neighborhoods like Icidua, where they walk from house to house, distributing bottles.

Each one should last a family for a week, but demand is massively outstripping supply as the cholera spreads.

For many Mozambicans still recovering in the cyclone’s wake, cholera is just one of many problems.

Outside the village of Nicoadala, about 300 people live in a makeshift camp of tarpaulin huts on a road next to a flooded field.

Their villages and fields are still under water, forcing them to fish in flooded rice paddies to survive.

Sixty-four-year-old Joaquina Bissane says she had to reach the camp by canoe after her village was submerged.

“Cholera is less of a problem here than malaria, as the damp and heat has turned these flatlands into a breeding ground for mosquitoes,” she said. They have received no support from the government, so they are supporting each other.

The World Food Program estimates the cyclone’s floodwaters destroyed 215,000 hectares of crops in Mozambique.

Seventy-year-old farmer Inácio Abdala says his family’s home and fields were among those destroyed.

He says they eat one day and don’t eat the next as they lost everything in the floods. Even the schools are flooded, so their children can’t go to school.

Even after the floods subside, saltwater brought inland by the cyclone may have damaged much of the soil.

Freddy hit just before the main harvest and officials say it will take months, or even years, for farmlands to fully recover — long after they hope to bring the cholera outbreak under control.
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Life on our planet faced a stern test during the Cryogenian Period that lasted from 720 million to 635 million years ago when Earth twice was frozen over with runaway glaciation and looked from space like a shimmering white snowball.

Life somehow managed to survive during this time called “Snowball Earth,” and a new study offers a deeper understanding as to why.

Fossils identified as seaweed unearthed in black shale in central China’s Hubei Province indicate that habitable marine environments were more widespread at the time than previously known, scientists said Tuesday. The findings support the idea that it was more of a “Slushball Earth” where the earliest forms of complex life — basic multicellular organisms — endured even at mid-latitudes previously thought to have been frozen solid.

The fossils date from the second of the two times during the Cryogenian Period when massive ice sheets stretched from the poles toward the equator. This interval, called the Marinoan Ice Age, lasted from about 651 million to 635 million years ago.

“The key finding of this study is that open-water — ice-free — conditions existed in mid-latitude oceanic regions during the waning stage of the Marinoan Ice Age,” said China University of Geosciences geobiologist Huyue Song, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Our study shows that, at least near the end of the Marinoan ‘Snowball Earth’ event, habitable areas extended to mid-latitude oceans, much larger than previously thought. Previous research argued that such habitable areas, at best, only existed in tropical oceans. More extensive areas of habitable oceans better explain where and how complex organisms such as multicellular seaweed survived,” Song added.

The findings demonstrate that the world’s oceans were not completely frozen and that habitable refuges existed where multicellular eukaryotic organisms — the domain of life including plants, animals, fungi and certain mostly single-celled organisms called protists — could survive, Song said.

Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The first single-celled organisms arose sometime during roughly the first billion years of the planet’s existence. Multicellular organisms arrived later, perhaps 2 billion years ago. But it was only in the aftermath of the Cryogenian that warmer conditions returned, paving the way for a rapid expansion of different life forms about 540 million years ago.

Scientists are trying to better understand the onset of “Snowball Earth.” They believe a greatly reduced amount of the sun’s warmth reached the planet’s surface as solar radiation bounced off the white ice sheets.

“It is widely believed that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels plummeted just prior to these events, causing the polar ice caps to expand and hence more solar radiation reflected back to space and the polar ice caps expanded further. And the Earth spiraled into Snowball Earth conditions,” Virginia Tech geobiologist and study co-author Shuhai Xiao said.

Seaweed and fossils of some other multicellular organisms were identified in the black shale. This seaweed — a rudimentary plant — was a photosynthetic organism living on the seafloor in a shallow marine environment lit by sunlight.

“The fossils were preserved as compressed sheets of organic carbon,” China University of Geosciences paleontologist and study co-author Qin Ye said.

Multicellular organisms including red algae, green algae and fungi emerged before the Cryogenian and survived “Snowball Earth.”

The Cryogenian freeze was much worse than the most recent Ice Age that humans survived, ending roughly 10,000 years ago.

“Compared to the most recent Ice Age, glacier coverage was much more extensive and, more importantly, much of the ocean was frozen,” Xiao said.

“It is fair to say that the ‘Snowball Earth’ events were significant challenges to life on Earth,” Xiao added. “It is conceivable that these ‘Snowball Earth’ events could have driven major extinctions, but apparently life, including complex eukaryotic organisms, managed to survive, attesting to the resilience of the biosphere.”
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Farmers and Silicon Valley technologists are collaborating to make agriculture more efficient and productive. Michelle Quinn reports on the ag technology being developed and what is to come.
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The digital divide is one of the biggest challenges to education in sub-Saharan Africa, where the United Nations says nearly 90% of students lack access to household computers, and 82% to the internet. In Kenya, the aid group TechLit Africa aims to change that by building scores of computer labs. Juma Majanga reports from Mogotio, Kenya.
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“It’s been more than a half century since astronauts journeyed to the moon — that’s about to change,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson as he stood before the current astronaut corps as well as veterans of the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs at Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. The crowd was gathered for the historic announcement of the crew for Artemis II — Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen.

“This is humanity’s crew,” said Nelson, emphasizing the diverse makeup of the international crew, all in their 40s. “We choose to go back to the moon and on to Mars, and we are going to do it together, because in the 21st century NASA explores the cosmos with international partners.”

International Space Station veteran Reid Wiseman is mission commander for Artemis II, while engineer Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will serve as mission specialists. Hansen is the first international astronaut scheduled to launch on a mission to the moon, while Koch would make history as the first woman taking part in such a journey.

“Am I excited? Absolutely,” Koch said to the cheering audience during the announcement ceremony. “But my real question is: Are you excited?”

Victor Glover, a U.S. naval aviator, will pilot the Orion spacecraft carrying the crew on a 10-day roundtrip mission around the moon and back, testing the functions of the systems and equipment future crews will use to eventually return to the lunar surface.

In an exclusive interview with VOA during the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission last year, Glover said he embraces the opportunity to be the first person of color assigned to a moon mission.

“People keep asking me, ‘Is it meaningful to you that little Black kids look up to you and say they want to be like you?’ You know what? Let’s be honest, I represent America,” he told VOA.

“I’m a naval officer and I work for NASA. I represent America and little white kids, little Mexican kids, little Hispanic kids and little Iranian kids follow what we’re doing because this is maybe one of the most recognizable symbols in the universe,” he said pointing to the NASA patch on his blue flight suit. “I think that that’s really important, and I take that very seriously.”

Not only is the crew makeup historic, those aboard Artemis II could also venture farther in space than any humans before them. While the Artemis II crew won’t orbit or land on the lunar surface, they could travel more than 1 million total kilometers on a path that slingshots well beyond the moon before returning to Earth. NASA says the exact distance and plan depends on a number of factors, including the date of the actual mission launch.

At the end of the NASA ceremony introducing his crew, astronaut Reid Wiseman expressed the determination of the agency to further its goals in space despite repeated delays and cost overruns.

“There’s three words we keep saying in this Artemis program, and that’s ‘We. Are. Going.’ And I want everyone to say it with me – We Are Going!”

NASA hopes to launch Artemis II as early as November 2024, with the first mission back to the lunar surface as early as 2025.
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Zimbabweans in the agriculture sector are dealing with rising fertilizer costs and poor rainfalls due to climate change. Now, some are turning to organic farming and conservation agriculture to make ends meet, and officials say they are making progress against the odds. Columbus Mavhunga has more from Mashava, one of Zimbabwe’s poorest and most drought-prone districts. (Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe)
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As more people become concerned about the effects of climate change on their lives, journalists in an otherwise struggling industry are becoming specialized in the environmental beat.

But that wasn’t always the case, said Frederick Mugira, founder of Water Journalists Africa, the largest network of journalists on the continent reporting on water.

Mugira said that when he started the organization in 2011, “not so much was being tackled about water.” But now, “we have more journalists preferring to specialize in water and climate issues.”

Mugira, an award-winning journalist based in Kampala, Uganda, founded the network to share ideas and provide training.

From investigative reporting on the impact of a large agricultural industry in Cameroon to how plastics and water pollution are devastating the fishing trade in the African Great Lakes, the coalition is combining environmental, data and solutions-led journalism.

Made up of about 1,000 journalists across Africa, the network works collaboratively to investigate issues around water, wildlife, biodiversity and climate change.

The nongovernmental organization receives funding from various institutions, including the U.S.-based Pulitzer Center and Internews, an international media support nonprofit organization in California.

The network also has a few specialized offshoots, including InfoNile, which uses graphics to map stories on the Nile Basin, and the Big Gorilla Project, which focuses on the endangered species in the forests of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

African nations are among the world’s lowest greenhouse gas emitters, but scientists have long warned the region will be one of the worst affected by climate change. Mugira said that more than ever, local people want explanations of phenomena such as droughts.

“We identify a theme of common and cross-border importance. For example, plastic pollution,” he said. “When we identify a theme, we search for credible data across the countries we’re working on.”

Water Journalists Africa projects include graphs and interactive maps and seek to break down data in a comprehensible and colorful way. Radio, TV and print are some of the mediums used, and the stories are published in English and local languages.

“When we started it, we realized journalists in the region didn’t have experience in data journalism,” Mugira said. But accessing that data can be a challenge.

One reason, Mugira said, is that scientists don’t always trust journalists and don’t always want to share their information. Another challenge comes when some government officials might want to release only numbers that show them in a good light.

“When it comes to natural resources, they don’t really release data, because they see it as sensitive,” he added.

Reporting with results

For Nairobi journalist Sharon Atieno, 29, being a member of Water Journalists Africa opened her up to a wide range of new skills.

“The network has helped shape my environmental reporting, and I’ve also learned to use data,” said Atieno, who learned of the network when applying for grants.

“You can use maps, visualizations, to make it more captivating. This is a skill I acquired not through university but through being part of the Water Journalists Network. That’s how I discovered my beat,” she said.

Asked why she thought the beat was important, Atieno said, “Everything around us is the environment — plastics in the oceans, polluted lakes, everything has an impact not only on the environment but also on climate change.

“Environment reporting is important because even tiny things we’re doing, if you look at it accumulatively, it’s having a very big impact on our lives as human beings.”

Atieno said everything is connected. For example, more drought results in increased wildlife poaching as people’s crops fail and they go hungry.

Atieno has taken part in collaborations with Water Journalists Africa. One story she was particularly proud of looked at how poaching for bushmeat increased when Kenya was under the pandemic lockdown. The poaching resulted in a decline in the population of the country’s iconic Rothschild’s giraffe, she said.

Another story she covered was how waste from sugarcane companies in a part of western Kenya was polluting a nearby river.

“The degradation of the sugarcane waste results in a chemical being produced so when it goes into the water system, it makes the rivers toxic,” she said. “When I did that story, I reached out to the county government. They said they didn’t know it was happening.”

After she covered the story, the county authorities opened a commission to investigate the issue.

Funding challenges

Cross-border networks of environmental journalists in Africa are growing, according to Anton Harber, adjunct professor of journalism at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg.

“At our annual gathering of the continent’s investigative journalists, the African Investigative Journalism Conference, we have definitely seen environmental coverage take center stage with the emergence of a number of cross-border, collaborative networks doing important and often excellent work,” he told VOA.

However, he said, such work needs funding to be able to survive.

“Few newsrooms are investing in it because it is not seen as a topic that sells newspapers or brings clicks,” Harber said. “Africa has the stories and the journalists who can tackle it, but they are not usually in the mainstream conventional newsrooms.”

But Mugira said stories from his network were now being picked up and followed by other media as interest in their coverage grows.

“These stories are just a starting point,” he said.
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