YCLOAK

Americans are becoming increasingly sedentary, spending almost a third of their waking hours sitting down, and computer use is partly to blame, a new study found.

Over almost a decade, average daily sitting time increased by roughly an hour, to about eight hours for U.S. teens and almost 6 1/2 hours for adults, according to the researchers. That includes school and work hours, but leisure-time computer use among all ages increased too.

By 2016, at least half of American kids and adults spent an hour or more of leisure time daily using computers. The biggest increase was among the oldest adults: 15 percent of retirement-aged adults reported using computers that often in 2003-04, soaring to more than half in 2015-16.

Most Americans of all ages watched TV or videos for at least two hours daily and that was mostly unchanged throughout the study, ranging from about 60 percent of kids aged 5 to 11, up to 84 percent of seniors.

“Everything we found is concerning,” said lead author Yin Cao, a researcher at Washington University’s medical school in St. Louis. “The overall message is prolonged sitting is highly prevalent,” despite prominent health warnings about the dangers of being too sedentary.

The researchers analyzed U.S. government health surveys from almost 52,000 Americans, starting at age 5, from 2001-2016. Total sitting time was assessed for teens and adults starting in 2007. The results were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Studies have shown that prolonged periods of sitting can increase risks for obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. U.S. activity guidelines released last fall say adults need at least 150 minutes to 300 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity each week, things like brisk walking, jogging, biking or tennis. Muscle strengthening two days weekly is also advised. Immediate benefits include reduced blood pressure and anxiety and better sleep. Long-term benefits include improved brain health and lower risks for falls.

Kids aged 6 through 17 need 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily. Regular activity is even recommended for kids as young as 3. But only about 1 in 4 U.S. adults and 1 in 5 teens get recommended amounts.

College student Daisy Lawing spends a lot of time sitting, but says she doesn’t have much choice. Classes and homework on the computer take up much of her day.

“I always feel bad” about being inactive, she said Tuesday at an Asheville, North Carolina, cafe, explaining that she did a school paper about the benefits of physical activity.

“I try to walk a lot, try to work out twice a week. But sometimes I can’t because I’m too busy with school,” Lawing, 21, a junior at Appalachian State University in Boone.

Peter T. Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said people who sit all day need to do more than the minimum recommended amount of physical activity to counteract the harms of being sedentary.

“We’ve just got to really work on the population to get the message out there. Physical activity is good for everyone,” he said.

 
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The World Health Organization says Malawi has become the first country to begin immunizing children against malaria, using the only licensed vaccine to protect against the mosquito-spread disease.

Although the vaccine only protects about one-third of children who are immunized, those who get the shots are likely to have less severe cases of malaria. The parasitic disease kills about 435,000 people every year, the majority of them children under 5 in Africa.

“It’s an imperfect vaccine but it still has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives,” said Alister Craig, dean of biological sciences at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who was not linked to WHO or to the vaccine. Craig said immunizing the most vulnerable children during peak malaria seasons could spare many thousands of children from falling ill with malaria or even dying.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2015. A previous trial showed the vaccine was about 30% effective in children who got four doses, but that protection waned over time. Reported side effects include pain, fever and convulsions.

WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed the new program, noting progress has “stalled and even reversed” in the ongoing fight against malaria. In the coming weeks, WHO said similar vaccination programs would begin in Kenya and Ghana together with other partners and that they aimed to reach about 360,000 children across the three countries. GSK is donating up to 10 million vaccine doses.

Other experts warned the vaccination programs should not divert limited public health funds from inexpensive and proven tools to curb malaria, like bednets and insecticides.

“This is a bold thing to do, but it’s not a silver bullet,” said Thomas Churcher, a malaria expert at Imperial College London. “As long as using the vaccine doesn’t interfere with other efforts, like the urgent new for new insecticides, it is a good thing to do.”

Craig noted one of health officials’ biggest challenges could be convincing parents to bring their children for repeated doses of a vaccine that only protects about a third of children for a limited amount of time.

More commonly used vaccines, like those for polio and measles, work more than 90 percent of the time.

“This malaria vaccine is going to save many lives, even if it is not as good as we would like,” Craig said. “But I hope this will kick-start other research efforts so that the story doesn’t end here.”
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Communist Vietnam is moving to privatize some parts of its health care system, raising questions about the state’s duty to guarantee care for all as a basic right, and about its budget to do so. 

A publicly funded medical school in Ho Chi Minh City said this month it is looking for a private investor to help it build a new training and outpatient center on its campus. The Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine said the idea is for it to handle the clinical operations and training, while a private company would handle the actual construction.

Tapping private funding

“Ho Chi Minh City’s health care needs are critical due to rapid urbanization and a growing population,” said Dr. Ngo Minh Xuan, who is the rector of the Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine. “However, we cannot cater to these needs effectively and timely by relying solely on public budget.”

The shift to partially privatize these health services is an ongoing trend as the country of 100 million people turns ever closer to capitalism. More and more international hospitals are popping up and expanding, like Hanh Phuc and the Vietnam Germany Hospital, as the government increasingly opens up the sector to private parties, such as through a trade deal with the European Union that permits higher foreign investment.

A record of health care for all

Since its establishment as a communist nation at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the country has provided universal health care, with most citizens having access to subsidized insurance but also paying out of pocket for some expenses. As public opinion generally supports the idea that all people are entitled to health care, doctors treat their roles as a public service, doing regular rotations from their home base to hospitals in rural areas and other underserved communities. The government also works to improve access in the countryside, through a network of commune health centers that are the first point of contact for patients when they can’t make it to bigger city hospitals. 

Vietnam’s record on health services is part of the reason it ranks relatively well on the Sustainable Economic Development Assessment (SEDA), which takes a look at not just how rich a country is, but also how well it translates its riches into creating a good quality of life for the public. Vietnam outperforms the Southeast Asian average on health care in the SEDA index. Between 2009 and 2018, its life expectancy rose from 74.8 years to 75.9 years, while rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, and undernourishment fell and measles immunization rose.

There are financial strains on the current system 

“Over the last decade, Vietnam made significant improvements, placing it in the first quartile of SEDA score change,” the Boston Consulting Group, which created the index, said in a statement. “In 2018, Vietnam’s wealth to well-being coefficient of 1.28 highlights the country’s well above average ability of converting wealth to well-being.”

Still there are shortcomings in the health care system that are prompting calls for more private sector involvement. It is not uncommon for a patient to pay a bribe to a doctor to request better care, nor for patients to share hospital beds or wait outside buildings on bamboo mats.

There are concerns about affordability for a state that has gotten close to its public debt ceiling of 65 percent of gross domestic product. Amid the strained public budget, Vietnam has undergone a drop in the rate of physicians per 1,000 people and in the relative number of hospital beds available in the past decade, according to the BCG. That is a particular burden for Ho Chi Minh City, the southern business center of as many as 13 million residents, accounting for about a quarter of Vietnam’s overall demand for health care. There are more than 100 hospitals in the city, according to the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

At the same time the country is expected to transition from a lower middle income nation to an upper middle income nation in the next decade or so. 

“This [transition] will make Vietnam a fast-growing market for a wide range of goods and services” — including health care — said Asia Pacific chief economist Rajiv Biswas and principal economist Bernard Aw in a joint report for investment research firm IHS Markit in February.

With medical needs on the rise, Vietnam’s debate about public versus private health care will only deepen in the coming years.
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The world’s recyclable plastic is being shipped to Asia where it is illegally dumped, buried or burned in the country with the lightest regulations, environmentalists warned on Tuesday calling for greater transparency in the global waste trade.

A report by Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Greenpeace East Asia analyzed the top 21 exporters and importers of plastic recyclable waste from 2016 until 2018 – before and after China stopped taking such waste last year.

It found that plastic waste imports into Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam jumped from mid-2017 to early 2018, leading to illegal operations dumping and open-burning, contaminating water supplies, killing crops and causing respiratory illnesses.

“For the first world, it makes them feel good about their waste supposedly being recycled but in reality it ends up in countries that cannot deal with the waste,” said Beau Baconguis, a plastics campaigner at GAIA in Manila.

“So the pollution is heading south to countries that do not have that capacity,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

As pollution and environmental damage linked to the rise in plastic waste became known in countries like Malaysia and Thailand during 2018, protests led to tighter waste regulations and import restrictions by authorities, the study found.

Large volumes of plastic waste then diverted to other countries in the region, like Indonesia and India, where regulations on the waste trade are more lenient, the study said.

“Once one country regulates plastic waste imports, it floods into the next un-regulated destination,” said Kate Lin, a Hong Kong based campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.

“It’s a predatory system, but it’s also increasingly inefficient,” she said. “Each new iteration shows more and more plastic going off grid – where we can’t see what’s done with it – and that’s unacceptable.”

​​China was the leading importer of plastic waste until it banned imports at the start of 2018 after a string of scandals.

This disrupted the flow of more than 7 million tons of plastic scrap a year, valued at about $3.7 billion.

The top exporters of plastic waste analyzed for the report included the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan.

Members of the Basel Convention, the main global pact regulating the trans-boundary movement of hazardous waste, will meet in Geneva from April 29 and decide on a proposal from Norway to create greater transparency in plastic waste trade.

If adopted, any plastic waste exporters would be required to obtain prior approval from an importing country, and give more detailed information on the volume and type of waste.

Greenpeace’s Lin welcomed the proposal but urged consumer goods companies to reduce the single-use plastics they produce.

“It is a good step but definitely not a final solution,” Lin said.
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A new study shows that many teenagers who use e-cigarettes do not understand the amount of addictive nicotine they are inhaling. 

The study, published in the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that 40 percent of adolescents who believed they were only using nicotine-free products were actually vaping significant amounts of the substance. 

The research involved 517 adolescents, aged 12 to 21, who were questioned about their use of e-cigarettes, traditional cigarettes and marijuana. 

Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York state compared adolescents’ responses about their use of such substances against urine samples taken from the teenagers. They found that almost all of the respondents were honest about their substance use, however, they discovered the biggest discrepancy in the study came from teens who thought they were using nicotine-free e-cigarettes. 

“Many of our participants were unaware of the nicotine content of the e-cigarette products they were using,” the researchers concluded. 

Pros and cons

The study comes at a time when the popularity of e-cigarettes is on the rise and their use has become a divisive topic in the public health community. 

Advocates for e-cigarettes say the products have the potential to shift lifelong smokers of traditional cigarettes onto less-harmful nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, while critics say that vaping risks bringing a new generation into nicotine addiction. Critics also point out that the health effects from the chemicals in e-cigarettes are not fully known.

E-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is addictive, but they do not contain tar or many of the other substances in traditional cigarettes, which make them deadly. Battery-powered e-cigarettes turn liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor.

Use among teens

Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a plan to restrict sales of most flavored e-cigarettes at drug stores and gasoline stations in an attempt to keep them out of the hands of young people.

U.S. federal law bans the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18 years of age. But a study published last year found that 1 in 5 high school students report using the devices — an activity known as vaping. 
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The endangered killer whales of the Pacific Northwest live very different lives from orcas in captivity.

They swim up to 100 miles (161 kilometers) a day in pursuit of salmon, instead of being fed a steady diet of baitfish and multivitamins. Their playful splashing awes and entertains kayakers and passengers on Washington state ferries instead of paying theme park customers.

But the captive whales are nevertheless providing a boon to researchers urgently trying to save wild whales in the Northwest.

SeaWorld, which displays orcas at its parks in California, Texas and Florida, has recently published data from thousands of routine blood tests of its killer whales over two decades, revealing the most comprehensive picture yet of what a healthy whale looks like. The information could guide how and whether scientists intervene to help sick or stranded whales in the wild.

“For us, collecting blood from free-ranging killer whales is exceedingly difficult, so it’s something we would rarely ever do,” said Deborah Fauquier, a veterinary medical officer at the National Marine Fisheries Service. “Having partners that are in the managed-care community that can provide us with blood values from those animals is very useful. It’s giving us a very robust baseline data set that we haven’t had previously for these whales.”

The round-up of killer whales for theme-park display in the 1960s and ’70s was devastating for the Pacific Northwest’s resident orcas: At least 13 were killed and 45 kept to awe and entertain paying crowds around the world, according to the Center for Whale Research on Washington’s San Juan Island. Only one of those orcas survives: Lolita, at the Miami Seaquarium.

​Protecting orcas

Washington state eventually sued SeaWorld to stop the hunts. Today, 17 of SeaWorld’s 20 whales were born in captivity, including some descended from orcas captured near Iceland; the company hasn’t collected a wild orca in more than 40 years. Under public pressure, it ended its captive breeding program and is replacing trained orca shows with what it describes as “more educational experiences where guests can still enjoy and marvel at the majesty and power of the whales.”

It took decades for the so-called southern resident killer whales, which spend several months every summer and fall in the marine waters between Washington state and Canada, to recover from the hunts. By the mid-1990s, their population reached 98. 

Half a century later, the orcas are struggling against different threats: pollution, vessel noise and, most seriously, starvation from a dearth of Chinook salmon, their preferred prey. There are just 75 left, and researchers say they’re on the verge of extinction.

Gov. Jay Inslee has proposed $1.1 billion in spending to help the whales, with much of the money going toward protecting and restoring salmon habitat. The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, is planning to propose expanded habitat protections this year for the whales’ foraging areas off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts.

SeaWorld has also boosted its efforts to help the southern resident orcas, pledging $10 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Killer Whale Research and Conservation Program.

​SeaWorld research

“Our stance is to do research with our animals to try to help this population now, and that’s what we’re doing,” said Todd Robeck, SeaWorld’s vice president of conservation research. “That’s why I got into what I do — to try to help animals in the wild.”

Robeck is one of the lead authors on the review of SeaWorld’s data, which included results of more than 2,800 blood tests on 32 whales from 1993 to 2013. Data from sick and pregnant whales were excluded to obtain a standard range for blood values, including cholesterol, platelet count, triglycerides and many other metrics. The whales were trained to present the underside of their tails for the blood draws, which were taken once or twice a month.

The results show that most of the values don’t differ much between male and female whales, but they do differ considerably with age and season, Robeck said. The study suggests that orcas lose some immune function as they age.

While there will be some difference between the values for captive and wild whales due to differences in climate, diet and other factors, the research provides a template for understanding the whales, Robeck said. Further, the values may be compared to data from blow samples or fecal samples to provide even greater insight, he said. Among the ongoing research projects at SeaWorld is studying the extent to which toxins that build up in the whales due to pollution are transferred to calves from their mothers.

“It’s something that could only be done with our animals,” Robeck said. “It’s an example of how we are dedicated to participating in the well-being of killer whales in the Pacific Northwest and around the world, and how research with our animals is vital in answering some of these questions about how to address the needs of the animals in the wild.” 
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Today as we observe World Immunization Week, we’re going to focus on a disease that could be eradicated from the earth, just like smallpox was, and as just as international programs are doing with polio. But instead, as we hear from Carol Pearson, this deadly disease is making a comeback.
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Climate change protesters who have brought parts of London to a standstill said Sunday they were prepared to call a halt if the British government will discuss their demands.

Some 963 arrests have been made and 42 people charged in connection with the ongoing Extinction Rebellion protests.

On the seventh day of demonstrations that have occupied key spots in the British capital, Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the demonstrators, telling them: “Humanity is standing at a crossroads.”

Organizers said they were willing to switch tactics from disruption to dialogue next week — if the government enters talks.

“We are prepared to pause, should the government come to the negotiating table,” Extinction Rebellion spokesman James Fox told AFP.

“What the pause looks like is us stopping an escalation.

“We can discuss leaving if they are willing to discuss our demands.

“At the moment, we haven’t received a response from the government… so we’re waiting on that.”

Extinction Rebellion was established last year in Britain by academics and has become one of the world’s fastest-growing environmental movements.

Campaigners want governments to declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, halt biodiversity loss and be led by new “citizens’ assemblies on climate and ecological justice.

“We’re giving them an opportunity now to come and speak to us,” Fox told AFP.

“If they refuse to come and negotiate with us, then this is going to continue and this is going to escalate in different, diverse and very creative ways.”

Thunberg, the 16-year-old activist who has inspired pupils worldwide to boycott classes to join climate protests, addressed the cheering crowds at the Marble Arch landmark, the only authorized demonstration site.

“For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis,” she said.

“But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer.”

She continued: “How do we want the future living conditions for all living species to be like?

“Humanity is now standing at a crossroads. We must now decide which path we want to take.

“We are waiting for the others to follow our example.”

Police said they had managed to clear the protesters from Parliament Square and the Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus junctions.

Those charged range in age from 19 to 77. They hail from around England and Wales, with one person from France charged.

The charges are for various offenses including breaching public order laws, obstructing a highway and obstructing police.

Calling for an end to the protests, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said more than 9,000 police officers had been responding to the demonstrations, which had left the force as a whole overstretched.

“This is now taking a real toll on our city… this is counter-productive to the cause,” he said.

“I’m extremely concerned about the impact the protests are having on our ability to tackle issues like violent crime.

“You must now let London return to business as usual.”

In the blazing sunshine on Waterloo Bridge, police lifted protesters and carried them off to waiting police vans.

“I’m genuinely terrified. I think about it all the time. I’m so scared for the world. I feel like there is going to be calamity in my lifetime,” student Amber Gray told AFP.

“I don’t even feel comfortable bringing children into this world knowing that that is coming.

“And I don’t want people in the future to say to me, ‘why didn’t you do anything?’.”
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On April 22, more than 1 billion people in 192 countries are expected to take part in a global day of political and civic action for the Earth.

People will march, plant trees, clean up their cities, parks, beaches and waterways, politicians will announce policies, and corporations will pledge to work toward sustainability — all to mark Earth Day 2019.

Earth Day Network, the organization that leads Earth Day observances worldwide, has designated 2019 to be the year to “Protect Our Species.”

According to EDN, the theme was picked to highlight the fact that human activities are directly linked to what environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert refers to in her book, “The Sixth Extinction,” which describes a mass extinction caused by human activity rather than natural causes.

“The good news is that the rate of extinctions can still be slowed, and many of our declining, threatened and endangered species can still recover if we work together now to build a united global movement of consumers, voters, educators, faith leaders and scientists to demand immediate action,” EDN President Kathleen Rogers told VOA.

Earth Day brings, in general, a greater awareness to environmental concerns.

The Pew Research Center released a report last week that found climate change was the top concern in half the countries it surveyed last year.

At the top of the list was Greece, where 90 percent of those surveyed called it a major threat and only 4 percent did not view climate change as a threat at all. Their concern was shared by residents of South Korea, France, Spain and Mexico, countries that ranked Nos. 2-5, respectively.

The survey also found that concern over climate change has been steadily rising around the world since 2013, when Pew first asked that question. That year, a median of 56 percent in 23 countries said climate change was a major threat.

In the most recent survey, a median of 67 percent in the same countries hold this view. The concern was also the highest among specific demographics — the educated, women and those between the ages of 18 and 26.

The rising awareness, especially among the young, is good news for EDN, which is looking ahead to next year when it marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. It has already launched several initiatives this year in hopes of seeing results by Earth Day 2020. Among them are:

Earth Challenge 2020

EDN is working with the U.S. State Department and the Woodrow Wilson International Center to engage millions of people around the world to gather more than 1 billion data points in areas including air quality, water quality, biodiversity, pollution and human health.

The “citizen science” volunteers will gather information about their local conditions asking questions such as: What is in my drinking water? How does air quality vary locally? What is the extent of plastics pollution? How are insect populations changing? And is my food supply sustainable?

EDN is working with major tech companies to develop apps where the citizen scientists can upload the data they collect. The apps will also tell users what the information they collect means and offer suggestions on what else they can do to help the environment, Rogers said.

EDN hopes to be able to use the data to leverage public policy decisions and inspire collaborative action worldwide.

The Great Global Cleanup

The initiative will be launched in cities across the United States on Earth Day this year. It will call on volunteers to help pick up pieces of trash from neighborhoods, beaches, rivers, lakes, trails and parks. Using the lessons learned in the U.S., a global effort on Earth Day next year will try to gather millions of volunteers to remove billions of pieces of trash.

One of the most ambitious project connected to the global cleanup is one aimed at cleaning the most polluted rivers in the world: the Ganges, in India. Coordinated by Earth Day India and a local NGO, the first phase will begin in the Himalayas, where two glacier-fed streams meet to form India’s most famous and sacred river.

The cleanup will evolve over the next 15 months through 100 towns and cities, including some of the most densely populated ones such as Kolkota, Varanasi and Patna. It will culminate in the Sunderbans Delta, where the river empties into the Bay of Bengal.

“The project on the Ganges will serve as a lightning rod for many more countries and communities to get involved worldwide,” Rogers said.

The Canopy Project

One of EDN’s ongoing projects since 2010 has been to plant trees to fight deforestation. EDN focuses on restoring forests in environmentally critical areas such the Amazon rainforest and the Boreal Forest. But it also plans on reforestation of areas degraded by natural disasters such as flooding or fires. The organization estimates it has planted hundreds of millions of trees worldwide since it started.

Rogers says EDN’s goal for the 50th anniversary is to plant 7.8 billion trees, one for every person alive on Earth that year. Although, she says, the latest population forecast is close to 7.6 billion in 2020 “so that’s a bit of a reprieve.”

She explains that the 7.8 billion number is in addition to the reforestation pledges made by governments, corporations and other environmental groups. For example, she said, the government of Pakistan has already declared its intention to plant 1 billion trees. EDN is now in negotiations with Islamabad to plant 1 billion additional trees to meet the 2020 goal.

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million Americans banded together to launch the modern environmental movement, governments around the world have passed laws and implemented policies to preserve the Earth.

EDN says as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day approaches, the time is long overdue for a global outpouring of energy, enthusiasm and commitment to create a new environmental paradigm.
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Trained to aid and accompany people with disabilities at all times, assistance dogs are much more than dedicated friends, they are the ears, the eyes and the moral support that is so needed, whether their companion has a physical disability or an emotional one, like PTSD. Anush Avetisyan learned more about training assistance dogs and matching them with companions.
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The U.N. children’s fund says at least 1.6 million children in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe need help right away to recover from the affects of Cyclone Idai, which battered their countries more than one month ago.

Cyclone Idai, the deadliest storm to hit southern Africa in more than two decades, killed at least 1,000 people, and destroyed crops, livelihoods and hundreds of thousands of homes.

The U.N. children’s fund says the emergency phase of its response in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe is winding down. But the road to recovery will remain very long, especially for children, who are the most vulnerable.

It says children lack essential services, including healthcare, nutrition, water and sanitation, protection and education. It says the situation is particularly dire for some one million children in Mozambique where the storm hit with particular ferocity.

UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac says conditions in that country are ripe for an explosion of disease, noting more than 5,000 cases of cholera have already been reported.

“We also have a concern with malaria, with more than 7,500 cases confirmed. And UNICEF is distributing 500,000 mosquito nets. I also understand that in the coming weeks, campaigns are planned around measles vaccination, deworming and vitamin A boosters,” he said.

Boulierac says UNICEF also is supporting the establishment of several health clinics in resettlement areas.

The agency reports nearly one-half-million children in Malawi need humanitarian assistance to recover from the impact of Cyclone Idai. It says many children are living in crowded evacuation centers.

It adds it is providing water trucks, toilets, medicine and mobile clinics in those centers; creating child-friendly spaces and providing children with education and recreation kits.

In Zimbabwe, 130,000 children are at risk. UNICEF says it is furnishing vital health and nutrition supplies, other essential relief and psycho-social support to vulnerable children in child-friendly spaces.

UNICEF is appealing for $122 million to support its humanitarian operations in the three storm-affected countries.

 
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Three months ago, this flu season was shaping up to be short and mild in the U.S. But a surprising second viral wave has made it the longest in 10 years.

This flu season has been officially going for 21 weeks, according to reports collected through last week and released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That makes it among the longest seen since the government started tracking flu season duration more than 20 years ago.

Some experts likened the unusual double waves to having two different flu seasons compressed, back-to-back, into one.

“I don’t remember a season like this,” said Dr. Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan researcher who had been studying respiratory illnesses for more than 50 years.

The previous longest recent flu season was 20 weeks, which occurred in 2014-2015.

Flu can cause a miserable, relatively mild illness in many people and a more severe illness in others. Young children and the elderly are at greatest risk from flu and its complications. Flu vaccinations are recommended annually for all but the very young.

The current season began the week of Thanksgiving, a typical start time. At the beginning, most illnesses were caused by a flu strain that tends not to cause as many hospitalizations and which is more easily controlled by vaccines.

But in mid-February, a nastier strain started causing more illnesses and driving up hospitalizations.

Not helping matters: The harsher bug is not well matched to the vaccine, said the CDC’s Lynnette Brammer, who oversees flu tracking.

Still, this flu season is not nearly as bad as last winter’s 19-week season, the deadliest in at least four decades. An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last season.

The CDC is estimating that flu-related deaths this season in the range of 35,000 to 55,000.

More good news: Brammer said that although the virus is notoriously unpredictable, signs suggest this flu season should be over soon.

“It’s on the verge” of being over, she said. “If nothing changes.”
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One of the key components of empathy is what scientists call facial mimicry. It seems complicated, but is as simple as smiling when someone smiles at you, and that conveys a lot of information. Scientists have always thought that animals who do it, humans included, are a small group, but maybe not. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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