Month: June 2020

Deepfakes, which use artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate highly realistic but phony videos, have been exploited for both entertainment and unethical purposes. Now one startup is showing how the face-swapping technology can be a practical tool for improving mental health and therapy practices.  VOA’s Tina Trinh explains.Camera: Tina Trinh ...

Tropical Storm Cristobal could soon renew its strength by uniting with another storm system coming from the west to form one giant cyclone, forecasters say. After drenching much of the South, forecasters now expect the remnants of Cristobal to bring fierce winds, heavy rain and thunderstorms to much of the Midwest by Tuesday. A very strong storm system sweeping out from the Rocky Mountains is expected to meld with Cristobal, said Greg Carbin, who oversees forecasts at the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. "The two will eventually merge into a large cyclone," Carbin said. "It's a pretty fascinating interaction we'll see over the next couple of days." Wind gusts of up to 45 mph (72 kph) are expected in Chicago by Tuesday night, the National Weather Service said. Boaters were being warned…

The U.N. has released $40 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to help tackle a new outbreak of Ebola and other health and humanitarian crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo.   The re-emergence of Ebola in Mbandaka, in DRC’s Equateur province, a week ago has dashed hopes of finally bringing this deadly disease to a timely end.  More than 2,200 people have died since the epidemic started in eastern Ituri, North and South Kivu provinces in August 2018.     Meanwhile, international support for humanitarian operations in Congo has fallen off a cliff.  The U.N. hopes its injection of $40 million to tackle Ebola and other health and humanitarian crises in the country will kickstart a more generous response from donors.   FILE - A police officer stands at the deserted crossing point…

The coronavirus pushed hospitals to the edge, and millions of workers lost job-based coverage in the economic shutdown to slow the spread, but a new poll suggests Americans have remarkably little interest in big changes to health care as a result of the pandemic.   People are still more likely to prefer the private sector than the government on driving innovation in health care, improving quality and, by a narrower margin, providing coverage, according to the survey by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.   Those views are basically unchanged since February, when an earlier edition of the AP-NORC poll asked the same questions at a time that the coronavirus was still largely seen as a problem in…

The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is "rare," despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.   Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms. But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.   Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type…

Iran on Monday urged its citizens to wear masks in public as it announced another 70 deaths from the novel coronavirus and 2,043 new cases of infection.   Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the latest figures took the overall toll to 8,351 dead out of a total of 173,832 people infected.   "Everybody must wear masks when attending places like stores or any other place where it is not possible to observe social distancing carefully," he said on state television.   Since announcing its first cases in the Shiite holy city of Qom in February, Iran has struggled to contain what quickly became the Middle East's deadliest outbreak of the COVID-19 illness.   It initially imposed a series of measures aimed at halting its spread, such as the closure…

Netflix is removing an episode of the History 101 program that says AIDS originated in Haiti.“We have seen the concerns raised and, together with the series creators, have decided to remove the episode while we review the issues involved,” a spokesperson for the online streaming service told VOA via email Saturday. Netflix offers users television shows, movies and documentaries.History 101 is a British TV show produced by ITN productions. It is described on Netflix as “infographics and archival footage [that] deliver bite-size history lessons on scientific breakthroughs, social movements and world-changing discoveries.”The episode sparked outrage among Haitian Americans, who posted their criticism and started a petition on Instagram and Twitter.“The framing of the whole doc lacks in world view,” renowned Haitian American DJ Michael Brun posted on Instagram. “For a…

Police in Vietnam showed up at a private home last year to find what they had suspected: a menagerie of illegal pets, from a clouded leopard to flying squirrels. Acting on a tip, the police ended up with a haul of 16 wild animals in total that had made up the resident’s personal zoo.An environmental group, Education for Nature Vietnam, has been passing citizens’ tips to police to fight wildlife trafficking, which it said is now more urgent because of COVID-19. As the world fights a virus passed from animals to humans, the organization has now released a report card on the Southeast Asian nation’s success in its fight against the wildlife trade, not giving it the best grades.Law enforcement acted on 84 percent of reported wildlife crimes in Vietnam…

A massive oil spill that occurred a week ago in Russia's Arctic region has resulted in an emergency declaration by the country's president and a government response to assess and clean up the damage.  Approximately 20,000 tons of diesel oil leaked from a storage tank on May 29, seeping into the Ambarnaya River in a part of Siberia located above the Arctic Circle, authorities said.   The tank was at an industrial plant operated by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest producer of palladium and one of the largest producers of nickel, platinum and copper. The incident was reportedly caused by "abnormally mild temperatures" that caused the permafrost beneath the tank to thaw, leading to its structural collapse, according to a company official. A government investigation into the cause is being…

Weather scientists said May was the warmest month on record worldwide, with one observing station reporting carbon dioxide levels hitting a record high.The World Meteorological Organization warned that will have a major impact on biodiversity and nature as well as on people’s socioeconomic development and well-being.    Pandemic won't affect climateAt the same time, lockdowns due to the COVID-19 virus have led to improvements in air quality and cleaner skies in many places.  But WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis said scientists agree the effects are temporary and the pandemic will not affect climate change in the long term.    “The industrial and economic slowdown from COVID 19 is not a substitute for sustained and coordinated climate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Nullis said. “Unfortunately carbon dioxide concentrations measured at the Mauna Loa observing station in Hawaii reached a new record in May.”   The WMO noted the atmospheric carbon dioxide…

The World Health Organization (WHO) updated its guidance on Friday to recommend that governments ask everyone to wear fabric face masks in public areas where there is a risk of transmission of COVID-19 to help reduce the spread of the pandemic disease.   In its new guidance, prompted by evidence from studies conducted in recent weeks, the WHO stressed that face masks were only one of a range of tools that can reduce the risk of viral transmission, and should not give a false sense of protection.   "Masks on their own will not protect you from COVID-19," the WHO's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a briefing.   The WHO's technical lead expert on COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in a Reuters interview: "We are advising governments to…

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has launched a monitoring project to protect the habitat of rare snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan.UNEP says the program, called Vanishing Treasures, has found 15 snow leopards in the mountains above the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Wildlife scientists say climate change is driving farmers higher into the mountains to graze their livestock, which then fall prey to the big cats.Wildlife scientists with the program map livestock losses linked to snow leopards to identify hotspots, then pinpoint ways to address the problem in those areas. Solutions vary from location to location, and include offering livestock insurance plans or building predator-proof corrals to separate snow leopards and livestock.Emilbek Dzhaparov, a ranger in Kyrgyzstan's Shamsher-Tuyuk reserve, has lost livestock to snow leopards. He said proper herding of livestock is…

Several authors of a large study that raised safety concerns about malaria drugs for coronavirus patients have retracted the report, saying independent reviewers were not able to verify information that's been widely questioned by other scientists. Thursday's retraction in the journal Lancet involved a May 22 report on hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, drugs long used for preventing or treating malaria but whose safety and effectiveness for COVID-19 are unknown. The study leaders also retracted an earlier report that used the same company's database on blood pressure drugs published by the New England Journal of Medicine. That study suggested that widely used blood pressure medicines were safe for coronavirus patients, a conclusion some other studies and heart doctor groups also have reached. Even though the Lancet report was not a rigorous test, the observational study had huge impact…

NASA’s Near-Earth observatory (NEO) is monitoring an asteroid bigger than New York’s Empire State building that is expected to pass by the Earth Saturday.According to the NEO, the asteroid known as 2002 NN4 at its broadest section, has a diameter of 570 meters. The Empire State building is just more than 426 meters tall.  But scientists at the NEO say there is nothing to fear from the asteroid, as “near earth” is a relative term. They measure the distance to deep space objects in astronomical units, with one astronomical unit close to the mean distance between the sun and Earth – approximately 150 million kilometers. Anything that comes within 1.3 astronomical units of the sun, is considered a near-Earth objectAt its closest distance, Asteroid 2002 NN4 is expected to pass…

The temporary expansion of telehealth during the coronavirus pandemic would become permanent under a bill considered Thursday by a Senate committee. As passed by the House in March, the bill would allow reimbursement for medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders conducted via telehealth. But an amendment before the Senate Health and Human Services Committee would also make permanent the provisions of Gov. Chris Sununu's emergency order on telehealth, which allowed all health care providers to offer services via phone, video and other remote systems and required insurers to cover them. Officials representing hospitals, community health centers, dentists and mental health providers all told the committee that telehealth has been a valuable tool during the pandemic and should continue. Christine Stoddard of the Bistate Primary Care Association said community health centers…

A report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says emergency room visits for non-coronavirus illnesses plummeted in April at the peak of the pandemic.The agency released an analysis Wednesday that the declines were greatest among children 14 years old and younger, women and for people living in the U.S. northeast region.  The CDC noted a steep drop in the number of people seeking emergency care for chest pain, including heart attack, along with declines in children needing help for conditions like asthma.   FILE - A view of medical personnel working in Mt. Sinai Hospital Morningside during the coronavirus pandemic on May 18, 2020 in New York City.The United States has the world’s largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases with more than 1.8 million infections, with the death toll…

The White House medical team kept a close eye on President Donald Trump's heart rhythms, including at least one electrocardiogram, to watch for potential side effects when he took a two-week course of a malaria drug to try to prevent the coronavirus, his doctor reported Wednesday."The President completed the regimen safely and without side effects," Dr. Sean Conley wrote in a report on Trump's latest physical and his treatment with hydroxychloroquine.A pharmacy tech pours out pills of hydroxychloroquine at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah, May 20, 2020.Overall, Conley said, Trump showed little change in basic health measurements from 16 months ago. On the negative side, he gained a pound. But on the plus side, his cholesterol level continued to fall."The data indicates the President remains healthy," Conley concluded. Trump recently…

Turkey and Russia have agreed to cooperate in the development of a coronavirus vaccine and plan to carry out joint clinical trials, the Turkish health minister said Wednesday. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said scientific advisers from the two countries were scheduled to hold a second round of talks later this week. A total of 22 Turkish universities and research centers are working to develop a vaccine, and four of them have advanced to the animal-testing stage, Koca said. The minister also said that Turkey has seen the benefit of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and will continue to administer it to COVID-19 patients, despite concerns raised over the drug. Koca said that unlike other countries, Turkey has been using the drug early in COVID-19 threatment.  Turkey recorded 867 confirmed virus cases and 24 deaths between…