Month: November 2022

Beijing closed city parks and imposed other restrictions as the country faces a new wave of COVID-19 cases, even as millions of people remained under lockdown Friday in the west and south of China. The country reported 10,729 new cases on Friday, almost all of them testing positive while showing no symptoms. More than 5 million people were under lockdown Friday in the southern manufacturing hub Guangzhou and the western megacity Chongqing. With the bulk of Beijing’s 21 million people undergoing near daily testing, another 118 new cases were recorded in the sprawling city. Many city schools switched to online classes, hospitals restricted services and some shops and restaurants were shuttered, with their staff taken to quarantine. Videos on social media showed people in some areas protesting or fighting with…

President Joe Biden is headed to Egypt for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), where he will discuss US climate crisis strategies. But environmental campaigners say wealthy nations need to focus on meeting their $100 billion pledge to cover climate change losses. Anita Powell reports. ...

The moon gave us a show we won’t again see for another three years. Plus, the U.K. is set for its first satellite launch, and NASA’s Artemis program is poised for another try. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. ...

People who have had COVID-19 more than once are two or three times more likely to have a range of serious health problems than those who have only had it once, the first major study on the subject said Thursday. Multiple infections have surged as the pandemic rumbles on and the virus mutates into new strains, but the long-term health effects of reinfection have not been clear. The U.S. researchers said their new study published in the Nature Medicine journal was the first to look at how reinfection increases the risk of health problems from acute cases as well as long COVID. The researchers analyzed the anonymous medical records of 5.8 million people in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' national health care database. More than 443,000 had tested positive…

China Wednesday said it would not pay into a climate loss and damage fund for developing nations, after small island nations cited its responsibility as a high carbon emitter at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, COP27. Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, on behalf of the Association of Small Island States, Tuesday called for major greenhouse gas emitters China and India to chip in for a fund to compensate poor countries for the consequences of climate change. It was the first time developing nations have included China and India among countries financially accountable for emissions. Beijing would support such a mechanism, but would not pay cash into the loss and damage fund, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said Wednesday. Xie added that China does is not obliged…

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on Wednesday announced the creation of a carbon offset plan meant to help developing countries speed their transition away from fossil fuels. Kerry launched the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) with the intention of funding renewable energy projects and accelerating clean energy transitions in developing countries. The United States will develop the program with the Bezos Earth Fund and Rockefeller Foundation, with input from the public and private sectors which would operate through 2030 and possibly be extended to 2035. Kerry said Chile and Nigeria were among the developing countries to have shown early interest in the ETA, and that Bank of America, Microsoft, PepsiCo and Standard Chartered Bank had voiced interest in "informing the ETA's development". "Our intention is to put the carbon market to…

Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday. The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. There have been numerous job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic. Zuckerberg as well said that he had made the decision to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic ended. “Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to…

NASA again rescheduled its long-delayed uncrewed mission to the Moon on Tuesday as Tropical Storm Nicole churned toward the east coast of Florida, officials said. A launch attempt, which had been scheduled for November 14, will now take place on November 16, Jim Free, a senior official at the U.S. space agency, said on Twitter. It is the third delay of the highly anticipated launch in as many months. "Our people are the most important aspect of our mission," wrote Free, who is NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems development. "Adjusting our target launch date for #Artemis I prioritizes employee safety and allows our team to tend to the needs of their families and homes." The Atlantic Ocean storm was expected to develop into a hurricane Wednesday near the Bahamas,…

The Horn of Africa's record drought has dried up wide areas of land and vegetation, left millions of livestock dead and threatened the survival of both wildlife and people. In Kenya, to reduce the impact of drought, a Dutch conservation group is helping ethnic Maasai to restore parched lands through rainwater harvesting. But with a failed rainy season forecast for the fifth time in a row, some are asking whether conservation efforts will be enough. Reporter Juma Majanga has more from Amboseli Kenya. Videographer: Juma Majanga ...

The Ugandan government says it will end the school year earlier than planned because of an Ebola outbreak that has affected 23 students, including eight children who died. Millions of Ugandan students in primary and secondary schools will be affected by the decision to end the semester two weeks early, due to the ongoing Ebola virus outbreak. Joyce Moriku Kaducu, the state minister for education, announced the closure on Tuesday. “Pre-primary, primary and secondary schools will close for Term 3 holidays on Friday, 25th November 2022," Kaducu said. According to the Ministry of Education, Ebola cases were found at five schools in the Kampala, Wakiso and Mubende districts.     Kaducu said the Cabinet of President Yoweri Museveni made the decision to close schools nationwide based on concerns that crowded schools…

Better catch the moon's disappearing act Tuesday — there won’t be another like it for three years. The total lunar eclipse will be visible throughout North America in the predawn hours — the farther west, the better — and across Asia, Australia and the rest of the Pacific after sunset. As an extra treat, Uranus will be visible just a finger's width above the moon, resembling a bright star. Totality will last nearly 1 1/2 hours — from 5:16 a.m. to 6:42 a.m. EST — as Earth passes directly between the moon and sun. Known as a blood moon, it will appear a reddish orange from the light of Earth's sunsets and sunrises. At the peak of the eclipse, the moon will be 390,653 kilometers away, according to NASA scientists.…

When world leaders, diplomats, campaigners and scientists descend on Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt for talks on tackling climate change, don't expect them to part the Red Sea or other miracles that would make huge steps in curbing global warming. Each year there are high hopes for the two-week United Nations climate gathering and, almost inevitably, disappointment when it doesn't deliver another landmark pact like the one agreed 2015 in Paris. But those were different days, marked by a spirit of cooperation between the world's two biggest polluters — the United States and China — as well as a global realization that failure to reach an agreement would put humanity on a self-chosen track to oblivion. This November the geopolitical tiles have shifted: a devastating war in Ukraine, skyrocketing energy and…

World health officials are linking a significant rise in African Ebola outbreaks in this century to climate change.     Uganda’s September 20 Ebola outbreak is just the latest in a growing number of eruptions of this deadly hemorrhagic disease in Africa. Since 2000, the World Health Organization has reported 32 outbreaks of Ebola, 19 in the last decade compared to 13 in the preceding one. Ebola is one of a range of zoonotic diseases — infections originating in animals and jumping to humans. A WHO analysis finds Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers constitute nearly 70% of these outbreaks. The remaining 30% include dengue fever, anthrax, plague, and monkeypox.   WHO Africa incident manager for the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, Patrick Otim, says the number of zoonotic diseases occurring in the region…

Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light-years away. Scientists reported Friday that this black hole is 10 times more massive than our sun. And it’s three times closer than the previous record-holder. It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun. The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way. Named Gaia BH1, it’s…

More than 120 world leaders will attend this year's U.N. climate talks, and requests by environmental activists to stage a rally during the event would be responded to "positively," host Egypt said. Veteran diplomat Wael Aboulmagd, who heads the Egyptian delegation, told reporters Friday that his country had been working for months to set the scene for "meaningful outcomes" at the two-week meeting in the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh starting Sunday. "We have, I think about 121 maybe, and the number is growing, heads of state and government here," he said during an online briefing. "We hope that it will be a watershed moment." Leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed their attendance, but Aboulmagd said other major heads of…

In South Africa, a country where 'braai' all-day barbecuing is a national pastime, plant-based substitutes are making surprising inroads despite a deep cultural love of meat and hostility from the regulator. That could be heartening for climate scientists, who say shifting diets from emissions-heavy meat and dairy towards more plant-based foods is vital to the fight against climate change. Plant-based meat substitutes are growing by 6.5% a year and sales are expected to reach $561 million by 2023, according to Research and Markets - more than half Africa's share of a global market forecast to hit $162 billion by 2030. That is still pretty niche - South Africans spent $15 billion on meat products in 2018 and is now the world's 9th biggest per capita consumer of beef. But the…

The lone volunteer in a study involving a gene-editing technique has died, and those behind the trial are now trying to figure out what killed him. Terry Horgan, a 27-year-old who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last month, according to Cure Rare Disease, a Connecticut-based nonprofit founded by his brother, Rich, to try and save him from the fatal condition. Although little is known about how he died, his death occurred during one of the first studies to test a gene editing treatment built for one person. It's raising questions about the overall prospect of such therapies, which have buoyed hopes among many families facing rare and devastating diseases. "This whole notion that we can do designer genetic therapies is, I would say, uncertain," said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist…

The U.S. flu season is off to an unusually fast start, adding to an autumn mix of viruses that have been filling hospitals and doctors’ waiting rooms. Reports of flu are already high in 17 states, and the hospitalization rate hasn't been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, there have been an estimated 730 flu deaths, including at least two children. The winter flu season usually ramps up in December or January. "We are seeing more cases than we would expect at this time," the CDC's Dr. José Romero said Friday. A busy flu season is not unexpected. The nation saw two mild seasons during the COVID-19 pandemic, and experts have worried that flu might…

A court in Senegal has dismissed a lawsuit by a fishermen’s collective against a fishmeal factory they had accused of polluting their village and destroying their livelihoods. Dozens of people filtered into the Thies courthouse Thursday to hear the judge’s decision. The lawsuit, filed by the Taxawu Cayar Collective against the Touba Proteine Marine fishmeal factory, accused the factory of polluting the town of Cayar’s air, soil and water. The collective had asked for the temporary closure of the factory based on urgency. During the legal proceedings, the collective presented video footage of the factory’s truck dumping fish waste into Cayar’s lake. An independent laboratory analysis revealed high levels of toxic metals in the lake, which was also found in the town’s tap water. The collective is now deciding whether…

U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said Friday a new study indicates their COVID-19 booster vaccination provides significant antibody protection against the omicron variant and its subvariants among adults. The companies introduced a new booster targeting the omicron variant in September, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it for use last month, along with a similar vaccine produced by U.S. drug company Moderna, as have several other countries. In their statement, the companies said the new data show the COVID-19 booster, adapted to target the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, generated four times the neutralizing antibodies against the omicron variants among adults ages 55 and older than their original vaccine. The study also showed after one month, the booster dose generated more than 13 times…