Month: March 2023

The discovery of major lithium deposits is being seen as a mixed blessing in India's troubled Kashmir region, where hopes for a major economic boost are tempered by fears of human displacement and damage to the territory's fragile ecology. The finding of the lithium, key to the manufacture of batteries used in electric cars and other electronic devices, is likely very good news for India as a whole, promising to save the country billions of dollars as it seeks to move its economy away from fossil fuels. It also offers the hope of good-paying jobs in Kashmir, where investment has been in decline amid political uncertainty and frequent internet shutdowns since the Indian government revoked the region's autonomous status in 2019. But residents in the southwestern Reasi district of Jammu…

Florida's warm weather attracts millions of visitors, including animals that outstay their welcome. Wildlife brought in from somewhere else has seriously damaged the ecosystem in Florida, home to the most severe invasive animal crisis in the continental United States. VOA's Dora Mekouar has more from Orlando. Camera: Adam Greenbaum Produced by: Dora Mekouar, Adam Greenbaum ...

In marking World TB Day, health officials warn the COVID-19 pandemic and multiple global crises are setting back years of progress in fighting tuberculosis and eventually ending the deadly disease. Tuberculosis, an ancient disease that some say goes back to biblical times, kills more people than any other infectious disease. The World Health Organization says 1.6 million people globally died from TB in 2021 and an estimated 10.6 million people were newly infected. Tuberculosis – a bacterial infection of the lungs – is a preventable, treatable and curable disease. Significant inroads have been made in battling tuberculosis, with the WHO saying that TB deaths have dropped by nearly 40 percent globally since 2000. Additionally, the organization reports an estimated 74 million lives were saved through TB diagnosis and treatment. While…

What would turn bird flu – the kind that's killed millions of birds around the world and a few hundred people – into the next deadly pandemic? Scientists want to know so they can get ahead of it. That's why, in 2010, two groups of researchers were studying an avian influenza virus that killed about half of the people it infected but does not spread easily among them. They infected ferrets with it to see what it would take to make it more transmissible. Ferrets' lungs and airways are a lot like ours. "They would infect a ferret, wait a certain amount of time, take the virus that comes out of that ferret and infect the next ferret," said University of Michigan microbiologist Michael Imperiale. After 10 rounds, the virus…

Cameroon and Gabon have stepped up border security after neighboring Equatorial Guinea confirmed a spreading Marburg virus has killed at least nine people. Despite the controls, people are still traveling across the porous borders, raising fears the virus that causes hemorrhagic fever could spread.  At the government primary school in Kye-Ossi, a town on Cameroon's southern border with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, children sing that regular hand washing protects people from diseases. Mireille Evan, head teacher of the school, said more than 15 children from Equatorial Guinea attended classes in Kye-Ossi on Friday. She said those children were separated from their Cameroonian peers and obliged to wash their hands before attending classes. Evan said Cameroon's public health ministry officials informed her that movement across the border was restricted because of…

Several African and Latin American countries on Thursday launched a major initiative to restore 300,000 kilometers of rivers by 2030, as well as lakes and wetlands degraded by human activity.  The "Freshwater Challenge," led by a coalition of governments that includes Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mexico and Gabon, is the largest river and wetland restoration project in history.  It aims to restore degraded rivers as long as seven times the Earth's circumference and an area of wetlands larger than India by 2030, according to a statement from the U.N. Water Conference, which ends Friday in New York City.  The initiative calls on all governments to set national river restoration targets to restore healthy freshwater ecosystems critical to humanity's water needs and biodiversity.  No details were given on…

Tuberculosis, or TB, a bacterial infection of the lungs, is one of the world's deadliest diseases. After decades of progress, cases are on the rise once more. March 24 is World TB Day — and as Henry Ridgwell reports, there are hopes that a vaccine may be developed in the next few years to help eradicate the disease. Videographer: Henry Ridgwell ...

A federal judge is expected to rule soon on the fate of a pill that leads to a medication abortion. The drug in question, mifepristone, has been on the market for 20 years, but opponents of abortion rights say it is unsafe. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti explains. ...

Nearly 200 years after Ludwig van Beethoven's death, researchers pulled DNA from strands of his hair, searching for clues about the health problems and hearing loss that plagued him. They weren't able to crack the case of the German composer's deafness or severe stomach ailments. But they did find a genetic risk for liver disease, plus a liver-damaging hepatitis B infection in the last months of his life. These factors, along with his chronic drinking, were probably enough to cause the liver failure that is widely believed to have killed him, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology. This Sunday marks the 196th anniversary of Beethoven's death in Vienna on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56. The composer himself wrote that he wanted doctors…

Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera is appealing for additional humanitarian assistance for thousands of Malawians displaced by Cyclone Freddy, which has killed more than 500 people in the country. Chakwera made the urgent request to Malawi’s parliament on Wednesday, when he was presenting an assessment of the impact of the cyclone, which also hit Mozambique. Though the country is receiving a lot of local and international assistance for the victims, he said, more aid is needed. “So many have responded positively to our appeal, and I have personally committed to acknowledge every support, for the situation is so grave that we simply cannot take any contribution for granted," he told lawmakers. "However, the supplies we are deploying are far from enough for the magnitude of the need.” Malawi’s Disaster Management Affairs…

More than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants around the world since 2015 and about 2,000 suffered injuries from less lethal impact projectiles, according to a report released Wednesday. The study by Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations, in collaboration with the Omega Research Foundation, took 2½ years to research. It provides a rare, partial count of casualties, compiled from medical literature, from these devices used by police around the world, including in Colombia, Chile, Hong Kong, Turkey and at Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. Most of the data comes from cases in which a person came to an emergency room with injuries from crowd control weapons and the attending doctor or hospital staff made…

China has approved its first domestically developed mRNA vaccine against COVID-19, CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd 1093.HK said on Wednesday, a major achievement in a country that has declined to use Western COVID shots to support domestic research.  China, whose home-grown vaccines are seen as less effective than the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA shots, has been racing to develop vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology since early 2020.  The long-awaited approval comes as infections have fallen sharply across China since it suddenly dropped its strict "zero-COVID" curbs in December, making the sales outlook for the newly approved vaccine moderate.  But it would give China an additional option to tackle future outbreaks and a base for development against newly emerging variants, scientists said.   The news of China's first successful mRNA vaccine…

The U.N. secretary-general called for significant commitments and investment Wednesday to avert a growing global water crisis at the start of a major conference on the issue.   “Water is a human right — and a common development denominator to shape a better future,” Antonio Guterres told a packed General Assembly hall. “But water is in deep trouble.”   The three-day conference, which kicked off on World Water Day, is the first of its kind in 46 years. Activists and experts say the ongoing water crisis is a threat to the entire planet.    According to the United Nations, a quarter of the planet — 2 billion people — does not have access to safe drinking water. It will only worsen. By 2030, the demand for fresh water is expected…

Tanzania's Ministry of Health has confirmed five people died in a first-ever Marburg virus outbreak near the border with Uganda. The virus causes a severe hemorrhagic fever and is deadlier than the related Ebola virus, which was first suspected in the deaths. Tanzanian health officials say they are working to contain the Marburg outbreak. Tanzania’s health minister, Ummy Mwalimu, said the mysterious and deadly outbreak in its northwest Kagera region was caused by the Marburg virus. Mwalimu announced at a Tuesday evening press briefing the government was intensifying efforts to contain the virus, including with contact tracing. She said among the five people who died from the virus last week were four from the same family. The additional death was a health worker. Mwalimu said the government has successfully managed…

As part of World Water Day, March 22, the United Nations is holding its first conference devoted to water issues since 1977. For VOA, Matt Dibble introduces us to a Native American engineering student who will share at that conference her tribe’s successful campaign to remove harmful dams in the Western United States. ...

U.S. cases of a dangerous fungus tripled over just three years, and more than half of the country's 50 states have now reported it, according to a new study.  The COVID-19 pandemic likely drove part of the increase, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in the paper published Monday by Annals of Internal Medicine. Hospital workers were strained by coronavirus patients and that likely shifted their focus away from disinfecting some other kinds of germs, they said.  The fungus, Candida auris, is a form of yeast that is usually not harmful to healthy people but can be a deadly risk to fragile hospital and nursing home patients. It spreads easily and can infect wounds, ears and the bloodstream. Some strains are so-called superbugs that are resistant…

President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill Monday that directs the federal government to declassify as much intelligence as possible about the origins of COVID-19 more than three years after the start of the pandemic. The legislation, which passed both the House and Senate without dissent, directs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. It cites “potential links” between the research that was done there and the outbreak of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic March 11, 2020. The law allows for redactions to protect sensitive sources and methods. U.S. intelligence agencies are divided over whether a lab leak or a spillover from animals is the likely source of the deadly virus. Experts say the true…

Astronomers on Monday warned that the light pollution created by the soaring number of satellites orbiting Earth poses an "unprecedented global threat to nature." The number of satellites in low Earth orbit has more than doubled since 2019, when U.S. company SpaceX launched the first "mega-constellation," which comprise thousands of satellites. An armada of new internet constellations are planned to launch soon, adding thousands more satellites to the already congested area fewer than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) above Earth. Each new satellite increases the risk that it will smash into another object orbiting Earth, creating yet more debris. This can create a chain reaction in which cascading collisions create ever smaller fragments of debris, further adding to the cloud of "space junk" reflecting light back to Earth. In a series…

French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders has launched the first Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination drive for schoolgirls in Malawi. They aim to reduce cervical cancer in Malawi, which has the world's second-highest death rate from the disease. Lameck Masina reports from Machinga district, Malawi.       ...

A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick.  The data had long been sought by retired military aviators who have raised alarms for years about the number of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer. They were told that earlier military studies had found they were not at greater risk than the general U.S. population.  In its yearlong study of almost 900,000 service members who flew on or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017, the Pentagon found that air crew members had an 87% higher rate of melanoma and a 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer, while men had a…