Month: April 2023

With the whir of a mower under a clear blue sky, Senegalese researchers have begun harvesting a crop of experimental homegrown wheat, the latest step in a yearslong effort to reduce reliance on imports. The second-most consumed cereal after rice, wheat is an important staple in the bread-loving West African nation. But Senegal, like many of its neighbors, depends entirely on foreign supplies. It imports 800,000 metric tons of the grain per year. Its tropical climate is not naturally suited to wheat, but domestic trials have been underway for years. Supply chain problems, rising grain prices and inflation caused by the war in Ukraine have added urgency to the country's efforts to achieve self-sufficiency. Four varieties Since late last week, researchers from the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research, a public…

A growing number of state legislatures are considering bans on cosmetics and other consumer products that contain a group of synthetic, potentially harmful chemicals known as PFAS. In Vermont, the state Senate gave final approval this week to legislation that would prohibit manufacturers and suppliers from selling or distributing any cosmetics or menstrual products in the state that have perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, as well as a number of other chemicals. The products include shampoo, makeup, deodorant, sunscreen, hair dyes and more, said state Sen. Terry Williams, a Republican, and member of the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare. “Many known toxic chemicals are used in or found as contaminants in personal care products, including PFAS, lead and formaldehyde," Williams said in reporting the bill to Senate colleagues. California, Colorado…

Dust off your eclipse glasses: It's only a year until a total solar eclipse sweeps across North America.  On April 8, 2024, the moon will cast its shadow across a stretch of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, plunging millions of people into midday darkness.  It's been less than six years since a total solar eclipse cut across the U.S., from coast to coast. That was on August 21, 2017.  If you miss next year's spectacle, you'll have to wait 20 years until the next one hits the U.S. But that total eclipse will be visible only in Montana and the Dakotas.  Here's what to know to get ready for the 2024 show:  Where can I see it?  Next year's eclipse will slice a diagonal line across North America on April…

Changes in air patterns as the world warms will likely push more and nastier hurricanes up against the United States' East and Gulf coasts, especially in Florida, a new study said. While other studies have projected how human-caused climate change will probably alter the frequency, strength and moisture of tropical storms, the study in Friday's journal Science Advances focuses on where hurricanes are going. It's all about projected changes in steering currents, said study lead author Karthik Balaguru, a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory climate scientist. "Along every coast they're kind of pushing the storms closer to the U.S.," Balaguru said. The steering currents move from south to north along the Gulf of Mexico; on the East Coast, the normal west-to-east steering is lessened considerably and can be more east-to-west, he…

India's federal government asked states to identify emergency hotspots and ramp up testing for COVID-19 after the country recorded its highest daily case count since September, a Reuters tally showed on Friday. There were 6,050 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, the federal Health Ministry said on Friday, continuing a sharp upward trend since a lull last year. At a meeting to review the degree to which the states are prepared, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya asked them to ramp up genome testing and conduct mock drills in hospitals, a government statement said. Daily new cases have nearly tripled from around 2,000 at the end of March. The prevalence of XBB.1.16, classified as a variant of interest by the World Health Organization, increased from 21.6% in February to…

Health care workers in Zimbabwe have condemned the government's plan to criminalize their recruitment to work in other countries as part of efforts to reduce a medical brain drain.  Zimbabwe's vice president and health minister, Constantino Chiwenga, said the country will introduce a law to make it illegal for foreign nations to hire their health care workers.  Zimbabwe’s Association of Doctors for Human Rights says any attempt to prevent health care workers from leaving the country for better jobs would be illegal. The head of the association, Dr. Norman Matara, told VOA Friday the government’s plan to criminalize foreign recruitment of health care workers was shocking.  “Also in our constitution, the Zimbabwe constitution, it guarantees citizens have the right to move freely within the country or leave the country,” Matara said. “We…

Celebrations marking World Health Day are taking place in the shadow of the coronavirus that has sickened more than 762 million people around the world and killed more than 6.8 million.  “For the past three years, [the World Health Organization] has coordinated the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the most severe health crisis in a century,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general. “And as COVID-19 has exposed so brutally, there remain serious gaps in the world’s defenses against epidemics and pandemics.  “For all these reasons and more, the world needs WHO now more than ever,” he said.  This year’s World Health Day coincides with the 75th anniversary of the founding of the WHO, which emerged from the ashes of World War II to create a healthier world in the…

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…

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…

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…

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. ...

"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…

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) ...

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,…