Month: August 2024

As Nigeria struggles with food insecurity, young Nigerians and startups are seeking to revolutionize the agricultural sector through technology. In the state of Kaduna, Shamsuddeen Jibril invented a drone that can detect crop diseases. Alhassan Bala has the report from Abuja, Nigeria. ...

SYDNEY — Researchers in Australia have developed a drug that could revolutionize treatment for millions of diabetes patients around the world.   Scientists in the U.S., China and Australia are designing treatments that imitate the body’s natural response to changing blood glucose, or sugar, levels and respond instantly.   The Australian team is handling one of several research projects that have developed different types of so-called 'smart insulins,' which sits in the body of a diabetes patient and is activated only when it is needed.  The aim is to keep glucose levels within a safe range, avoiding excessively high blood glucose, which is called hyperglycaemia, and excessively low blood sugar levels, known as hypoglycaemia.     The new treatments are not cures for diabetes but could ease the burden on patients.…

Harare — Zimbabwean authorities recently declared the end of a cholera outbreak which lasted nearly 18 months, but public health experts say the conditions which caused the waterborne disease still exist and need urgent attention. After battling a cholera outbreak which began in February of last year, Zimbabwe gave the ‘all clear’ after saying no new cases were recorded in July. The last reported case was in June. During the outbreak, the country recorded 34,549 suspected cases and more than 700 deaths.   Dr. Douglas Mombeshora is Zimbabwe’s health minister. “What it means really is to say the interventions that we undertook as government have yielded [the] results that we wanted, that is to make sure that we suppress cholera. There are other issues that we have to continue working on.…

...

Beersheba, Israel — At 19, Yoni, an Israeli man, has to put aside his plans to join the military and instead enter rehab for drug abuse that has worsened since Hamas' October 7 attack. Health professionals said Yoni's case is not an exception in wartime Israel, noting a surge in drug and alcohol abuse as well as other addictive behaviors. Yoni, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his privacy, told AFP he had started taking drugs recreationally before, but "after the war it seemed to really get worse." "It's just a way to escape from reality, this whole thing," said the resident of Beersheba in southern Israel who lost a friend, Nir Beizer, in the Hamas attack that sparked the ongoing Gaza war. Psychiatrist Shaul Lev-Ran, founder of the…

...

Balkhash, Kazakhstan — Seen from the sky, with its turquoise waters stretching out into the desert expanses in the shape of a crescent, you can see why they call Lake Balkhash the "pearl of Kazakhstan." But pollution, climate change and its overuse are threatening the existence of one of the most unique stretches of water in the world. One side of the Balkhash — the biggest lake in Central Asia after the Caspian Sea — has salt water, but on the other it is fresh. In such a strange environment, rare species have abounded. Until now. "All the miseries of the Balkhash are right under my eyes," fisherman Alexei Grebennikov told AFP from the deck of his boat on the northern shores, which sometimes has salty water, sometimes fresh. "There are…

Windhoek, Namibia — Poverty, family dysfunction, hopelessness and learning challenges are among the reasons children, sometimes as young as 9, take their own lives. The Namibia Association of Occupational Therapists on Saturday brought together children, parents, and health care workers to teach children how to cope and adapt into adulthood. When Samuel Njambali was 11 years old, he began drinking and smoking with his peers. This destructive behavior led to fights and failing grades at school. His grandmother helped him get his act together. Now an intern occupational therapist, Njambali gave a peer talk at a #Be Free Youth Campus workshop Saturday on the impact of substance abuse on adolescent mental health and the role of occupational therapy in treating and correcting negative behavior patterns. "Occupational therapy is a profession that…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Mars and Jupiter are cozying up in the night sky for their closest rendezvous this decade. They’ll be so close Wednesday, at least from our perspective, that just a sliver of moon could fit between them. In reality, our solar system’s biggest planet and its dimmer, reddish neighbor will be more than 575 million kilometers apart in their respective orbits. The two planets will reach their minimum separation — one-third of 1 degree or about one-third the width of the moon — during daylight hours Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa. But they won’t appear that much different hours or even a day earlier when the sky is dark, said Jon Giorgini of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The best views will be…

LAHAINA, Hawaii — When a deadly wildfire tore through Lahaina on Maui last August, the wall of flames scorched the 151-year-old banyan tree along the historic town's Front Street. But the sprawling tree survived the blaze, and thanks to the efforts of arborists and dedicated volunteers, parts of it are growing back — and even thriving. One year after the fire, here's what to know about the banyan tree and the efforts to restore it. Why is Lahaina's banyan tree significant? The banyan tree is the oldest living one on Maui but is not a species indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands. India shipped the tree as a gift to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries to live in Lahaina. It was planted in 1873, a…

PARIS — Women's boxing at the Paris Olympics has highlighted the complexity of drafting and enforcing sex eligibility rules for women's sports and how athletes like Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan are left vulnerable in the fallout. When eligibility for women's events has come into question, it often has been a legally difficult process for sports bodies that has risked exposing athletes to humiliation and abuse. In the 1960s, the Olympics used degrading visual tests intended to verify the sex of athletes. The modern era of eligibility rules are widely known to have started in 2009, after South African 800-meter runner Caster Semenya surged to stardom on the track as an 18-year-old gold medalist at the world championships. Semenya, the Olympic champion in the 800 meters in…

...

Almaty, Kazakhstan — Central Asian leaders met in Kazakhstan on Friday seeking to agree on a shared policy on water management in a region where the scarce resource causes frequent disputes. Interruptions to water supplies are a regular occurrence in the five ex-Soviet Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan – whose territory is 80% desert and steppe. Hosting the summit, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said it was "necessary to develop a new consolidated water policy, based on equal and fair use of water and strict fulfilment of obligations," the presidential website said. The way water access is shared in the Central Asian states has remained the same since the Soviet era and is fraught with problems: those countries with more water exchange it in return for electricity…

Flying cars, long the dream of futurists, may finally be here. From California, Matt Dibble has our story about the rise of electric aircraft. ...

GENEVA — United Nations aid agencies warn climate change is wreaking havoc throughout large parts of eastern and southern Africa, worsening the plight of millions of people struggling to survive conflict, poverty, hunger and disease. Since mid-April, El Nino-related heavy rainfall has led to extreme weather events across East Africa, including flooding, landslides, violent winds and hail. In Sudan The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, reports climate-induced heavy rains and flooding have upended the lives of tens of thousands of people in war-torn Sudan this year, displacing, injuring and killing many. The agency warns that heavy seasonal rains are creating further misery for thousands of displaced, including refugees in dire need of humanitarian aid. UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado told journalists in Geneva Friday that torrential rains and severe floods in the past…

...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — What should have been a quick trip to the International Space Station may turn into an eight-month stay for two NASA astronauts if they have to switch from Boeing to SpaceX for a ride home. There's lingering uncertainty over the safety of Boeing's new Starliner capsule, NASA officials said Wednesday, and the space agency is split over the risk. As a result, chances are increasing that test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may have to watch from the space station as their Starliner is cut loose to return to Earth empty. If that happens, NASA will leave behind two of four astronauts from the next SpaceX taxi flight in late September, with the vacant seats set aside for Wilmore and Williams on the return trip in…

GENEVA — Soaring temperatures in July have had detrimental effects on the well-being of hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have found the monthlong extreme heat too hot to handle, according to the World Meteorological Organization. “The extreme heat, which continued throughout July after a hot June … has had really, really devastating impacts on communities, on people’s health, on ecosystems, also on economies,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists Tuesday in Geneva. “Extreme heat has a domino effect across society,” she said, noting that the world’s hottest day on recent record was registered on July 22. “All of this is really yet another unwelcome indication, one of many, of the extent that greenhouse gases from human activities are, in fact, changing our climate.” WMO data show widespread, intense and…

WASHINGTON — Ocean temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef hit their highest level in 400 years over the past decade, according to researchers who warned that the reef likely won't survive if planetary warming isn't stopped. During that time, between 2016 and 2024, the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef ecosystem and one of the most biodiverse, suffered mass coral bleaching events. That's when water temperatures get too hot and coral expel the algae that provide them with color and food, and sometimes die. Earlier this year, aerial surveys of over 300 reefs in the system off Australia's northeast coast found bleaching in shallow water areas spanning two-thirds of the reef, according to Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Researchers from Melbourne University and other universities in Australia, in…

Geneva — World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday called an "emergency" meeting of international experts amidst growing worries over the mpox virus. With mpox spreading outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tedros said the WHO emergency committee would meet "as soon as possible" to advise him on "whether the outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern." A public health emergency of international concern is the highest alarm the WHO can sound and allows Tedros to trigger emergency responses under the International Health Regulations. Formerly known as monkeypox, mpox is an infectious disease caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals that can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact. It was first discovered in humans in 1970 in DR…