Year: 2024

Many Israeli and Palestinian children are suffering from trauma because of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing eight months of war between the two sides. Therapists in both communities say the emotional scars could linger for years. Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem. ...

SHANGHAI, China — Novo Nordisk is facing the prospect of intensifying competition in the promising Chinese market, where drugmakers are developing at least 15 generic versions of its diabetes drug Ozempic and weight loss treatment Wegovy, clinical trial records showed. The Danish drugmaker has high hopes that demand for its blockbuster drugs will surge in China, which is estimated to have the world's highest number of people who are overweight or obese. Ozempic won approval from China in 2021, and Novo Nordisk saw sales of the drug in the greater China region double to $698 million last year. It is expecting Wegovy to be approved this year. But the patent on semaglutide, the active ingredient in both Wegovy and Ozempic, expires in China in 2026. Novo is also in the midst…

Geneva — The World Health Organization said Wednesday a person in Mexico had died in the first confirmed human case globally of infection with the H5N2 variant of bird flu. The patient, who died on April 24 after developing fever, shortness of breath, diarrhea and nausea, had "no history of exposure to poultry or other animals" and "multiple underlying medical conditions," the WHO said. Mexican health authorities reported the confirmed case of human infection with the virus to the U.N. health body on May 23, after a 59-year-old was taken to a hospital in Mexico City. The WHO said the case was the "first laboratory-confirmed human case of infection with an influenza A(H5N2) virus reported globally". The source of exposure to the virus was unknown, the WHO said, although cases of…

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NEW YORK — The U.N. secretary-general said Wednesday that the world is “at a moment of truth” to reach targets in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming, as the planet has just experienced the 12 hottest consecutive months on record. “The truth is, almost ten years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the target of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is hanging by a thread,” Antonio Guterres told an audience at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, where exhibits about extinct dinosaurs offered their own planetary warning. “The World Meteorological Organization reports today that there is an 80% chance the global annual average temperature will exceed the 1.5-degree limit in at least one of the next five years,” he said. “We are playing Russian…

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washington — Federal health advisers voted Tuesday against a first-of-a-kind proposal to begin using the mind-altering drug MDMA as a treatment for PTSD, handing a potentially major setback to advocates who had hoped to win a landmark federal approval and bring the banned drugs into the medical mainstream.  The panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration sided 10-1 against the overall benefits of MDMA when used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. They cited flawed study data, questionable research conduct and significant drug risks, including the potential for heart problems, injury and abuse.  "It seems like there are so many problems with the data — each one alone might be OK, but when you pile them on top of each other … there's just a lot of questions I would…

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AKTUN TUYUL CAVE SYSTEM, Mexico — Rays of sunlight slice through pools of crystal water as clusters of fish cast shadows on the limestone below. Arching over the emerald basin are walls of stalactites dripping down the cavern ceiling, which opens to a dense jungle. These glowing sinkhole lakes — known as cenotes — are a part of one of Mexico's natural wonders: A fragile system of an estimated 10,000 subterranean caverns, rivers and lakes that wind almost surreptitiously beneath Mexico's southern Yucatan peninsula. Now, construction of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's crown jewel project — the Maya Train — is rapidly destroying part of that hidden underground world, already under threat by development and mass tourism. As the caverns are thrust into the spotlight in the lead-up to the country's…

Geneva — Nearly 62,000 people died from heat-related stress in the summer of 2022 in Europe alone, and, according to a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, “With further global warming, we can expect an increase in the intensity, frequency, and duration of heatwaves.” A new report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) launched ahead of Heat Action Day on Sunday, June 2, looks at the role climate change is playing in increasing the number of extreme heat days around the world over the last 12 months. “What we are now going through is a very silent but increasingly common killer — heat, that was particularly disastrous last year,” said climatologist Friederike Otto, co-lead of World Weather Attribution at Imperial College…

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Last-minute computer trouble nixed Saturday's launch attempt for Boeing's first astronaut flight, the latest in a string of delays over the years. Two NASA astronauts were strapped in the company's Starliner capsule when the countdown automatically was halted at 3 minutes and 50 seconds by the computer system that controls the final minutes before liftoff. With only a split second to take off, there was no time to work the latest problem and the launch was called off. Technicians raced to the pad to help astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams out of the capsule atop the fully fueled Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Within an hour of the launch abort, the hatch was reopened. The team can't get to the computers to…

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Beijing — China's Chang'e-6 lunar probe successfully landed on the far side of the moon to collect samples, state news agency Xinhua reported Sunday, the latest leap for Beijing's decades-old space program. The Chang'e-6 set down in the immense South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, Xinhua said, citing the China National Space Administration. It marks the first time that samples will be collected from the rarely explored area of the moon, according to the agency. The Chang'e-6 is on a technically complex 53-day mission that began on May 3. Now that the probe has landed, it will attempt to scoop up lunar soil and rocks and carry out experiments in the landing zone. That process should be complete within two days, Xinhua said.…

Geneva, Switzerland — The World Health Organization annual assembly on Saturday gave member countries another year to agree on a landmark accord to combat future pandemics.  Three years of effort to reach a deal ended last month in failure. But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed what he called historic decisions taken to make a new bid for an accord.  The WHO agreed in 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic eased to launch talks on an accord to counter any new global health crisis. Millions died from COVID-19 which brought health systems in many countries to their knees.  The talks hit multiple obstacles however with many developing countries accusing rich nations of monopolizing available COVID-19 vaccines.  They have sought assurances that any new accord will make provision of medicines and the sharing…

GARDI SUGDUB, Panama — On a tiny island off Panama’s Caribbean coast, about 300 families are packing their belongings in preparation for a dramatic change. Generations of Gunas who have grown up on Gardi Sugdub in a life dedicated to the sea and tourism will trade that next week for the mainland’s solid ground. They go voluntarily — sort of. The Gunas of Gardi Sugdub are the first of 63 communities along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts that government officials and scientists expect to be forced to relocate by rising sea levels in the coming decades. On a recent day, the island’s Indigenous residents rowed or sputtered off with outboard motors to fish. Children, some in uniforms and others in the colorful local textiles called “molas,” chattered as they hustled through…

KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda has rolled out a nationwide yellow fever vaccination campaign to help safeguard its population against the mosquito-borne disease that has long posed a threat. By the end of April, Ugandan authorities had vaccinated 12.2 million of the 14 million people targeted, said Dr. Michael Baganizi, an official in charge of immunization at the health ministry. Uganda will now require everyone traveling to and from the country to have a yellow fever vaccination card as an international health regulation, Baganizi said. Ugandan authorities hope the requirement will compel more people to get the yellow fever shot amid a general atmosphere of vaccine hesitancy that worries health care providers in the East African nation. The single-dose vaccine has been offered free of charge to Ugandans between the ages of…

SYDNEY — Australian researchers say a simpler and cheaper method to remove salt from seawater using heat could help combat what they call “unprecedented global water shortages." The desalination of seawater is a process where salt and impurities are removed to produce drinking water.   Most of the world’s desalination methods use a process called reverse osmosis. It uses pressure to force seawater through a membrane. The salt is retained on one side, and purified water is passed through on the other.  Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) say that while widespread, the current processes need large amounts of electricity and other expensive materials that need to be serviced and maintained.   Scientists at ANU say they developed the world’s first thermal desalination method. It is powered not by electricity, but by moderate heat…

It’s an emergence that’s been more than a decade in the making. Trillions of cicadas that have burrowed underground for 13 or 17 years are now emerging in parts of the Midwestern and Southern United States. And, VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, they are ready to mate. ...

Washington — Pakistan's space agency on Thursday launched its second satellite in a month from a launch site in China's northwest Sichuan province. According to Pakistan’s Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), PakSAT-MM1 is a high-power multimission satellite designed to provide a range of communication services. "Based on advanced communication technologies, PakSAT-MM1 will play a pivotal role in the socio-economic uplift of the country," SUPARCO said on its website, adding that the satellite is "the hallmark of technological cooperation between" China and Pakistan. SUPARCO added, "It will prove to be a stepping stone in the transformation of the country into digital Pakistan." Chinese state news agency Xinhua said Thursday that the country successfully launched Pakistan's multimission communications satellite. "At 20:12 on May 30, my country [China] successfully launched Pakistan's multi-mission…