Year: 2024

geneva — While new data show that smoking globally is on the decline, the World Health Organization warns that this good news is being undercut by an alarming rise in the use of e-cigarette and vaping devices, especially among children. "It is an alarming increase in the last four to five years. That is why we are ringing the alarm bell here," said Ruediger Krech, director of health promotion at WHO. "In a couple of countries, we see huge increases in the use of e-cigarettes and vaping devices. We see a 150% increase in the U.K. and in the U.S. We also see an uptick in double-digit numbers of vaping among children," he said. Krech accuses the tobacco industry of employing devious tactics to get a future generation of young people…

NEW YORK — Sixty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general released a report that settled a longstanding public debate about the dangers of cigarettes and led to huge changes in smoking in America.   Today, some public health experts say a similar report could help clear the air about vaping.   Many U.S. adults believe nicotine vaping is as harmful as — or more dangerous than — cigarette smoking. That’s wrong. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and most scientists agree that, based on available evidence, electronic cigarettes are far less dangerous than traditional cigarettes.   But that doesn’t mean e-cigarettes are harmless either. And public health experts disagree about exactly how harmful, or helpful, the devices are. Clarifying information is urgently needed, said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert…

TOKYO — Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Sunday the country's north-central region of Noto for the first time since the deadly Jan. 1 earthquakes to alleviate growing concern about slow relief work and the spread of diseases in evacuation centers. The magnitude 7.6 earthquake left 220 dead and 26 others still missing while injuring hundreds. More than 20,000 people, many of whom had their homes damaged or destroyed, are taking refuge at about 400 school gymnasiums, community centers and other makeshift facilities, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency report. Road damage has hampered rescue efforts, and though relief supplies have reached most regions affected by the quake, hundreds of people in isolated areas are getting little support. Additionally, in the hard-hit towns of Noto, Wajima and Suzu, elderly…

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — The Tyrannosaurus rex seemingly came out of nowhere tens of millions of years ago, with its monstrous teeth and powerful jaws dominating the end of the age of the dinosaurs.  How it came to be is among the many mysteries that paleontologists have long tried to solve. Researchers from several universities and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science say they now have one more piece of the puzzle.  On Thursday, they unveiled fossil evidence and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Their study identifies a new subspecies of tyrannosaur thought to be an older and more primitive relative of the well-known T. rex.  There were oohs and ahs as the massive jaw bone and pointy teeth were revealed to a group of…

geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information. "Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable," the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva. He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven't been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments…

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Geneva — The World Health Organization is warning that millions of people caught in conflict-driven health emergencies risk dying from traumatic wounds and infectious diseases because life-saving humanitarian aid is not reaching those in need. In one of his most forceful statements to date, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused the Israeli government of blocking essential aid to Gaza. In a briefing to journalists Wednesday, Tedros said a humanitarian mission to northern Gaza planned for that day, the sixth since December 26, had to be canceled because “our requests were rejected and assurances of safe passage were not provided.” “Delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges. Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach…

sydney — Australian researchers have found that record heat profoundly affected the global water cycle in 2023, contributing to severe storms, floods and droughts. An Australian National University study published Thursday asserts that rising sea and air temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels have intensified monsoons, cyclones and other storm systems. The world’s climate is increasingly lurching between extreme events, according to the study. It results in severe storms and cyclones dumping more water than they used to and droughts developing much faster. The burning of fossil fuels is identified by the report’s authors as “by far the biggest contributor to global warming.” They say that some of the worst disasters of 2023 were linked to unusually strong cyclones that brought massive rainfall to Libya, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand…

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washington — An ancient species of great ape was likely driven to extinction when climate change put their favorite fruits out of reach during dry seasons, scientists reported Wednesday.  The species Gigantopithecus blacki, which once lived in southern China, represents the largest great ape known to scientists — standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 650 pounds.  But its size may also have been a weakness.  "It's just a massive animal – just really, really big," said Renaud Joannes-Boyau, a researcher at Australia's Southern Cross University and co-author of the study published in the journal Nature. "When food starts to be scarce, it's so big it can't climb trees to explore new food sources."  The giant apes, which likely resembled modern orangutans, survived for around 2 million years on the…

Washington — Ancient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: It’s a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago. The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with that culled from ancient humans’ teeth and bones — allowing scientists to trace both prehistoric migration and disease-linked genes that tagged along. When a Bronze Age people called the Yamnaya moved from the steppes of what are now Ukraine and Russia into northwestern Europe, they carried gene variants that today are known to increase people’s risk of multiple sclerosis, researchers reported Wednesday. Yet the Yamnaya flourished, widely spreading those variants. Those genes probably also protected the nomadic herders from infections carried by their…

Geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.  Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information.  "Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable," the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva.  He said it was "certain" that cases were on the rise in other places that haven't been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments…

Islamabad — A senior representative of Afghanistan’s Taliban government told a Pakistan-hosted international health conference Wednesday that his country had recorded an increase in mosquito-borne malaria and dengue fever cases, but infections caused by highly contagious poliovirus declined significantly. Only 12 children around the world were paralyzed by wild poliovirus in 2023, all of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with six reported in each. The two countries, sharing a nearly 2,600-kilometer border, have not detected a polio infection this year. "Polio is still a great challenge for both Afghanistan and Pakistan," Qalandar Ebad, the Taliban health minister, said in his English-language speech at the first global health security summit in Islamabad. Delegates from 70 countries worldwide, including those from the United States and the United Nations, are attending the summit…

washington — The United States is pushing back its planned return of astronauts to the surface of the Moon from 2025 to 2026, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday. Artemis, named after the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, was officially announced in 2017 as part of the US space agency's plans to establish a sustained presence on Earth's nearest space neighbor, and apply lessons learned there for a future mission to Mars. Its first mission, an uncrewed test flight to the Moon and back called Artemis 1, took place in 2022, after several postponements. Artemis 2, involving a crew that doesn't land on the surface, has been postponed from later this year to September 2025, Nelson told reporters. Artemis 3, in which the first woman and first person of color…

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A crippling fuel leak forced a U.S. company on Tuesday to give up on landing a spacecraft on the moon. Astrobotic Technology's lander began losing fuel soon after Monday's launch. The spacecraft also encountered problems keeping its solar panel pointed towards the sun and generating solar power. "Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon," Astrobotic said in a statement. Astrobotic had been targeting a lunar landing on Feb. 23, following a roundabout, fuel-efficient flight to the moon. It could have been the first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years, and the first by a private company. A second lander from a Houston company is due to launch next month. Only four countries have pulled off a…

PARIS — The year 2023 was the hottest on record, with the increase in Earth's surface temperature nearly crossing the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, EU climate monitors said Tuesday. Climate change intensified heatwaves, droughts and wildfires across the planet and pushed the global thermometer 1.48 C above the preindustrial benchmark, the Copernicus Climate Change Service reported. "It is also the first year with all days over one degree warmer than the preindustrial period," said Samantha Burgess, deputy head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. "Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years," she said. Nearly half the year exceeded the 1.5C limit, beyond which climate impacts are more likely to become self-reinforcing and catastrophic, according to scientists. But even if Earth's…

Researchers in Taiwan are using a special robot to hunt mosquitoes that carry the virus that causes dengue fever. From the southern city of Kaohsiung, Shelley Schlender has our story. ...

The impact of climate change is increasingly evident along El Salvador’s coastlines where saltwater is slowly claiming what once was farmland. Veronica Villafañe narrates this report from Claudia Zaldaña ...

Cape Canaveral, Florida — The first American spacecraft to attempt to land on the Moon in more than half a century is poised to blast off early Monday — but this time, private industry is leading the charge.   A brand-new rocket, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur, should lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:18 a.m. (7:18 GMT) for its maiden voyage, carrying Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander. The weather so far appears favorable. If all goes to plan, Peregrine will touch down on a mid-latitude region of the Moon called Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, on February 23. "Leading America back to the surface of the Moon for the first time since Apollo is a momentous honor," Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic's CEO John Thornton said ahead of the launch.…