US Supreme Court to weigh in on flavored e-cigarette products
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court took up an e-cigarette case Tuesday, weighing whether the Food and Drug Administration wrongly blocked the marketing of sweet, flavored products amid a surge in vaping by young people. Vaping companies argue the FDA unfairly denied more than a million applications to market fruit or candy flavored versions of nicotine-laced liquid that's heated by the e-cigarette to create an inhalable aerosol. The case comes as the FDA undertakes a sweeping review after years of regulatory delays intended to bring scientific scrutiny to the multibillion-dollar vaping market, which includes thousands of flavored vapes that are technically illegal but are widely available in convenience stores, gas stations and vape shops. The FDA recently approved its first menthol-flavored electronic cigarettes for adult smokers. The agency says the sweet,…
LogOn: New test will be game changer in tuberculosis diagnostics
UCLA molecular bioengineer Mireille Kamariza has developed a new tuberculosis test that tackles shortcomings of existing TB diagnostics. VOA’s Genia Dulot reports for this week’s episode of LogOn. ...
Street medicine teams search for homeless people to deliver lifesaving IV hydration in extreme heat
Phoenix — Alfred Handley leaned back in his wheelchair alongside a major Phoenix freeway as a street medicine team helped him get rehydrated with an intravenous saline solution dripping from a bag hanging on a pole. Cars whooshed by under the blazing 96-degree morning sun as the 59-year-old homeless man with a nearly toothless smile got the help he needed through a new program run by the nonprofit Circle the City. “It’s a lot better than going to the hospital,” Handley said of the team that provides health care to homeless people. He's been treated poorly at traditional clinics and hospitals, he said, more than six years after being struck by a car while he sat on a wall, leaving him in a wheelchair. Circle the City introduced its IV…
Space Pioneer says part of rocket crashed in central China
Beijing — Beijing Tianbing Technology Company said Sunday that the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket under development had detached from its launch pad during a test due to structural failure and landed in a hilly area of the city of Gongyi in central China. There were no reports of casualties after an initial investigation, Beijing Tianbing, also known as Space Pioneer, said in a statement on its official WeChat account. Parts of the rocket stage were scattered within a "safe area" but caused a local fire, according to a separate statement by the Gongyi emergency management bureau. The fire has since been extinguished and no one has been hurt, the bureau said. The two-stage Tianlong-3 ("Sky Dragon 3") is a partly reusable rocket under development by Space Pioneer, one of…
Hurricane Beryl strengthens into Category 4 storm as it nears southeast Caribbean
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Hurricane Beryl strengthened into what experts called an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm as it approaches the southeast Caribbean, which began shutting down Sunday amid urgent pleas from government officials for people to take shelter. Hurricane warnings were in effect for Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Beryl's center is expected to pass about 112 kilometers south of Barbados on Monday morning, said Sabu Best, director of Barbados' meteorological service. "This is a very serious situation developing for the Windward Islands," warned the National Hurricane Center in Miami, which said that Beryl was "forecast to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge." Beryl was located about 570 kilometers east-southeast of Barbados. It had maximum sustained winds of 215 kph and was moving west…
Ice baths and ventilators: India’s hospitals adapt to killer heat
NEW DELHI — The Nigerian student only popped out to repair his phone, but he ended up in a New Delhi hospital, the latest victim of a brutal heat wave that has cost scores of lives, sent birds plummeting from the sky and tormented India's poorest workers. On that sweltering June day, the business administration student collapsed in the street and strangers rushed him to the nearby Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital, one of the country's largest. When he was admitted, his body temperature had soared to more than 41 degrees Celsius and he was very dehydrated, said Seema Wasnik, head of RML's emergency medicine department. She immediately recognized the classic signs of heatstroke. More than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases were recorded in India as a prolonged heat wave pushed temperatures…
Beryl strengthens into a hurricane, forecast to become major storm
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Beryl strengthened into a hurricane Saturday as it churned toward the southeast Caribbean, with forecasters warning it was expected to strengthen into a dangerous major hurricane before reaching Barbados late Sunday or early Monday. A major hurricane is considered a Category 3 or higher, with winds of at least 178 kph. Beryl is now a Category 1 hurricane. A hurricane warning was issued for Barbados, and a hurricane watch was in effect for St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while a tropical storm watch was issued for Martinique, Dominica and Tobago. "It's astonishing to see a forecast for a major (Category 3+) hurricane in June anywhere in the Atlantic, let alone this far east in the deep tropics. #Beryl organizing in a…
Antelope poaching on rise in South Sudan
BADINGILO and BOMA NATIONAL PARKS, South Sudan — Seen from the air, they ripple across the landscape — a river of antelope racing across the vast grasslands of South Sudan in what conservationists say is the world's largest land mammal migration. The country's first comprehensive aerial wildlife survey, released Tuesday, found about 6 million antelope. The survey over a two-week period last year in two national parks and nearby areas relied on spotters in airplanes, nearly 60,000 photos and tracking more than a hundred collared animals over about 120,000 square kilometers. The estimate from the nonprofit African Parks, which conducted the work along with the government, far surpasses other large migratory herds such as the estimated 1.36 million wildebeests surveyed last year in the Serengeti straddling Tanzania and Kenya. But they…
Palestinians face summer heat surrounded by sewage, garbage
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza — Children in sandals trudge through water contaminated with sewage and scale growing mounds of garbage in Gaza's crowded tent camps for displaced families. People relieve themselves in burlap-covered pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands. In the stifling summer heat, Palestinians say the odor and filth surrounding them is just another inescapable reality of war — like pangs of hunger or sounds of bombing. The territory's ability to dispose of garbage, treat sewage and deliver clean water has been virtually decimated by eight brutal months of war between Israel and Hamas. This has made grim living conditions worse and raised health risks for hundreds of thousands of people deprived of adequate shelter, food and medicine, aid groups say. Hepatitis A cases are on the rise, and…
More African nations focus on HPV vaccination against cervical cancer
ABUJA, Nigeria — Yunusa Bawa spends a lot of time talking about the vaccine for the human papillomavirus that is responsible for nearly all cases of cervical cancer. But on most days, only two or three people allow their daughters to be vaccinated in the rural part of Nigeria where he works. The challenge in Sabo community, on the outskirts of the capital of Abuja, is the unfounded rumor that the HPV vaccine will later keep young girls from giving birth. "The rumor is too much," said Bawa, 42. As more African countries strive to administer more HPV vaccines, Bawa and other health workers tackle challenges that slow progress, particularly misinformation about the vaccine. The World Health Organization's Africa office estimates that about 25% of the population still has doubts about…
Nigerian ginger farmers struggle after outbreak of disease
Nigeria is one of the world’s leading producers of ginger, but a massive outbreak of fungal disease last year caused millions of dollars of damage. The Nigerian government has launched an emergency recovery intervention to help ginger farmers. Timothy Obiezu reports from Kaduna. ...
Canada’s 2023 fires spewed more heat-trapping gas than millions of cars
WASHINGTON — Catastrophic Canadian wildfires last year pumped more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than India did by burning fossil fuels, setting ablaze an area of forest larger than the U.S. state of West Virginia, new research finds. Scientists at the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland calculated how devastating the impacts were of the monthslong fires in Canada in 2023 that sullied the air around large parts of the globe. They figured it put 2.98 billion metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air, according to a study update published in Thursday's Global Change Biology. The update is not peer-reviewed, but the original study was. The fire spewed nearly four times the carbon emissions as airplanes do in a year, study authors said. It's about the…
Supreme Court halts enforcement of the EPA’s plan to limit downwind pollution from power plants
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is putting the Environmental Protection Agency's air pollution-fighting "good neighbor" plan on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court's latest blow to federal regulations. The justices in a 5-4 vote on Thursday rejected arguments by the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled states that the plan was cutting air pollution and saving lives in 11 states where it was being enforced and that the high court's intervention was unwarranted. The rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution. It will remain on hold while the federal appeals court in Washington considers a challenge to the plan from industry and Republican-led states. The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the…
2 pandas en route from China to US under conservation partnership
SAN DIEGO — A pair of giant pandas are on their way from China to the U.S., where they will be cared for at the San Diego Zoo as part of an ongoing conservation partnership between the two nations, officials said Wednesday. Officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were on hand in China for a farewell ceremony commemorating the departure of the giant pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao. The celebration included cultural performances, video salutations from Chinese and American students and a gift exchange among conservation partners, the zoo said in a statement. After the ceremony, the giant pandas began their trip to Southern California. "This farewell celebrates their journey and underscores a collaboration between the United States and China on vital conservation efforts," Paul Baribault, the wildlife…
Hilton tells Congress youth care programs need more oversight
WASHINGTON — Reality TV star Paris Hilton called for greater federal oversight of youth care programs at a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing on Wednesday as she described her traumatic experience in youth care facilities. Hilton, 43, the great-granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, has spoken publicly about the emotional and physical abuse she endured when she was placed in residential youth treatment facilities as a teen. In remarks to the committee on Wednesday, she described being taken from her bed in the middle of the night at age 16 and transported across state lines to a residential facility where she experienced physical and sexual abuse. "This $23 billion industry sees this population [of vulnerable children] as dollar signs and operates without meaningful oversight," she said. "There's no education…
Report: Supreme Court seems poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho when a pregnant patient's health is at serious risk, according to Bloomberg News, which said a copy of the opinion was briefly posted Wednesday on the court's website. The document suggests the court will conclude that it should not have gotten involved in the case so quickly and will reinstate a lower court order that had allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect a pregnant patient's health, Bloomberg said. It does not appear likely to fully resolve the issues at the heart of the case. The Supreme Court acknowledged that a document was inadvertently posted Wednesday. That document was quickly removed. "The Court's Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court's…
Delhi grapples with water woes amid heat wave
New Delhi — Mushrat Parveen, a resident of a low-income neighborhood in the Indian capital, New Delhi, perches atop a tanker truck delivering water to her neighborhood to escape the chaos that ensues. “Everyone keeps fighting for water, so I climb on top and use a pipe to make sure I fill two or three buckets. Then I help others,” says Parveen, who in recent weeks has been spending about two hours daily first waiting for the truck, then filling containers and lugging them home. As taps in urban slums and working-class areas in Delhi run virtually dry, millions have been depending on water ferried by government tankers. It is not the only Indian megacity running low on water. Two months ago, a similar crisis afflicted India’s information technology hub, Bengaluru.…
Experts: Northern Gaza spared famine, but ‘sustained risk’ remains
New York — The situation in the Gaza Strip remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across all of Gaza as long as the Israel-Hamas war continues and humanitarian access is restricted, a United Nations-backed food security report concluded Tuesday. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, found that nearly a half-million Gazans are on the brink of famine, while 745,000 are facing emergency levels of hunger. Overall, the experts said about 96% of Gazans — some 2.15 million people — are currently facing high levels of acute food insecurity that will continue at least through the end of September. Fears of a famine in northern Gaza, projected in the IPC analysis conducted in February, have been averted for now. The analysts said the quantity…