Author: Dmedia

Abortion is on the ballot in 2024, the White House says, with Vice President Kamala Harris crisscrossing the country to equate the Biden campaign with protection and expansion of reproductive rights, and Republican candidates speaking of possible federal abortion bans. This leaves the ultimate choice on this sensitive issue to American voters. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House. ...

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washington — Scientists have mapped the largest coral reef deep in the ocean, stretching hundreds of miles off the U.S. Atlantic Coast.  While researchers have known since the 1960s that some coral were present off the Atlantic, the reef's size remained a mystery until new underwater mapping technology made it possible to construct 3D images of the ocean floor.  The largest yet known deep coral reef "has been right under our noses, waiting to be discovered," said Derek Sowers, an oceanographer at the nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust.  Sowers and other scientists, including several at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently published maps of the reef in the journal Geomatics.  The reef extends for about 310 miles (499 kilometers) from Florida to South Carolina and at some points reaches 68 miles…

SHILLONG, India — Tambor Lyngdoh made his way through the fern-covered woodland — naming plants, trees, flowers, even stones — as if he were paying older family members a visit. The community leader and entrepreneur was a little boy when his uncle brought him here and said these words: "This forest is your mother." This sacred space is in the village of Mawphlang, nestled in the verdant Khasi Hills in the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya, whose name means "abode of clouds." On an overcast day, the forest, a bumpy 24-kilometer drive from the state capital of Shillong, was tranquil but for the sound of crickets chirping and raindrops rustling the bright green foliage. The ground, carpeted by dead leaves and green saplings, was peppered with moss-covered sacred stones, which for…

LAHORE, Pakistan — The air smells burnt in Lahore, a city in Pakistan's east that used to be famous for its gardens but has become infamous for its terrible air quality. Toxic smog has sickened tens of thousands of people in recent months. Flights have been canceled. Artificial rain was deployed last December to battle smog, a national first. Nothing seems to be working. Lahore is in an airshed, an area where pollutants from industry, transportation and other human activities get trapped because of local weather and topography so they cannot disperse easily. Airsheds also contribute to cross-border pollution. Under certain wind conditions, 30% of pollution in the Indian capital New Delhi can come from Pakistan's Punjab province, where Lahore is the capital. There are six major airsheds in South Asia,…

Tokyo, Japan — Japan on Saturday became only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing, but its Moon Sniper spacecraft was running out of power because of a problem with its solar battery. After a nail-biting 20-minute descent, space agency JAXA said its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had touched down and communication had been established. But without the solar cells functioning, JAXA official Hitoshi Kuninaka said the craft, dubbed the Moon Sniper for its precision technology, would only have power for "several hours." As mission control scientists prioritized acquiring data while they could, Kuninaka suggested that once the angle of the sun changed, the batteries might work again. "It is unlikely that the solar battery has failed. It's possible that it is not facing in the originally…

TOKYO — Japan landed a spacecraft on the moon Saturday, an attempt at the world's first "pinpoint lunar landing." The milestone puts Japan in a club previously occupied by only the United States, the Soviet Union, India and China. A raft of countries and companies are also plotting moon missions. Success means international scientific and diplomatic accolades and potential domestic political gains. Failure means a very expensive, and public, .Here's a look at high-profile recent and upcoming attempts, and what they might mean. The United States NASA plans to send astronauts to fly around the moon next year, and to land there in 2026. Just this week, however, a U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, said its lunar lander will soon burn up in Earth's atmosphere after a failed moonshot. The lander, named…

tokyo — Japan’s spacecraft arrived on the surface of the moon early Saturday, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the landing was a success, because the Japanese space agency said it was still “checking its status.” More details about the spacecraft, which is carrying no astronauts, would be given at a news conference, officials said. If the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed successfully, Japan would become the fifth country to accomplish the feat after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India. SLIM came down onto the lunar surface at around 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time Saturday (1520 GMT Friday). As the spacecraft descended, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s mission control said that everything was going as planned and later said that SLIM was on the lunar surface.…

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Turkey's first astronaut and three other crew members representing Europe were launched from Florida on Thursday on a voyage to the International Space Station in the latest commercially arranged mission from Texas startup Axiom Space.  A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom quartet lifted off about an hour before sunset from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, beginning a planned 36-hour flight to the orbiting laboratory.  The launch was shown live on an Axiom webcast.  The autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the space station early Saturday morning and dock with the orbiting outpost 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.  The mission was the third such flight organized by Houston-based Axiom over the past two years as the company builds on its business…

The American Red Cross has declared a critical blood shortage, with supplies running the lowest in 20 years. The number of donors in the country has declined by 40%, for reasons that include COVID, seasonal infections, and bad weather. Angelina Bagdasaryan visited a blood donation station in Los Angeles and talked with some of the donors. Anna Rice narrates her story. ...

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Harare, Zimbabwe — The U.N.'s Children's Fund expressed alarm this week about a cholera outbreak in Africa that has spread to at least 10 countries, with the situation in Zambia and Zimbabwe "very serious." Dr. Paul Ngwakum, the regional health adviser for UNICEF in East and Southern Africa, said about 200,000 cases have been reported and more than 3,000 lives taken by the disease. Of the 10 countries he named as having an active outbreak, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Somalia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are in “acute cholera crisis.” "The key drivers are long-term poor water sanitation and hygiene conditions, exacerbated by changing weather patterns, climate change leading to floods and droughts, end-of-year festivities, inadequate community sensitization [and] late care-seeking behavior for those that are affected,” Ngwakum said. “Children, unfortunately, carry the lion’s…

nairobi, kenya — Kenya has embarked on its biggest rhino relocation project and began the difficult work Tuesday of tracking, darting and moving 21 of the critically endangered beasts, which can each weigh over a ton, to a new home. A previous attempt at moving rhinos in the East African nation was a disaster in 2018, as all 11 of the animals died. The latest project experienced early troubles. A rhino targeted for moving was successfully hit with a tranquilizer dart shot from a helicopter but ended up in a creek. Veterinarians and rangers held the rhino's head above water with a rope to save it while a tranquilizer reversal drug took effect, and the rhino was released. Wildlife officials have stressed that the challenging project will take time, likely weeks.…

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…