Author: Dmedia

WASHINGTON — Arnong Mungoei has farmed rice in Thailand’s Khon Kaen province for half a century.   Working land some 500 kilometers northeast of Bangkok never made her rich, but it provided a dependable livelihood.   But since February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, global geopolitical tensions and weather conditions elsewhere have upended the rice markets and by 2023, worldwide rice prices had exploded.   Yet Arnong said she made less than she has in years.  “The mills [that buy rice] don’t increase the price. What can I do? I bring rice there to sell. Whatever they offer us, we have to sell it. We won’t take the rice back because we had to pay for the truck,” said Arnong, 68. In 2023, the prices of wheat and grains such as oats and corn declined 20% to 30% as…

Tokyo, Japan — Japan's SLIM space probe entered the moon's orbit Monday in a major step toward the country's first successful lunar landing, expected next month. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is nicknamed the "Moon Sniper" because it is designed to land within 100 meters (328 feet) of a specific target on the lunar surface. If successful, the touchdown would make Japan only the fifth country to have successfully landed a probe on the moon, after the United States, Russia, China and India.   On Monday, SLIM "successfully entered the moon's orbit at 04:51 p.m. Japan time" (0751 GMT), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a statement released Monday evening.   "Its’ trajectory shift was achieved as originally planned, and there is nothing out of the ordinary…

Christmas for many is a time of family togetherness and good cheer, but for older adults, it can too often be one of the year’s loneliest days. Age UK, a charity group that deals with ageism and the problems of this demographic, says people can take simple steps to help. Umberto Aguiar has more from London in this report narrated by Elizabeth Cherneff. ...

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PARIS — Bird flu is likely to spread further in the Antarctic region, causing immense damage to wildlife, according to experts on the highly contagious disease that has killed hundreds of millions of birds worldwide in recent years. The spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, commonly called bird flu, to the remote southern region has raised concerns for isolated populations of species, including penguins and seals, that have never been exposed to the virus. The H5 strain of the virus was detected in the region on October 8 in a brown skua on Bird Island, part of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, according to a report by OFFLU, which gathers experts from the World Organization of Animal Health and the U.N. Food…

BLANTYRE, MALAWI — Malawi, which already is suffering from food shortages, this week banned the import of unmilled maize from Kenya and Tanzania over concerns that the spread of maize lethal necrosis disease could wipe out the staple food. The ministry of agriculture announced the ban in a statement that said the disease has no treatment and can cause up to 100% yield loss. The statement said maize can be imported only after it is milled, either as flour or grit. Henry Kamkwamba, an agriculture expert with the International Food Policy Research Institute, told VOA that if the disease were introduced into the country, it would be difficult to contain. He used the banana bunchy top virus as an example of the potential danger. “Think of how we lost all of…

SANTA FE, N.M. — Like Christmas trees, Santa and reindeer, the poinsettia has long been a ubiquitous symbol of the holiday season in the U.S. and across Europe. But now, nearly 200 years after the plant with the bright crimson leaves was introduced in the U.S., attention is once again turning to the poinsettia's origins and the checkered history of its namesake, a slaveowner and lawmaker who played a part in the forced removal of Native Americans from their land. Some people would now rather call the plant by the name of its Indigenous origin in southern Mexico. Some things to know: Where did the name poinsettia come from? The name comes from the amateur botanist and statesman Joel Roberts Poinsett, who happened upon the plant in 1828 during his tenure…

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PARIS — A French appeals court on Wednesday ordered pharmaceutical firm Servier to pay more than $460 million in damages over a scandal involving a diabetes drug linked to hundreds of deaths. The health scandal came to light in 2007 when a doctor raised the alert on heart risks linked to Mediator, a drug destined for overweight people with diabetes but that was also widely prescribed to others as an appetite-suppressant. The drug, which may have caused up to 1,800 deaths, was later banned in France where millions of people took it. It is also banned in the United States, Spain and Italy. In the latest court ruling in more than a decade of legal proceedings, the Paris appeals court upheld verdicts of "aggravated fraud" and "involuntary manslaughter and injuries." It…

Injecting billions of dollars into green solutions to fight climate change has been a top priority of the Biden administration in 2023. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at this year’s achievements and setbacks in the president’s environmental agenda. ...

Nairobi, Kenya — According to the British charity Save the Children, some 30,000 children will be born in war-torn Sudan over the next three months without access to proper medical care, such as through doctors, hospitals and medicines. The group says the lack of basic health care endangers both mothers and unborn children, heightening the risk of long-term and deadly complications.  That’s out of a total of some 45,000 children that are expected to be born in Sudan in the next quarter amid conflict that has destroyed many health facilities in the country. The head of child protection at Save the Children International in Sudan, Osman Adam Abdelkarim, told VOA that the recent escalation of violence in many parts of Sudan has made his organization fear for pregnant women and millions…

GENEVA — As Ukraine enters a second winter of war, the World Health Organization warns that the country’s public health system will come under enormous stress as millions of civilians try to keep safe and warm during the long, brutally cold weather ahead. “Since the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine … we have seen the impacts on public health and the increase in disease burden,” said Jarno Habicht, WHO representative in Ukraine. “So, even if the war would end today, the health needs of millions of people across Ukraine will increase,” he said, noting that children and the elderly “are suffering particularly and struggling as winter arrives amid ongoing fighting.” Speaking to journalists Tuesday from Odesa, Habicht said he and Ukraine’s minister of health recently delivered critical equipment and medicines to…

SACRAMENTO, California — When a toilet is flushed in California, the water can end up in a lot of places: an ice skating rink in Ontario, ski slopes around Lake Tahoe, farmland in the Central Valley. And — coming soon — kitchen faucets. California regulators on Tuesday approved new rules to let water agencies recycle wastewater and put it right back into the pipes that carry drinking water to homes, schools and businesses. It's a big step for a state that has struggled for decades to secure reliable sources of drinking water for its more than 39 million residents. And it signals a shift in public opinion on a subject that as recently as two decades ago prompted backlash that scuttled similar projects. Since then, California has been through multiple extreme…

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North America’s oldest citizen science project is underway with thousands of volunteers measuring bird populations in the annual Christmas Bird Count. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya joined a birdwatching team in Seattle.    ...

NEW YORK — A new study adds to evidence that severe obesity is becoming more common in young U.S. children. There was some hope that children in a government food program might be bucking a trend in obesity rates — earlier research found rates were dropping a little about a decade ago for those kids. But an update released Monday in the journal Pediatrics shows the rate bounced back up a bit by 2020. The increase echoes other national data, which suggests around 2.5% of all preschool-aged children were severely obese during the same period. "We were doing well and now we see this upward trend," said one of the study's authors, Heidi Blanck of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We are dismayed at seeing these findings." The…

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio was in the throes of a bitter debate over abortion rights this fall when Brittany Watts, 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant, began passing thick blood clots. The 33-year-old Watts, who had not shared the news of her pregnancy even with her family, made her first prenatal visit to a doctor's office behind Mercy Health-St. Joseph's Hospital in Warren, a working-class city about 100 kilometers southeast of Cleveland. The doctor said that, while a fetal heartbeat was still present, Watts' water had broken prematurely and the fetus she was carrying would not survive. He advised heading to the hospital to have her labor induced, so she could have what amounted to an abortion to deliver the nonviable fetus. Otherwise, she would face "significant risk" of death, records…

NEW YORK — The scene: A crowded shopping center in the weeks before Christmas. Or a warehouse store. Or maybe a packed airport terminal or a commuter train station or another place where large groups gather. There are people — lots of people. But look around, and it's clear one thing is largely absent these days: face masks. Yes, there's the odd one here and there, but nothing like it was three years ago at the dawn of the COVID pandemic's first winter holidays — an American moment of contentiousness, accusation and scorn on both sides of the mask debate. As 2023 draws to an end, with promises of holiday parties and crowds and lots of inadvertent exchanges of shared air, mask-wearing is much more off than on around the country…

MEXICO CITY — Guatemala violated Indigenous rights by permitting a huge nickel mine on tribal land almost two decades ago, according to a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Friday. The landmark verdict marks a monumental step in a four-decade struggle for Indigenous land rights and a long, bitter legal battle, which has at times spilled into the streets of northern Guatemala. It also comes at the close of the U.N. climate summit COP28, which stressed the importance of renewables and energy transition minerals like nickel more than ever. According to a verdict read from Costa Rica in the early hours of the morning, the Guatemalan government violated the rights of the Indigenous Q'eqchi' people to property and consultation by permitting mining on land where members of the…

WEST END, N.C. — Jesse Wimberley burns the woods with neighbors. Using new tools to revive an old communal tradition, they set fire to wiregrasses and forest debris with a drip torch, corralling embers with leaf blowers. Wimberley, 65, gathers groups across eight North Carolina counties to starve future wildfires by lighting leaf litter ablaze. The burns clear space for longleaf pine, a tree species whose seeds won't sprout on undergrowth blocking bare soil. Since 2016, the fourth-generation burner has fueled a burgeoning movement to formalize these volunteer ranks. Prescribed burn associations are proving key to conservationists' efforts to restore a longleaf pine range forming the backbone of forest ecology in the American Southeast. Volunteer teams, many working private land where participants reside or make a living, are filling service and…

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New oil and natural gas leasing will be prohibited on state land surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park, an area sacred to Native Americans, for the next 20 years under an executive order by New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard. Wednesday's order extends a temporary moratorium that she put in place when she took office in 2019. It covers more than 293 square kilometers of state trust land in what is a sprawling checkerboard of private, state, federal and tribal holdings in northwestern New Mexico. The U.S. government last year adopted its own 20-year moratorium on new oil, gas and mineral leasing around Chaco, following a push by pueblos and other Southwestern tribal nations that have cultural ties to the high desert region. Garcia Richard said during…

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seattle — The U.S. government said Thursday it plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to help recover depleted populations of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and that it will help figure out how to offset the hydropower, transportation and other benefits provided by four controversial dams on the Snake River, should Congress ever agree to breach them. President Joe Biden's administration stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams to save the fish, but Northwest tribes and conservationists who have long sought that called the agreement a road map for dismantling them. Filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon, it pauses long-running litigation over federal operation of the dams and represents the most significant step yet toward breaching them. "Today's historic agreement marks a…

washington — The maiden liftoff of a new American rocket called Vulcan Centaur has been delayed from December 24 to January 8, the company that developed it said Thursday. The postponement stems from last-minute technical snags, but United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said on X, formerly Twitter, that a recent dress rehearsal on the launch pad went well. The rocket will carry a private lunar lander, developed by the startup Astrobotic, which could become the first such private craft to touch down on the moon and the first American robot to land on the surface since the Apollo program ended in 1972. "This is sort of, in a way, the first giant step in the campaign for the U.S., and for all of our friends, to go back to the…

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