Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

Stuck NASA astronauts welcome SpaceX capsule to bring them home next year

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Cape Canaveral, Florida — The two astronauts stuck at the International Space Station since June welcomed their new ride home with Sunday's arrival of a SpaceX capsule. SpaceX launched the rescue mission on Saturday with a downsized crew of two astronauts and two empty seats reserved for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will return next year. The Dragon capsule docked in darkness high over Botswana as the two craft soared 420 kilometers above Earth. NASA switched Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX following concerns over the safety of their Boeing Starliner capsule. It was the first Starliner test flight with a crew, and NASA decided the thruster failures and helium leaks that cropped up after liftoff were too serious and poorly understood to risk the test pilots' return. So Starliner returned…


Sep292024 by TechmanNo Comments

California governor vetoes bill to create first-in-nation AI safety measures

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Sacramento, California — California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a landmark bill aimed at establishing first-in-the-nation safety measures for large artificial intelligence models Sunday. The decision is a major blow to efforts attempting to rein in the homegrown industry that is rapidly evolving with little oversight. The bill would have established some of the first regulations on large-scale AI models in the nation and paved the way for AI safety regulations across the country, supporters said. Earlier in September, the Democratic governor told an audience at Dreamforce, an annual conference hosted by software giant Salesforce, that California must lead in regulating AI in the face of federal inaction but that the proposal “can have a chilling effect on the industry.” The proposal, which drew fierce opposition from startups, tech giants and several…


Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

Frigid alien planet may offer a glimpse at Earth’s distant future

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WASHINGTON — The first rocky planet ever spotted orbiting a burned out star called a white dwarf offers a glimpse of what may be in store for Earth billions of years from now -- showing it is possible our planet might survive the death of the sun, albeit as a cold and desolate outpost in space. The planet, with a mass about 1.9 times that of Earth, is orbiting the white dwarf about 4,200 light-years away from our solar system near the bulge at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, according to a study using data from Hawaii-based telescopes. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion kilometers. The white dwarf began as an ordinary star one or two times the mass of the…


Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

US suicides in 2023 still at highest level in nation’s history, says data

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new york — U.S. suicides last year remained at about the highest level in the nation's history, preliminary data suggests.  A little more than 49,300 suicide deaths were reported in 2023, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number that could grow a little as some death investigations are wrapped up and reported.  Just under 49,500 were reported in 2022, according to final data released Thursday. The numbers are close enough that the suicide rate for the two years are the same, CDC officials said.  U.S. suicide rates have been rising for nearly 20 years, aside from a two-year drop around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. So "a leveling off of any increase in suicide is cautiously promising news," said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia…


Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

Alcohol-free beer is gaining popularity, even at Oktoberfest

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MUNICH — The head brewmaster for Weihenstephan, the world's oldest brewery, has a secret: He really likes alcohol-free beer. Even though he's quick to say he obviously enjoys real beer more, Tobias Zollo says he savors alcohol-free beer when he's working or eating lunch. It has the same taste but fewer calories than a soft drink, he said, thanks to the brewery's process of evaporating the alcohol. "You can't drink beer every day — unfortunately," he joked last week at the Bavarian state brewery in the German town of Freising, about 30 kilometers north of Munich. Zollo isn't alone in his appreciation for the sober beverage. Alcohol-free beer has been gaining popularity in recent years as beer consumption shrinks. At Weihenstephan, which was founded as a brewery in 1040 by Benedictine…


Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

In US, it’s time to roll up sleeves for new COVID, flu shots

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WASHINGTON — Fall means it's time for just about everybody to get up to date on their flu and COVID-19 vaccines – and a lot of older adults also need protection against another risky winter virus, RSV. Yes, you can get your flu and COVID-19 shots at the same time. Don't call them boosters — they're not just another dose of last year's protection. The coronavirus and influenza are escape artists that constantly mutate to evade your body's immune defenses, so both vaccines are reformulated annually to target newer strains. "Right now is the best time" to get all the recommended fall vaccinations, said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as she got her flu shot Wednesday. She has an appointment for her COVID-19 shot,…


Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

SpaceX launches rescue mission for 2 NASA astronauts stranded in space

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — SpaceX launched a rescue mission for the two stuck astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday, sending up a downsized crew to bring them home but not until next year.  The capsule rocketed into orbit to fetch the test pilots whose Boeing spacecraft returned to Earth empty earlier this month because of safety concerns. The switch in rides left it to NASA's Nick Hague and Russia's Alexander Gorbunov to retrieve Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.  Because NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this newly launched flight with two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams won't return until late February. Officials said there wasn't a way to bring them back earlier on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions.  By the time they return,…


Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

Marburg virus kills 6 in Rwanda, health minister says

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KIGALI, Rwanda — Rwanda has confirmed six deaths and 20 cases of Marburg disease, the country's health minister Sabin Nsanzimana said late on Saturday. The majority of victims are health workers in the intensive care unit, Nsanzimana said in a video statement posted on X. "We are counting 20 people who are infected, and six who have already passed away due to this virus. The large majority of cases and deaths are among healthcare workers, mainly in the intensive care unit," the health minister said. Marburg disease, a viral hemorrhagic fever, can cause death among some patients, with symptoms including severe headache, vomiting, muscle aches and stomach aches, the ministry has said. Institutions and partners are working to trace those who have been in contact with the virus-affected individuals, the minister…


Sep282024 by DmediaNo Comments

Dozens dead, millions without power after Helene’s march across southeastern US

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PERRY, Florida — Hurricane Helene caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars of destruction across a wide swath of the southeastern United States, and more than 3 million customers went into the weekend without power and, for some, a continued threat of floods. Helene blew ashore in Florida's Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 225 kilometers per hour and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. The storm uprooted trees, splintered homes and sent creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams. Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. There were hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in eastern…


Sep282024 by DmediaNo Comments

Cambodia’s new canal could boost trade but risks harming key river

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PREK TAKEO, Cambodia — The Mekong River is a lifeline for millions in the six countries it traverses on its way from its headwaters to the sea, sustaining the world's largest inland fishery and abundant rice paddies on Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Cambodia's plan to build a massive canal linking the Mekong to a port on on its own coast on the Gulf of Thailand is raising alarm that the project could devastate the river's natural flood systems, worsening droughts and depriving farmers on the delta of the nutrient-rich silt that has made Vietnam the world's third-largest rice exporter. Cambodia hopes that the $1.7 billion Funan Techo canal, being built with Chinese help, will support its ambition to export directly from factories along the Mekong without relying on Vietnam, connecting the capital…


Sep282024 by TechmanNo Comments

Brazil imposes new fine, demands payments before letting X resume

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SAO PAULO/BRASILIA BRAZIL — Brazil's Supreme Court said on Friday that social platform X still needs to pay just over $5 million in pending fines, including a new one, before it will be allowed to resume its service in the country, according to a court document.  Earlier this week, the Elon Musk-owned U.S. firm told the court it had complied with orders to stop the spread of misinformation and asked it to lift a ban on the platform.  But Judge Alexandre de Moraes responded on Friday with a ruling that X and its legal representative in Brazil must still agree to pay a total of $3.4 million in pending fines that were previously ordered by the court.  In his decision, the judge said that the court can use resources already frozen…


Sep272024 by DmediaNo Comments

African leaders at UN warn against dwindling malaria funding

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Abuja, Nigeria — Leaders in Africa say the fight against malaria on the continent is facing significant funding gaps due to the ongoing global financial crisis and the impact of climate change. African leaders this week met in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly and called for a concerted effort to avert a funding crisis they say could set back decades of progress in the fight against malaria. The African Leaders Malaria Alliance, or ALMA, which hosted the high-level meeting, said if malaria funding continues to shrink, there will be an expected additional 112 million cases and some 280,000 deaths by the year 2029. Africa already accounts for an estimated 236 million malaria cases — or 95% of the global total — and 97% of deaths.…


Sep262024 by DmediaNo Comments

Push for renewable energy sparks new environmental worries

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According to the International Energy Agency, the world now invests almost twice as much in clean energy as it does in fossil fuels. But with that shift comes environmental risks related to the mining of critical minerals. VOA’s Jessica Stone looks at how nations are navigating the environmental challenges of creating a renewable future. ...


Sep262024 by DmediaNo Comments

Hong Kong welcomes new giant pandas gifted by Beijing

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HONG KONG — Hong Kong welcomed a new pair of giant pandas gifted by Beijing on Thursday with a lavish ceremony, raising hopes for a boost to the city's tourism. An An and Ke Ke are the third pair of giant pandas to be sent to the city from mainland China since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Their arrival came after their new neighbor, Ying Ying, gave birth to twins last month and became the world's oldest first-time panda mother on record. With the addition of the new bears, the twins, and their father, Le Le, Hong Kong now houses six pandas. Chief Executive John Lee on Tuesday said An An is a 5-year-old male panda who is agile, intelligent and active, while Ke Ke, a…


Sep252024 by TechmanNo Comments

CrowdStrike executive apologizes to Congress for July global tech outage

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WASHINGTON — An executive at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike apologized in testimony to Congress for sparking a global technology outage over the summer.  "We let our customers down," said Adam Meyers, who leads CrowdStrike's threat intelligence division, in a hearing before a U.S. House cybersecurity subcommittee Tuesday.  Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off a global tech outage in July that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.  "Everywhere Americans turned, basic societal functions were unavailable," House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green said. "We cannot allow a mistake of this magnitude to happen again."  The Tennessee Republican likened the impact of the outage to an…


Sep252024 by TechmanNo Comments

Former executive gets 2 years in prison for role in FTX fraud

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new york — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried's fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized repeatedly to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers.  U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison's cooperation was "very, very substantial" and "remarkable."  But he said a prison sentence was necessary because she had participated in what might be the "greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else" or at least close to it.  He said in such a serious case, he could not let cooperation be a get-out-of-jail-free card, even when it was clear that Bankman-Fried had become "your kryptonite."  "I've seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years…


Sep242024 by DmediaNo Comments

Swiss police detain several people in connection with ‘suicide capsule’

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GENEVA — Police in northern Switzerland said Tuesday that several people have been detained and a criminal case opened in connection with the suspected death of a person in a "suicide capsule." The "Sarco" capsule is presumably designed to allow a person sitting in a reclining seat inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes. Exit International, an assisted suicide group based in the Netherlands, said it is behind the 3D-printed device that cost over $1 million to develop. Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no "external assistance" and those who help the person die do not do so for…


Sep242024 by DmediaNo Comments

Ancient coastal city in Egypt feels impact of changing climate

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Egypt’s second-largest city, Alexandria, lies in the Eastern Mediterranean, a top climate change hotspot that has dealt with record global air and ocean temperatures this year. Egypt-based photojournalist Hamada Elrasam presents scenes of everyday life that have been impacted by the changing climate phenomenon in the low-lying metropolis that has survived over two millennia, only to find itself on this century’s climate frontlines. Written in collaboration with Elle Kurancid. ...


Sep242024 by DmediaNo Comments

‘Short corn’ could replace the towering cornfields steamrolled by a changing climate

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wyoming, iowa — Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower. The skyscraper-like corn is a part of rural America as much as cavernous red barns and placid cows. But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long. "As you drive across the Midwest, maybe in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you're going to see a lot of this out there," said Cameron Sorgenfrey, an eastern Iowa farmer who has been growing newly developed short corn for several years, sometimes…


Sep232024 by DmediaNo Comments

Jill Biden reveals $500 million plan that focuses on women’s health at Clinton Global Initiative

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NEW YORK — First lady Jill Biden is unveiling a new set of actions to address health inequities faced by women in the United States, plans that include spending at least $500 million annually on women's health research.  Biden was making the announcement Monday while closing out the first day of this year's Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York.  The additional government spending will mainly come from the Department of Defense, which provides medical care to more than 230,000 active-duty military women and nearly 2 million military retirees, as well as their family members. The research will focus on why these women experience endocrine, hematological and other immunity-related disorders twice as often as men.  "Our nation is home to the best health research in the world, yet women's health…


Sep232024 by DmediaNo Comments

California sues Exxon over global plastic pollution

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NEW YORK — California and several environmental groups sued ExxonMobil on Monday and accused the oil giant of engaging in a decades-long campaign that helped fuel global plastic waste pollution.  Speaking at an event during Climate Week in New York City, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state sued Exxon after concluding a nearly two-year investigation that he said showed Exxon was deliberately misleading the public about the limitations of recycling.  "Today's lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil's decades-long deception, and we are asking the court to hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis through its campaign of deception," Bonta said in a statement.  The investigation mirrors California's previous probes into the oil industry's alleged efforts to mislead…


Sep232024 by TechmanNo Comments

Biden proposes banning Chinese vehicles from US roads with software crackdown 

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Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns — a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market. The planned regulation, first reported by Reuters, would also force American and other major automakers in the coming years to remove key Chinese software and hardware from vehicles in the United States. The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The White House ordered an investigation into the potential dangers in February. The prohibitions would prevent testing of self-driving…


Sep232024 by DmediaNo Comments

Soyuz capsule with 2 Russians, 1 American from ISS returns to Earth

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Moscow — A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed Monday in Kazakhstan, ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair. The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about 3 1/2 hours after undocking from the ISS in an apparently trouble-free descent. In the last stage of the landing, it descended under a red-and-white parachute at about 7.2 meters per second (16 mph), with small rockets fired in the final seconds to cushion the touchdown. The astronauts were extracted from the capsule and placed in nearby chairs to help them adjust to gravity, then given medical examinations in a nearby tent. Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the space station; on Friday they broke the record for the longest continuous…


Sep232024 by DmediaNo Comments

Cholera spreading in Sudan as fighting between rival generals shows no sign of abating 

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Cairo — Cholera is spreading in war-torn Sudan, killing at least 388 people and sickening about 13,000 others over the past two months, health authorities said, as more than 17 months of fighting between the military and a notorious paramilitary group shows no sign of abating.   The disease is spreading in areas devastated by recent heavy rainfall and floods especially in eastern Sudan where millions of war displaced people sheltered.   The casualties from cholera included six dead and about 400 sickened over the weekend, according to Sunday’s report by the Health Ministry. The disease was detected in 10 of the country’s 18 provinces with the eastern Kassala and al-Qadarif provinces the most hit, the ministry said.   Cholera is a fast-developing, highly contagious infection that causes diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration and…