Sep292024 by DmediaNo Comments

Marburg virus kills 6 in Rwanda, health minister says

All, News
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

All, News
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

All, News
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

All, Business, News, Technology
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

All, News
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

All, News
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

All, News
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

All, Business, News, Technology
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

All, Business, News, Technology
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’

All, News
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

All, News
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

All, News
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

All, News
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

All, News
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 

All, Business, News, Technology
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

All, News
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 

All, News
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…


Sep222024 by TechmanNo Comments

US to propose ban on Chinese software, hardware in connected vehicles, sources say

All, Business, News, Technology
Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department is expected on Monday to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns, two sources told Reuters. The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the decision had not been publicly disclosed. The move is a significant escalation in the United States' ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Last week, the…


Sep222024 by DmediaNo Comments

UN adopts pact promising to build ‘brighter future’ for humanity 

All, News
United Nations, United States — The United Nations on Sunday adopted a "Pact for the Future" aimed at addressing sprawling 21st-century challenges ranging from conflict to climate change and human rights, despite last-minute objections from a group of countries led by Russia. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who organized the "Summit of the Future," had billed it as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to reshape human history by rekindling international cooperation. As an opening act for the annual high-level week of the U.N. General Assembly, which begins Tuesday, dozens of heads of state and government gathered for the signing of the text. In the adopted version, leaders pledged to bolster the multilateral system to "keep pace with a changing world" and to "protect the needs and interests of current and future generations" facing "persistent crisis."…


Sep222024 by DmediaNo Comments

Dolphins dying in Amazon lake made shallow by drought

All, News
TEFE, Brazil — The carcass of a baby dolphin lay on the sand bank left exposed by the receding waters in an Amazon lake that has been drying up during the worst drought on record.  Researchers recovered the dead animal on Wednesday and measured water temperatures that have been rising as the lake's level drops. In last year's drought, more than 200 of the endangered freshwater dolphins died in Lake Tefe from excessive water temperatures.  "We've found several dead animals. Last week, we found one a day on average," said Miriam Marmontel, head of the dolphin project at the Mamiraua Institute for Sustainable Development.   "We're not yet associating the deaths with changes in water temperatures, but with the exacerbation of the proximity between human populations, mainly fishermen, and the animals,"…


Sep222024 by DmediaNo Comments

This US city is hailed as a vaccination success. Can it be sustained?

All, News
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — On his first day of school at Newcomer Academy, Maikel Tejeda was whisked to the school library. The 7th grader didn't know why. He soon got the point: He was being given make-up vaccinations. Five of them. "I don't have a problem with that," said the 12-year-old, who moved from Cuba early this year. Across the library, a group of city, state and federal officials gathered to celebrate the school clinic, and the city. With U.S. childhood vaccination rates below their goals, Louisville and the state were being praised as success stories: Kentucky's vaccination rate for kindergarteners rose 2 percentage points in the 2022-23 school year compared with the year before. The rate for Jefferson County — which is Louisville — was up 4 percentage points. "Progress is…


Sep222024 by DmediaNo Comments

Fortified bouillon cubes are seen as way to curb malnutrition in Africa

All, News
IBADAN, Nigeria — In her cramped, dimly lit kitchen, Idowu Bello leans over a gas cooker while stirring a pot of eba, the thick, starchy West African staple made from cassava root. Kidney problems and chronic exhaustion forced the 56-year-old Nigerian woman to retire from teaching, and she switches between cooking with gas or over a wood fire depending on the fuel she can afford. Financial constraints also limit the food Bello has on hand even though doctors have recommended a nutrient-rich diet both to improve her weakening health and to help her teenage daughter, Fatima, grow. Along with eba, on the menu today is melon soup with ponmo, an inexpensive condiment made from dried cowhide. "Fish, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables and even milk are costly these days," Bello, 56, said,…


Sep212024 by DmediaNo Comments

Parts of US Midwest could offer fall’s most vibrant foliage

All, News
PORTLAND, Maine — Fall is back, and bringing with it jack-o'-lanterns, football, pumpkin spice everything and — in some parts of the country — especially vibrant foliage. Leaves around the northern United States are starting to turn orange, yellow and red, inspiring legions of leaf lovers to hop in their cars and travel to the countryside for the best look at fall's fireworks. Leaf peeping — the act of traveling to witness nature's annual kaleidoscope — contributes billions of dollars to the economy, especially in New England and New York. But this year, some of the most colorful displays could be in the Midwest. AccuWeather, the commercial forecasting service, said in early September that it expects especially vibrant foliage in states such as Michigan and Illinois. The service also said powerful,…


Sep212024 by TechmanNo Comments

California governor signs law to protect children from social media addiction

All, Business, News, Technology
SACRAMENTO, California — California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Governor Gavin Newsom signed Friday.  California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform's algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children's access to social media, but those have faced challenges in court.  The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users' personal information in ways…