sydney — With fangs that could pierce a human fingernail, the largest male specimen of the world’s most venomous arachnid has found a new home at the Australian Reptile Park where it will help save lives after a member of the public discovered it by chance.

The deadly Sydney funnel-web spider dubbed Hercules was found on the Central Coast, about 50 miles north of Sydney, and was initially given to a local hospital, the Australian Reptile Park said in a statement Thursday.

Spider experts from the nearby park retrieved it and soon realized it was the largest male specimen ever received from the public in Australia.

The spider measured 7.9 centimeters from foot to foot, surpassing the park’s previous record-holder from 2018, the male funnel-web named Colossus.

Sydney funnel-web spiders usually range in length from 1 to 5 centimeters, with females being generally larger than their male counterparts but not as deadly. They are predominantly found in forested areas and suburban gardens from Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, to the coastal city of Newcastle in the north and the Blue Mountains to the west.

Hercules will contribute to the reptile park’s anti-venom program. Safely captured spiders handed in by the public undergo “milking” to extract venom, essential for producing life-saving anti-venom.

“We’re used to having pretty big funnel-web spiders donated to the park, however receiving a male funnel-web this big is like hitting the jackpot,” said Emma Teni, a spider keeper at Australian Reptile Park. “Whilst female funnel-web spiders are venomous, males have proven to be more lethal. With having a male funnel-web this size in our collection, his venom output could be enormous, proving incredibly valuable for the park’s venom program.”

Since the inception of the program in 1981, there has not been a fatality in Australia from a funnel-web spider bite.

Recent rainy, humid weather along Australia’s east coast has provided the ideal conditions for funnel-web spiders to thrive.
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NEW YORK — The flu season in the U.S. is getting worse, but it’s too soon to tell how much holiday gatherings contributed to a likely spike in illnesses.

New government data posted Friday for last week — the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s — shows 38 states with high or very high levels for respiratory illnesses with fever, cough and other symptoms. That’s up from 31 states the week before.

The measure likely includes people with COVID-19, RSV and other winter viruses, and not just flu. But flu seems to be increasing most dramatically, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We expect it to be elevated for several more weeks,” said the CDC’s Alicia Budd. So far, though, this is a moderate flu season, she said.

Interpreting flu reports during and after the holidays can be tricky, she said. Schools are closed. More people are traveling. Some people may be less likely to go see a doctor, deciding to just suffer at home. Others may be more likely to go.

The flu season generally peaks between December and February; CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said she expects it to peak by the end of this month. Officials say this season’s flu shots are well-matched to the strain that is spreading the most.

According to CDC estimates, since the beginning of October, there have been at least 10 million illnesses, 110,000 hospitalizations, and 6,500 deaths from flu so far this season. The agency said 27 children have died of flu.

COVID-19 illnesses may not be escalating as quickly as flu this winter. CDC data indicates coronavirus-caused hospitalizations haven’t hit the same levels they did at the same point during the last three winters. Still, COVID-19 is putting more people in the hospital than flu, CDC data shows.

Lauren Ancel Meyers of the University of Texas said the nation is seeing a second rise in COVID-19 after a smaller peak in September.

“There is a lot of uncertainty about when and how high this current surge will peak,” said Meyers, who runs a team that forecasts COVID-19, flu and RSV trends.

A new version of the coronavirus, called JN.1, is accounting for nearly two-thirds of U.S. cases, according to a CDC estimate. But health officials say there’s no evidence that it causes more severe disease than other recent variants.
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As the world waits for NASA to announce the first crews in its Artemis missions to the moon, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh talks with several astronauts hoping to make the cut as the space agency promotes diversity in its ranks. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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After three nasty years, the La Nina weather phenomenon that increases Atlantic hurricane activity and worsens Western drought is gone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Thursday.

That’s usually good news for the United States and other parts of the world, including drought-stricken northeast Africa, scientists said.

The globe is now in what’s considered a “neutral” condition and probably trending to an El Nino in late summer or fall, said climate scientist Michelle L’Heureux, head of NOAA’s El Nino/La Nina forecast office.

“It’s over,” said research scientist Azhar Ehsan, who heads Columbia University’s El Nino/La Nina forecasting. “Mother Nature thought to get rid of this one because it’s enough.”

Global impact

La Nina is a natural and temporary cooling of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide. In the United States, because La Nina is connected to more Atlantic storms and deeper droughts and wildfires in the West, La Ninas often are more damaging and expensive than their more famous flip side, El Nino, experts said, and studies show.

Generally, American agriculture is more damaged by La Nina than El Nino. If the globe jumps into El Nino, it means more rain for the Midwestern corn belt and grains in general and could be beneficial, said Michael Ferrari, chief scientific officer of Climate Alpha, a firm that advises investors on financial decisions based on climate.

When there’s a La Nina, there are more storms in the Atlantic during hurricane season because it removes conditions that suppress storm formation. Neutral or El Nino conditions make it harder for storms to get going, but not impossible, scientists said.

Over the last three years, the U.S. has been hit by 14 hurricanes and tropical storms that each caused $1 billion or more in damage, totaling $252 billion in costs, according to NOAA economist and meteorologist Adam Smith. La Nina and people building in harm’s way were factors, he said.

Influence of climate change

Climate change is a major factor in worsening extreme weather, alongside La Nina, scientists said and numerous studies and reports show. Human-caused warming is like an escalator going up – It makes temperatures increase and extremes worse – while La Nina and El Nino are like jumping up and down on the escalator, according to Northern Illinois University atmospheric sciences professor Victor Gensini.

La Nina has also slightly dampened global average temperatures, keeping warming from breaking annual temperature records, while El Nino slightly turbocharges those temperatures, often setting records, scientists said.

La Nina tends to make western Africa wet, but eastern Africa, around Somalia, dry. The opposite happens in El Nino, with drought-struck Somalia likely to get steady “short rains,” Ehsan said. La Nina has wetter conditions for Indonesia, parts of Australia and the Amazon, but those areas are drier in El Nino, according to NOAA.

El Nino means more heat waves for India and Pakistan and other parts of South Asia and weaker monsoons there, Ehsan said.

Signs that La Nina’s leaving

This particular La Nina, which started in September 2020 but is considered three years old because it affected three different winters, was unusual and one of the longest on record. It took a brief break in 2021 but came roaring back with record intensity.

“I’m sick of this La Nina,” Ehsan said. L’Heureux agreed, saying she’s ready to talk about something else.

The few other times that there’s been a triple-dip La Nina have come after strong El Ninos, and there’s clear physics on why that happens. But that’s not what happened with this La Nina, L’Heureux said. This one didn’t have a strong El Nino before it.

Even though this La Nina has confounded scientists in the past, they say the signs that it’s leaving are clear: Water in the key part of the central Pacific warmed to a bit more than the threshold for a La Nina in February, the atmosphere showed some changes, and along the eastern Pacific near Peru there’s already El Nino-like warming brewing on the coast, L’Heureux said.

Think of a La Nina or El Nino as something that pushes the weather system from the Pacific with ripple effects worldwide, L’Heureux said. When there are neutral conditions like now, there’s less push from the Pacific. That means other climatic factors, including the long-term warming trend, have more influence in day-to-day weather, she said.

Without an El Nino or La Nina, forecasters have a harder time predicting seasonal weather trends for summer or fall because the Pacific Ocean has such a big footprint in weeks-long forecasts.

El Nino forecasts made in the spring are generally less reliable than ones made at other times of year, so scientists are less sure about what will happen next, L’Heureux said. But NOAA’s forecast said there’s a 60% chance that El Nino will take charge come fall.

There’s also a 5% chance that La Nina will return for an unprecedented fourth dip. L’Heureux said she really doesn’t want that but the scientist in her would find that interesting.
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All U.S. women getting mammograms will soon receive information about their breast density, which can sometimes make cancer harder to spot.

The new requirements, finalized Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration, are aimed at standardizing the information given to millions of women following scans to detect breast cancer. Regulators first proposed the changes in 2019; health care providers will have 18 months to comply with the policy.

Some states already require that women receive information on breast density.

About half of women over age 40 have dense breasts, with less fatty tissue and more connective and glandular tissue. That tissue appears white on X-rays, the same color as growths in the breast, making mammograms harder to read. Dense breast tissue is one of the factors that can increase a woman’s chances of developing cancer.

Under the new rules, women with dense breasts will receive a written memo alerting them that their status “makes it harder to find breast cancer.” Those patients will also be directed to speak with their doctor about their results.

Professional guidelines don’t specify next steps for women identified with dense breasts, but some physicians may recommend additional forms of scanning, including ultrasound or MRI.
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Sodium is essential for the smooth functioning of muscles and nerves and maintaining the proper balance of water and minerals. But too much sodium in the diet can kill.

“Almost 2 million deaths each year are associated with excessive sodium intake,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.

“Too much sodium can lead to high blood pressure and increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases,” he said. “And yet globally, average sodium intake is more than double the WHO recommendation for adults of less than 2,000 milligrams per day, or 5 grams of salt.”

That is equivalent to one teaspoon of salt a day.

A WHO report launched Thursday explores for the first time the progress countries have made in implementing sodium intake reduction policies. A survey of WHO’s 194 member states showed “the world is off track to achieve its global target of reducing sodium intake by 30% by 2025.”

The report finds that only 5% of WHO member states “are protected by mandatory and comprehensive sodium reduction policies,” and 73% of WHO member states “lack full range of implementation of such policies.”

Francesco Branca, director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, noted that reducing sodium intake is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve health and reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases “as it can avert a large number of cardiovascular events and deaths at very low program costs.”

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally, claiming an estimated 17.9 million lives. WHO reports that more than four out of five of these deaths are due to heart attacks and strokes, with one-third occurring prematurely in people under age 70.

9 nations succeed

The report finds that only nine countries — Brazil, Chile, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Uruguay — have fully enacted WHO’s recommended policies to reduce sodium intake.

Tom Frieden, CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, cites Chile as a leader in the implementation of lifesaving sodium-reduction policies.

Speaking in a webinar among fellow experts that followed the report’s launch, Frieden said Chile had “passed the law of food labeling and advertising that simultaneously required mandatory front-of pack warning labels, including on sodium; restricted marketing of products that have those warning labels; and banned the procurement of the sale of those products in schools.”

He noted that Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay had all passed similar policies, following Chile’s lead.

Branca noted that a significant proportion of sodium in the diet comes from processed and highly processed foods sold in many high-income countries and increasingly in low- and middle-income countries.

“Government-led mandatory maximum limits for sodium-processed foods promote industrywide reformulations,” he said. “They create a marketplace that restricts the less healthy food options regardless of where people shop, or how much they understand or have access to information on labels.”

Frieden said self-regulation by the food manufacturing industry has repeatedly proven to be ineffective and “voluntary policies are often ignored.”

“In fact, a mandatory approach creates a level playing field,” because it can keep companies that take positive steps from feeling as though they must conduct business at a competitive disadvantage.

In addition to the existing proven strategies to reduce sodium, Frieden said, countries can consider new, innovative measures, such as increasing the availability and use of sodium and salt substitutes.

“Recent studies show that these substitutes significantly decrease not only blood pressure, and not only heart attack and strokes, but even death from cardiovascular events,” he said.

“Imagine that changing the brand of salt that you use could reduce the risk of death by 10% or 15%.”
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WeightWatchers, the 60-year-old diet firm, announced this week it would acquire a telehealth company whose providers prescribe anti-obesity drugs for growing numbers of eager online subscribers.

The $132 million deal with Sequence is just the latest commercial push into the red-hot market for prescription drugs that promises significant weight loss. For months, the diabetes drug Ozempic has been touted on social media by celebrities, even though it’s not approved for weight loss. The demand for it sparked shortages.

WeightWatchers will be introducing its roughly 3.5 million subscribers to a new generation of medications that go beyond behavioral changes like gym workouts and diet tracking. Obesity experts say the drugs may revolutionize treatment of the disease that affects 42% of American adults.

Here’s a look at the promise of these new medications and cautions about their use.

What are these new diet drugs?

The drugs that have generated most buzz are from a class of medications called GLP-1 agonists. Two of the most popular, Ozempic and Wegovy, are different doses of the same drug, semaglutide.

Ozempic has been used for six years to treat Type 2 diabetes and is not approved for weight loss. Wegovy was approved in 2021 to treat obesity in adults, and late last year to treat kids and teens 12 and older.

Doctors prescribe the medications to people with diabetes alone, or to people who are obese or who are overweight with additional health problems. Most of these types of drugs are delivered through weekly injections.

Supply problems and soaring demand last year led to a shortage of the drugs, but manufacturer Novo Nordisk said those have been replenished.

How do the drugs work?

They mimic the action of a gut hormone that kicks in after people eat, boosting the release of insulin, blocking sugar production in the liver and suppressing appetite.

A newer drug called tirzepatide mimics the action of two hormones for even greater effect. The Eli Lilly and Company drug, sold under the brand name Mounjaro, is now approved to treat diabetes. But the FDA granted fast-track status to review it to treat obesity. A decision is expected this spring.

With lower appetite and a greater feeling of fullness, people using these drugs eat less and lose weight.

How effective are the drugs?

In a clinical trial, adults who took Wegovy saw a mean weight loss of nearly 35 pounds, or about 15% of their initial body weight. Adolescents lost about 16% of their body weight.

A clinical trial of Mounjaro, which is still being studied, saw mean weight loss of 15% to 21% of body weight depending on the dose, compared with a weight loss of about 3% for people taking a placebo, or a dummy drug.

Why not just diet and exercise?

In a typical weight-loss program where participants rely only on diet and exercise, about a third of people enrolled will lose 5% or more of their body weight, noted Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Most people find it difficult to lose weight because of the body’s biological reactions to eating less, he said. There are several hormones that respond to reduced calorie intake to increase hunger and maintain body mass.

“There is a real physical phenomenon,” he said. “There is a resistance mechanism that is a coordinated effort by the body to prevent you from losing weight.”

What are the side effects of the drugs?

The most common side effects are short-lived gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain and constipation.

Other possible side effects include thyroid tumors, cancer, inflammation of the pancreas, kidney and gallbladder and eye problems. People with a family history of certain thyroid cancers or a rare, genetic endocrine disorder should avoid the drugs.

What should consumers watch out for?

These new medications could be an effective part of a multifaceted approach to weight loss, said Dr. Amy Rothberg, a University of Michigan endocrinologist who directs a virtual weight management and diabetes program called Rewind.

But she worries that programs like WeightWatchers are primarily interested in boosting enrollment — and profits.

“My hope is that they do their due diligence and have real monitoring of the patients taking the drugs,” she said.

It’s important to make sure that patients are taking the drugs for the intended purpose, to make sure there’s no reason they shouldn’t take the drugs and that they’re monitored for side effects, she said.
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Plastics entering the world’s oceans have surged by an unprecedented amount since 2005 and could nearly triple by 2040 if no further action is taken, according to research published on Wednesday.

An estimated 171 trillion plastic particles were afloat in the oceans by 2019, according to peer-reviewed research led by the 5 Gyres Institute, a U.S. organization that campaigns to reduce plastic pollution.

Marine plastic pollution could rise 2.6-fold by 2040 if legally binding global policies are not introduced, it predicted.

The study looked at surface-level plastic pollution data from 11,777 ocean stations in six major marine regions covering the period from 1979 to 2019.

“We’ve found an alarming trend of exponential growth in microplastics in the global ocean since the millennium,” Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Group said in a statement.

“We need a strong legally binding U.N. global treaty on plastic pollution that stops the problem at the source,” he added.

Microplastics are particularly hazardous to the oceans, not only contaminating water but also damaging the internal organs of marine animals, which mistake plastic for food.

Experts said the study showed that the level of marine plastic pollution in the oceans has been underestimated.

“The numbers in this new research are staggeringly phenomenal and almost beyond comprehension,” said Paul Harvey, a scientist and plastics expert with Environmental Science Solutions, an Australian consultancy focused on pollution reduction.

The United Nations kicked off negotiations on an agreement to tackle plastic pollution in Uruguay in November, with the aim of drawing up a legally binding treaty by the end of next year.

Environmental group Greenpeace said that without a strong global treaty, plastic production could double within the next 10 to 15 years, and triple by 2050.

A separate international treaty was agreed on Sunday to help protect biodiversity in the world’s high seas.
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France has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu among red foxes northeast of Paris, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Tuesday, as the spread of the virus to mammals raised global concerns.

After three foxes were found dead in a nature reserve in Meaux near where gulls had died, one of the foxes was collected and tested, WOAH said in a report, citing French authorities.

The World Health Organization last month described the bird flu situation as “worrying” due to the recent rise in cases in birds and mammals and that it was reviewing its global risk assessment in light of recent developments including cases of human transmission in Cambodia.

Avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has been spreading around the world in the past year, killing more than 200 million birds, sending egg prices rocketing and raising concern among governments about human transmission.

The virus infected a cat in France in late December.

It has also been detected in minks in Spain, foxes and otters in Britain, sea lions in Peru and grizzly bears in the United States.
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Many states have enacted or contemplated limits or outright bans on transgender medical treatment, with conservative U.S. lawmakers saying they are worried about young people later regretting irreversible body-altering treatment.

But just how common is regret? And how many youth change their appearances with hormones or surgery only to later change their minds and detransition?

Here’s a look at some of the issues involved.

What is transgender medical treatment?

Guidelines call for thorough psychological assessments to confirm gender dysphoria — distress over gender identity that doesn’t match a person’s assigned sex — before starting any treatment.

That treatment typically begins with puberty-blocking medication to temporarily pause sexual development. The idea is to give youngsters time to mature enough mentally and emotionally to make informed decisions about whether to pursue permanent treatment.

Puberty blockers may be used for years and can increase risks for bone density loss, but that reverses when the drugs are stopped.

Sex hormones — estrogen or testosterone — are offered next. Dutch research suggests that most reports from doctors and individual U.S. clinics indicate that the number of youth seeking any kind of transgender medical care has increased in recent years.

How often do transgender people regret transitioning?

In updated treatment guidelines issued last year, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health said evidence of later regret is scant, but that patients should be told about the possibility during psychological counseling.

Dutch research from several years ago found no evidence of regret in transgender adults who had comprehensive psychological evaluations in childhood before undergoing puberty blockers and hormone treatment.

Some studies suggest that rates of regret have declined over the years as patient selection and treatment methods have improved. In a review of 27 studies involving almost 8,000 teens and adults who had transgender surgeries, mostly in Europe, the U.S and Canada, 1% on average expressed regret. For some, regret was temporary, but a small number went on to have detransitioning or reversal surgeries, the 2021 review said.

Research suggests that comprehensive psychological counseling before starting treatment, along with family support, can reduce chances for regret and detransitioning.

What is detransitioning?

Detransitioning means stopping or reversing gender transition, which can include medical treatment or changes in appearance, or both.

Detransitioning does not always include regret. The updated transgender treatment guidelines note that some teens who detransition “do not regret initiating treatment” because they felt it helped them better understand their gender-related care needs.

Research and reports from individual doctors and clinics suggest that detransitioning is rare. The few studies that exist have too many limitations or weaknesses to draw firm conclusions, said Dr. Michael Irwig, director of transgender medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

He said it’s difficult to quantify because patients who detransition often see new doctors, not the physicians who prescribed the hormones or performed the surgeries. Some patients may simply stop taking hormones.

“My own personal experience is that it is quite uncommon,” Irwig said. “I’ve taken care of over 350 gender-diverse patients and probably fewer than five have told me that they decided to detransition or changed their minds.”

Recent increases in the number of people seeking transgender medical treatment could lead to more people detransitioning, Irwig noted in a commentary last year in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. That’s partly because of a shortage of mental health specialists, meaning gender-questioning people may not receive adequate counseling, he said.

Dr. Oscar Manrique, a plastic surgeon at the University of Rochester Medical Center, has operated on hundreds of transgender people, most of them adults. He said he’s never had a patient return seeking to detransition.

Some may not be satisfied with their new appearance, but that doesn’t mean they regret the transition, he said. Most, he said, “are very happy with the outcomes surgically and socially.”
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The Italian health minister’s proposals to extend a smoking ban include the outdoor areas of bars and parks, according to details reported by local media, drawing the ire of right-wing Cabinet colleagues who labeled him a “communist.” 

Minister Orazio Schillaci, a technocrat with no party affiliation, said in January he would crackdown on smoking, including e-cigarettes, which are being widely used by teenagers. 

The new rules will include the outside areas of bars and at public transport stops, La Stampa newspaper reported on Monday. The prohibition will also be extended to parks if pregnant women and children are present, it said. 

Junior Culture Minister Vittorio Sgarbi, known for expressing his opinions, called Schillaci’s view “intimidating” and said such bans would instead encourage people to smoke. 

“This is something typical of an authoritarian and dictatorial communist regime,” Sgarbi told AdnKronos news agency. 

Italy’s top health institute (ISS) said some 24% of adult Italians were smokers last year — roughly 12.4 million people and the highest percentage recorded since 2009. 

The government passed a ban on smoking indoors in 2003, which came into force two years later. 

Health association Fondazione Umberto Veronesi estimates at least 43,000 people die in Italy every year for smoke-related reasons. 

But the proposed clampdown also faces skepticism from Deputy Prime Minister and League party leader Matteo Salvini, who quit cigarettes four years ago but said the open-air ban on e-cigarettes was “exaggerated.” 

“Electronic cigarettes are helping a lot of people to abandon regular cigarettes,” he added on Twitter. 

The Health Ministry did not reply to a request for comment. 

The proposals would need to be approved by the Cabinet before being passed to parliament. 
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A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms in one of its two new reactors, Georgia Power said Monday, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactors built from scratch in decades in the United States. 

The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said operators reached self-sustaining nuclear fission inside the reactor at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta. That makes the intense heat that will be used to produce steam and spin turbines to generate electricity. 

A third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2009, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The company now says Unit 3 could begin commercial operation in May or June. 

Unit 4 is projected to begin commercial operation sometime between this November and March 2024. 

The cost of the third and fourth reactors was originally supposed to be $14 billion. The reactors are now supposed to cost more than $30 billion. That doesn’t include $3.68 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners after going bankrupt, which brings total spending to more than $34 billion. 

The latest set of delays at Unit 3 included a pipe part of a critical backup cooling system that was vibrating during startup testing. Construction workers had failed to install supports called for on blueprints. The company has also said it had to repair a slowly dripping valve and diagnose a problem involving water flow through reactor coolant pumps. 

Georgia Power said Unit 3 would continue startup testing to show that its cooling system and steam supply system will work at the intense heat and pressure that a nuclear reactor creates. After that, operators are supposed to link the reactor to the electrical grid and gradually raise it to full power. 

“We remain focused on safely bringing this unit online, fully addressing any issues and getting it right at every level,” Chris Womack, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, said in a written statement. “Reaching initial criticality is one of the final steps in the startup process and has required tremendous diligence and attention to detail from our teams.” 

Georgia Power owns a minority of the two new reactors. The remaining shares are owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Oglethorpe and MEAG would sell power to cooperatives and municipal utilities across Georgia, as well in Jacksonville, Florida, and parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. 

Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers are already paying part of the financing cost, and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase of $3.78 a month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. The elected Georgia Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs. 

Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions. 
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A group of attorneys general from 45 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., demanded Monday that social media app TikTok produce materials as part of an investigation into its effect on young users’ mental health.   

“We know that social media is taking a devastating toll on young people’s mental health and well-being, and through our investigation we are getting a clearer sense of TikTok’s role,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.   

The investigation began last year when eight states, including California, Massachusetts and Tennessee, launched a bipartisan probe of TikTok, focusing on whether the popular video-sharing app is endangering young people and violating state consumer protection laws.    

On Monday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti asked a Tennessee court to order TikTok to produce subpoenaed materials sought by the investigation. Attorneys general from across the United States filed a brief in support of the motion to compel TikTok to hand over the information.    

The Tennessee court petition alleges that TikTok has failed to preserve potentially relevant evidence in the investigation, including internal employee chat messages.   

It says TikTok has shared some internal messages in response to its request but said the company has rendered them “unrecognizable and nearly incomprehensible.”   

TikTok has not commented on the case.   

“We need to know more about the company’s business practices so we can keep our kids safe,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said in a statement Monday.   

California’s Department of Justice said in a statement that heavy use of social media is “strongly associated with self-harm, depression, and low self-esteem in teens — and every additional hour young people spend on social media is associated with an increased severity of the symptoms of depression.”   

The latest court challenge comes as TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, faces security concerns. The United States, Canada and the European Union have all banned the use of the app on government-issued devices.    

Like other social media apps, TikTok has also received criticism that it is not doing enough to protect younger users from inappropriate content.   

Last week, TikTok said it was developing a tool that would allow parents to block certain content on the app. The company also said parents will now be able to set time limits on the app for their teens, depending on the day of the week.   

Some information in this report came from Reuters. 
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Greenhouse gas emissions from the way humans produce and consume food could add nearly 1 degree of warming to the Earth’s climate by 2100, according to a new study.

Continuing the dietary patterns of today will push the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) limit of warming sought under the Paris climate agreement to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to the study published Monday in Nature Climate Change and will approach the agreement’s limit of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The modeling study found that most greenhouse gas emissions come from three major sources: meat from animals like cows, sheep and goats; dairy; and rice. Those three sources account for at least 19% of each food’s contribution to a warming planet, according to the study, with meat contributing the most, at 33%.

All emit large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, in the way they are currently farmed. The researchers calculated that methane will account for 75% of food’s share of warming by 2030, with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide accounting for most of the rest.

“I think the biggest takeaway that I would want [policymakers] to have is the fact that methane emissions are really dominating the future warming associated with the food sector,” said Catherine C. Ivanovich, a climate scientist at Columbia University and the study’s lead author.

Ivanovich and colleagues from the University of Florida and Environmental Defense Fund calculated the three major gases produced by each type of food over its lifetime based on current consumption patterns. Then they scaled the annual emissions over time by gas based on five different population projections.

And then they used a climate model frequently used by the United Nations’ panel on climate change to model the effects of those emissions on surface air temperature change.

Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who wasn’t involved in the study, said it used well-established methods and datasets “to produce a novel, sobering conclusion.”

“The study highlights that food is absolutely critical to hitting our Paris Agreement climate targets — failure to consider food is failure to meet our climate targets globally,” said Meredith Niles, a food systems scientist at the University of Vermont who was not involved in the study.  

The study offered some ways to change global food production and consumption that could limit warming.

Many of these changes are already being called for or adopted. U.S. President Joe Biden touted the climate benefits of planting cover crops that can draw down carbon from the atmosphere in an April 2021 address to Congress. Multiple recent studies and reports have recommended eating less meat in order to reduce greenhouse gas creation by animals raised for consumption. And California started a mandatory food waste recycling program in 2021 to reduce the emissions created by decaying food.

But reducing methane may be the most important goal of all. Although methane is far more potent than carbon, it also is much shorter-lived — meaning cuts in methane emissions can have a quick benefit, Ivanovich said.

“So that’s going to help us stay under the dangerous warming target,” she said, “as well as give us some time to build up resilience and adaptation to climate change in the meantime.”

A major question that remains is whether food producers and consumers can change their behavior in order to achieve the reductions in greenhouse gases laid out in the study. There’s a roadmap, but will it be followed?

“Changing behavior, especially when we are bombarded with constant media extolling the benefits of everything from Coke to French fries, from pizza to burgers, is pretty damned difficult,” said Columbia University plant physiologist Lew Ziska in an email to the AP. “So, overall, while we need to change, whether we can change is … problematic.” 
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The United Nations announced Monday that it had taken a significant step towards trying to fill a key gap in the fight against climate change: standardized, real-time tracking of greenhouse gases.

The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization has come up with a new Global Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Infrastructure that aims to provide better ways of measuring planet-warming pollution and help inform policy choices.

The WMO’s new platform will integrate space-based and surface-based observing systems, and seek to clarify uncertainties about where greenhouse gas emissions end up.

It should result in much faster and sharper data on how the planet’s atmosphere is changing.

“We know from our measurements that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas said. 

The three major greenhouses gases are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Of those, CO2 accounts for around 66 percent of the warming effect on the climate.

“The increase in CO2 levels from 2020 to 2021 was higher than the average growth rate over the past decade, and methane saw the biggest year-on-year jump since measurements started,” Taalas said.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change saw countries agree to cap global warming at “well below” two degrees Celsius above levels measured between 1850 and 1900 — and 1.5C if possible.

The WMO said there needed to be stronger scientific underpinnings of climate change mitigation actions taken under the agreement.

“There are still uncertainties, especially regarding the role in the carbon cycle of the ocean, the land biosphere and the permafrost areas,” Taalas said.

“We therefore need to undertake greenhouse gas monitoring within an integrated… framework in order to be able to account for natural sources and sinks.

“This will provide vital information and support for implementation of the Paris Agreement.”

The WMO held a symposium in late January that brought together experts from a wide range of fields to start fitting the jigsaw pieces together.

During a meeting last week, the agency’s executive council endorsed the plans they came up with, it said Monday.

Further approval will be needed from the World Meteorological Congress — the WMO’s top decision-making body — in May.

The decision to tie together WMO’s expertise in weather prediction and climate analysis “will be seen as a historic step”, said Lars Peter Riishojgaard, deputy director of the organization’s infrastructure department.
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Only a third of people in the world’s poorest countries can connect to the internet, the U.N. telecoms agency said Sunday, but low-flying satellites could bring hope to millions, especially in remote corners of Africa.

Tech giants including Microsoft have pledged to help populations hobbled by poor internet services to “leapfrog” into an era of online connectivity, with satellites set to play a key role as rival firms send thousands of new generation transmitters into low level orbit.

At the moment just 36% of the 1.25 billion people in the world’s 46 poorest countries can plug into the internet, the International Telecommunication Union said. By comparison, more than 90 percent have access in the European Union.

The ITU condemned the “staggering international connectivity gap” that it said had widened over the past decade.

The divide has been a key complaint at a U.N. summit of Least Developed Countries in Doha, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told their leaders that “you are being left behind in the digital revolution.”

The digital dearth is particularly acute in some African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, where barely a quarter of the population of nearly 100 million can connect.

While internet access is easy in major DRC cities such as Kinshasa, huge rural zones and swathes of territory battled over by rival rebel groups for more than two decades are digital deserts.

The launch of thousands of Low-Earth Orbit satellites could bring speedy change and boost African hopes, tech experts promised at the Doha summit.

‘Leapfrog other nations’

Satellite coverage will play a key role in Microsoft’s vow to bring internet access to 100 million Africans by 2025, which was outlined ahead of the summit.

Microsoft announced a first phase for five million Africans in December and last week added a commitment to cover another 20 million people.

The initial five million will be served by Viasat, one of the companies sending constellations of satellites into space to compete with land-based fibre broadband.

Elon Musk’s Space X and Starlink are also putting thousands of satellites into an orbit between 400 and 700 kilometers (250 to 430 miles) above Earth.

Microsoft president Brad Smith told AFP that when he first saw the 20 million figure proposed by his team last year, he asked “is this real?”, but that he was now convinced it is possible.

“The technology costs have come down substantially and will continue to drop,” he said. “That is part of what makes it possible to move this fast to reach this size of population.

“Countries in Africa have the opportunity to leapfrog other nations when it comes to the regulatory structure for something like wireless communications,” he added.

“We can reach many more people than we could with fixed line technologies five or 10 or 15 years ago.”

Bandwidth bonanza

Richer countries have already largely allocated the available bandwidth for telecoms and television.

“In Africa the spectrum isn’t being used and so it is available and the governments are moving faster to bring this connectivity to more people,” Smith said.

Microsoft is working with Africa telecoms specialist Liquid Intelligent Technologies to provide internet for the second segment of 20 million people.

Providing internet and digital skills training for thousands of Africans was part of an effort to provide a private-sector alternative to “foreign aid”, Smith said, declaring that “we are bullish on what we believe digital technology can do for development.”

But the Microsoft president acknowledged that the private sector is “woefully under-developed and under-invested” in many LDC economies.

Liquid Intelligent says it has 100,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) of land fibre across Africa but is building a major satellite footprint.

“In hard-to-reach areas,” said Nic Rudnick, its deputy chief executive, “satellite is often the only technology or the most reliable technology for fast broadband that always works.”

 
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For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas — nearly half the planet’s surface — concluding two weeks of talks in New York.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept.

An updated framework to protect marine life in the regions outside national boundary waters, known as the high seas, had been in discussions for more than 20 years, but previous efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. The unified agreement treaty was reached late Saturday.

“We only really have two major global commons — the atmosphere and the oceans,” said Georgetown marine biologist Rebecca Helm. While the oceans may draw less attention, “protecting this half of earth’s surface is absolutely critical to the health of our planet.”

Now that long-awaited treaty text has been finalized, Nichola Clark, an oceans expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts who observed the talks in New York, said, “This is a once in a generation opportunity to protect the oceans — a major win for biodiversity.”

The treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas. And Clark said that’s critical to achieve the U.N. Biodiversity Conference’s recent pledge to protect 30% of the planet’s waters, as well as its land, for conservation.

The treaty also establishes ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans.

“It means all activities planned for the high seas need to be looked at, though not all will go through a full assessment,” said Jessica Battle, an oceans governance expert at the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Many marine species — including dolphins, whales, sea turtles and many fish — make long annual migrations, crossing national borders and the high seas. Efforts to protect them — and human communities that rely on fishing or tourism related to marine life — have previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws.

“This treaty will help to knit together the different regional treaties to be able to address threats and concerns across species’ ranges,” said Battle.

That protection also helps coastal biodiversity and economies, said Gladys Martínez de Lemos, executive director of the nonprofit Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense focusing on environmental issues across Latin America.

“Governments have taken an important step that strengthens the legal protection of two-thirds of the ocean and with it marine biodiversity and the livelihoods of coastal communities,” she said.

The question now is how well the ambitious treaty will be implemented.

The high seas have long suffered exploitation due to commercial fishing and mining, as well as pollution from chemicals and plastics. The new agreement is about “acknowledging that the ocean is not a limitless resource, and it requires global cooperation to use the ocean sustainably,” said Malin Pinsky, a biologist at Rutgers University.
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Drugs known as statins are the first-choice treatment for high cholesterol but millions of people who can’t or won’t take those pills because of side effects may have another option.

In a major study, a different kind of cholesterol-lowering drug named Nexletol reduced the risk of heart attacks and some other cardiovascular problems in people who can’t tolerate statins, researchers reported Saturday.

Doctors already prescribe the drug, known chemically as bempedoic acid, to be used together with a statin to help certain high-risk patients further lower their cholesterol. The new study tested Nexletol without the statin combination — and offers the first evidence that it also reduces the risk of cholesterol-caused health problems.

Statins remain “the cornerstone of cholesterol-lowering therapies,” stressed Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic, who led the study.

But people who can’t take those proven pills “are very needy patients, they’re extremely difficult to treat,” he said. This option “will have a huge impact on public health.”

Too much so-called LDL or “bad” cholesterol can clog arteries and lead to heart attacks and strokes. Statin pills like Lipitor and Crestor – or their cheap generic equivalents – are the mainstay for lowering LDL cholesterol and preventing heart disease or treating those who already have it. They work by blocking some of the liver’s cholesterol production.

But some people suffer serious muscle pain from statins. While it’s not clear exactly how often that occurs, by some estimates 10% of people who’d otherwise qualify for the pills can’t or won’t take them. They have limited options, including pricey cholesterol-lowering shots and another kind of pill sold as Zetia.

Nexletol also blocks cholesterol production in the liver but in a different way than statins and without that muscle side effect.

The new five-year study tracked nearly 14,000 people who were unable to tolerate more than a very low dose of a statin. Half got daily Nexletol and half a dummy pill.

The main finding: Nexletol-treated patients had a 13% lower risk of a group of major cardiac problems. Then researchers teased apart those different conditions and found a 23% reduced risk of a heart attack, the biggest impact. The drug also cut by 19% procedures to unclog arteries. There wasn’t a difference in deaths, which researchers couldn’t explain but said might require longer to detect.

The data was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Saturday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology. The study was funded by Nexletol maker Esperion Therapeutics.

The results are “compelling,” Dr. John H. Alexander of Duke University, who wasn’t involved with the study, wrote in the journal. They “will and should” spur use of the drug by patients unwilling or unable to take statins.

“It is premature, however, to consider bempedoic acid as an alternative to statins,” he cautioned. “Given the overwhelming evidence of the vascular benefits,” statins remain the top choice for most patients.
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India may issue an alert on cough syrup exported by Marion Biotech, whose products have been linked to deaths in Uzbekistan, after tests showed many of the company’s drug samples contained toxins, a drug inspector said Saturday.

Indian police arrested three Marion employees Friday and are looking for two directors after tests in a government laboratory found 22 of 36 syrup samples “adulterated and spurious.”

New Delhi is pursuing the issue even as the government has pushed back against allegations that cough syrup made by another Indian company, Maiden Pharmaceuticals, led to the deaths of children in Gambia last year.

Vaibhav Babbar, an inspector involved in the Marion probe, told Reuters the samples had been adulterated with ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol — the toxins that the World Health Organization says were found in the products sold by the two companies in the two countries.

As many as 70 children have died in Gambia and 19 in Uzbekistan.

More than 300 children, most under age 5, in Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan died last year of acute kidney injury associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said in January.

In addition, it said the Philippines, Timor Leste, Senegal and Cambodia might be affected because they may have the medicines on sale. It also called for “immediate and concerted action” among its 194 member states to prevent more deaths.

“Because Marion’s drugs have gone to so many countries, I pray nothing happens elsewhere,” Babbar said. “The health ministry could issue an alert. They may do it. It will be good to issue an alert.”

He said he did not know whether an alert was under active consideration.

An Indian health ministry spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Marion did not answer calls from Reuters and did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

A government alert would warn people in all countries to take the products off their shelves, though it carries no legal penalty.

Babbar said the drugs had also been exported to Kyrgyzstan and Cambodia.

Babbar has been part of a team that inspected Marion’s plant four times after Uzbekistan said in December the children died after consuming the company’s cough syrups. India suspended Marion’s production soon after.

Analysis by Uzbekistan’s health ministry showed the syrups, Ambronol and DOK-1 Max, were contaminated with unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol or ethylene glycol, the WHO said in a January medical product alert. The United Nations health watchdog said it was important to detect and remove these substandard products from circulation.

The syrups were administered in doses higher than the standard for children, either by parents mistaking the product for anti-cold remedies or on the advice of pharmacists, according to the analysis.

India in October suspended production at Maiden for violating manufacturing standards after the WHO said four of its cough syrups may have killed dozens of children in Gambia.

Maiden has denied that its drugs were at fault for the deaths in Gambia, and tests by an Indian government laboratory found no toxins in them.
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The Hartbeespoort dam in South Africa used to be brimming with people enjoying scenic landscapes and recreational water sports. Now, the visitors are greeted to the sight of boats stuck in a sea of invasive green water hyacinth weed.

The spike in Harties – as Hartbeespoort is known – can be attributed to pollution, with sewage, industrial chemicals, heavy metals and litter flowing on rivers from Johannesburg and Pretoria.

“In South Africa, we are faced with highly polluted waters,” said Professor Julie Coetzee, who has studied water hyacinths for over 20 years and manages the aquatic weeds program at the Centre for Biological Control at Rhodes University.

Nutrients in the pollutants act as perfect fertilizers for the weed, a big concern for nearby communities due to its devastating impact on livelihoods.

Dion Mostert, 53, is on the verge of laying off 25 workers at his recreational boat company after his business came to a standstill because of the carpet of water hyacinths.

“The boats aren’t going anywhere. It’s affecting tourism in our town… tourist jobs,” Mostert said pointing towards his luxury cruise boat “Alba,” marooned in the weeds.

He has considered using herbicides, but admits it would only be a quick fix against the weed.

Scientists and community members have, however, found a unique way to deal with the invasion by introducing a water hyacinth eating bug called Megamelus scutellaris.

The tiny phloem-feeding insects are the natural enemy to the plants, both are originally from the Amazon basin in South America, and are released by thousands at a time.

The insects destroy the weed by attacking tissue that transports nutrients produced in the leaves during photosynthesis to the rest of the plant.

The insect army has previously reduced the expanse of water hyacinths to a mere 5% on the dam, Coetzee said. At times the weed has covered at least 50% of it.

Environmentalist Patrick Ganda, 41, mass rears the bugs at Grootvaly Blesbokspruit wetland conservancy southeast of Harties, once home to more than a hundred species of birds which attracted a lot of tourists.

But now, unable to find food such as fish and small plants with much of the wetland’s water covered in plants, there are only two to three species of birds left, he said.

Scientists warn that while the insects have been fairly successful in controlling the situation, more needs to be done to treat its cause, which authorities could tackle by tightening regulations on waste water management.

“We are only treating the symptom of a much larger problem,” says Kelby English, a scientist at Rhodes University.
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Walgreens says it will not start selling an abortion pill in 20 states that had warned of legal consequences if it did so.

The drugstore chain’s announcement Thursday signals that access to mifepristone may not expand as broadly as federal regulators intended in January, when they finalized a rule change allowing more pharmacies to provide the pill.

Here’s a closer look at the issue.

About the abortion pill

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone in 2000 to end pregnancy when used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol. The combination is approved for use up to the 10th week of pregnancy.

Mifepristone is taken first to dilate the cervix and block a hormone needed to sustain a pregnancy. Misoprostol is taken a day or two later, causing contractions to empty the uterus.

More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills rather than with a procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. In rare cases, the drug combination can cause excess bleeding, requiring emergency care.

Widening access

For more than 20 years, the FDA limited dispensing of mifepristone to a subset of specialty offices and clinics due to safety concerns.

The agency has repeatedly eased restrictions and expanded access, increasing demand even as state laws make the pills harder to get for many women.

In late 2021, the agency eliminated an in-person requirement for getting the pill, saying a new scientific review showed no increase in safety complications if the drug is taken at home. That change also permitted the pill to be prescribed via telehealth and shipped by mail-order pharmacies.

Earlier this year, the FDA further loosened restrictions by allowing pharmacies such as Walgreens to start dispensing the drug after they undergo certification. That includes meeting standards for shipping, tracking and confidentially storing prescribing information.

States step in

Typically, the FDA’s authority to regulate prescription drug access has gone unchallenged. But more than a dozen states now have laws restricting abortion broadly — and the pills specifically — following last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning the federal right to abortion.

Last month, attorneys general in 20 conservative-led states warned CVS and Walgreens in a letter that they could face legal consequences if they sold abortion pills by mail in their states.

In addition to state laws, attorneys general from conservative states have argued that shipments of mifepristone run afoul of a 19th century law that prohibited sending items used in abortion through the mail.

Walgreens’ reaction

A Walgreens spokesperson says the company told the attorneys general that it will not dispense mifepristone in their states and it doesn’t plan to ship the drug to them as well.

But Walgreens is working to become eligible through the FDA’s certification process. It plans to dispense the pills where it can legally do so.

The company is not currently dispensing the pills anywhere.

Other drugstores

Rite Aid Corp. said it was “monitoring the latest federal, state, legal and regulatory developments” and would keep evaluating its policies. The Associated Press also sought comment from CVS Health Corp., retail giant Walmart and the grocery chain Kroger.

Some independent pharmacists would like to become certified to dispense the pills, said Andrea Pivarunas, a spokesperson for the National Community Pharmacists Association. She added that this would be a “personal business decision,” based partly on state laws. The association has no specifics on how many will do it.

Other legal issues

In November, an anti-abortion group filed a federal lawsuit in Texas seeking to revoke mifepristone’s approval, claiming the FDA approved the drug 23 years ago without adequate evidence of safety.

A federal judge could rule soon. If he sides with abortion opponents, mifepristone could potentially be removed from the U.S. market.

In January, abortion rights supporters filed separate lawsuits challenging abortion pill restrictions imposed in North Carolina and West Virginia.

Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills.
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Former President George W. Bush recently urged Washington lawmakers to reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative he launched two decades ago against one of deadliest diseases at the time. VOA Senior Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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More than 35 years after the world’s worst nuclear accident, the dogs of Chernobyl roam among decaying abandoned buildings in and around the closed plant — somehow still able to find food, breed and survive.

Scientists hope that studying these dogs can teach humans new tricks about how to live in the harshest, most degraded environments, too.

They published the first of what they hope will be many genetics studies on Friday in the journal Science Advances, focusing on 302 free-roaming dogs living in an officially designated “exclusion zone” around the disaster site. They identified populations whose differing levels of radiation exposure may have made them genetically distinct from one another and other dogs worldwide.

“We’ve had this golden opportunity” to lay the groundwork for answering a crucial question: “How do you survive in a hostile environment like this for 15 generations?” said geneticist Elaine Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute, one of the study’s many authors.

Co-author Tim Mousseau, professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina, said the dogs “provide an incredible tool to look at the impacts of this kind of a setting” on mammals overall.

Dogs’ DNA reveal differences

Chernobyl’s environment is singularly brutal. On April 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Ukraine power plant caused radioactive fallout to spew into the atmosphere. Thirty workers were killed in the immediate aftermath, while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is estimated to eventually number in the thousands.

Researchers say most of the dogs they are studying appear to be descendants of pets that residents were forced to leave behind when they evacuated the area.

Mousseau has been working in the Chernobyl region since the late 1990s and began collecting blood from the dogs around 2017. Some of the dogs live in the power plant, a dystopian, industrial setting. Others are about 15 kilometers (9 miles) or 45 kilometers (28 miles) away.

At first, Ostrander said, they thought the dogs might have intermingled so much over time that they would be much the same. But through DNA, they could readily identify dogs living in areas of high, medium and low levels of radiation exposure.

“That was a huge milestone for us,” said Ostrander. “And what’s surprising is we can even identify families” — about 15 different ones.

Now researchers can begin to look for alterations in the DNA.

“We can compare them and we can say, ‘OK, what’s different, what’s changed, what’s mutated, what’s evolved, what helps you, what hurts you at the DNA level?'” Ostrander said. This will involve separating nonconsequential DNA changes from purposeful ones.

Data can give insight

Scientists said the research could have wide applications, providing insights about how animals and humans can live now and in the future in regions of the world under “continuous environmental assault” — and in the high-radiation environment of space.

Dr. Kari Ekenstedt, a veterinarian who teaches at Purdue University and was not involved in the study, said it’s a first step toward answering important questions about how constant exposure to higher levels of radiation affects large mammals. For example, she said, “Is it going to be changing their genomes at a rapid rate?”

Researchers have already started on the follow-up research, which will mean more time with the dogs at the site about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Kyiv. Mousseau said he and his colleagues were there most recently last October and didn’t see any war-related activity. Mousseau said the team has grown close to some dogs, naming one Prancer because she excitedly prances around when she sees people.

“Even though they’re wild, they still very much enjoy human interaction,” he said, “Especially when there’s food involved.”
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Former President George W. Bush last week urged Washington lawmakers to continue to support the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an initiative he launched two decades ago against one of deadliest diseases at the time.

Bush made his initial plea before Congress at his State of the Union address in 2003, when nearly 30 million people in Africa had the AIDS virus, including 3 million children under age 15.

“I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean,” Bush said at the time.

Fast forward to today: Bush, in Washington to mark his plan’s 20-year anniversary, said he made the trip to remind people that American taxpayers’ money is making a huge and measurable difference in providing lifesaving treatment to millions of people living with HIV/AIDS.

Check the results

“This program needs to be funded. And for the skeptics, all I ask is look at results. If the results don’t impress you, then nothing will impress you,” he told an audience February 24 at the U.S. Institute of Peace. PEPFAR is due for reauthorization this year.

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates was in attendance as well.

“HIV is still a huge problem. We’ve cut the death rates down substantially, but if we don’t continue to provide these medicines, then people’s viral load goes up, they become infected, and you get that exponential increase that we saw with all infectious diseases, including COVID,” Gates said.

The significance of the PEPFAR program boils down to the number of lives that have been affected, said David Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.

“Over 25 million lives have been saved as a result of President Bush’s PEPFAR initiative. … And it was a vision that he [Bush] had to step in and help people that were in real need of help. He felt the U.S. was in a position to do so,” Kramer told VOA.

The program has brought other benefits, Kramer said.

“The infrastructure that was set up over the 20 years under PEPFAR and also with the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria] provided important assistance to health workers and officials in dealing with other crises such as the COVID pandemic.”

Bipartisan backing

Since the legislation was signed into law in May 2003, PEPFAR has benefited from bipartisan support in Congress, even though funding for its abstinence programs — a requirement later removed in 2008 — had drawn criticism. Former President Donald Trump unsuccessfully proposed to reduce PEPFAR’s funding during his term.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS, recognizes PEPFAR’s impact.

“When he announced PEPFAR 20 years ago, our people were dying, our countries were devastated. There was fear, there was pain and suffering. … So, we come here to honor President Bush, the American government, the American taxpayers for $100 billion that has been put in this program over 20 years and saved lives,” she told VOA.

She also said it was the partnerships that formed between PEPFAR, the Global Fund, UNAIDS, civil societies, governments and others that helped to turn the tide.

Former President of Tanzania Jakaya Kikwete, who joined Bush at the event and whom Bush referred to as his “pal,” recalled getting tested publicly to encourage others who were afraid to come forward.

“I remember the 14 of July, 2007, we launched this major campaign at a big square in Dar es Salaam. … The best thing is for my wife and I to lead by example, and we should not do it under a tent where no one sees it. It would be under the tent, but let’s have TV cameras beam in, blood being drawn, being taken to the labs. Of course, my veins were easy, but my wife’s had some problems. They pricked her several times. … I was very sorry for her, but I said, ‘That’s the price of leadership.'”

Kikwete was the first African leader to do so, a gesture that Bush saluted at the event.

Fight continues

With a worldwide target of ending AIDS by 2030, stopping new infections is a must, especially given 2021 data, Byanyima said.

“We had 1.5 million infections worldwide, most of these in sub-Saharan Africa. We had 650 thousand people who died in 2021 of AIDS-related illnesses. Not one of those new infections, not one of those deaths had to happen, because we have everything we need for prevention and for putting people on treatment,” she said.

She pointed out that new infections are being noticed among girls and women between the ages of 14 and 24, gay men, sex workers and young people who inject drugs.

“We know what needs to be done,” Byanyima said.

“For girls and young women, we know it’s about gender inequalities and opportunities to be in school where it’s safe,” she said. As for “gay men, transgender women, sex workers … it’s the criminal laws that are in place that stop them from coming forth to get prevention or treatment services. We know from our evidence that these laws that are there do not serve any purpose.”
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