Month: March 2023

How Common Is Transgender Treatment Regret, Detransitioning? 

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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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Japan’s New Rocket Fails After Engine Issue, in Blow to Space Ambitions

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Japan’s new medium-lift rocket failed on its debut flight in space on Tuesday after the launcher’s second-stage engine did not ignite as planned, in a blow to its efforts to cut the cost of accessing space and compete against Elon Musk’s SpaceX. 

The 57-metre tall H3 rocket lifted off without a hitch from the Tanegashima space port, a live-streamed broadcast by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) showed. 

But upon reaching space, the rocket’s second-stage engine failed to ignite, forcing mission officials to manually destroy the vehicle. 

“It was decided the rocket could not complete its mission, so the destruct command was sent,” a launch broadcast commentator from JAXA said. “So what happened? It’s something we will have to investigate looking at all the data.” 

The failed attempt followed an aborted launch last month. 

“Unlike the previous cancellation and postponement, this time it was a complete failure,” said Hirotaka Watanabe, a professor at Osaka University with expertise in space policy. 

“This will have a serious impact on Japan’s future space policy, space business and technological competitiveness,” he added. 

Japan’s first new rocket in three decades was carrying the ALOS-3, a disaster management land observation satellite, which was also equipped with an experimental infrared sensor designed to detect North Korean ballistic missile launches. 

H3 builder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) said it was confirming the situation surrounding the rocket with JAXA and did not have an immediate comment. 

MHI has estimated that the H3’s cost per launch will be half that of its predecessor, the H-II, helping it win business in a global launch market increasingly dominated by SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket. 

A company spokesperson said earlier that it was also relying on the reliability of Japan’s previous rockets to gain business. 

In a report published in September, the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the cost of a Falcon 9 launch to low Earth orbit at $2,600 per kilogram. The equivalent price tag for the H-II is $10,500. 

A successful launch on Tuesday would have put the Japanese rocket into space ahead of the planned launch later this year of the European Space Agency’s new lower-cost Ariane 6 vehicle. 

Powered by a new simpler, lower-cost engine that includes 3D-printed parts, the H3 is designed to lift government and commercial satellites into Earth orbit and will ferry supplies to the International Space Station. 

As part of Japan’s deepening cooperation with the United States in space, it will also eventually carry cargo to the Gateway lunar space station that U.S. space agency NASA plans to build as part of its program to return people to the moon, including Japanese astronauts. 

Shares of MHI fell 1.8% in morning trade, while the broader Japanese benchmark index was up 0.4%.  
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Georgia Nuclear Plant Begins Splitting Atoms for First Time

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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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Lebanon Leans on US Dollar to Cope as Currency, Economy Tank

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When Moheidein Bazazo opened his Beirut mini-market in 1986, during some of the fiercest fighting in Lebanon’s civil war, he didn’t expect it to thrive. But several years later, he had shelves full of food and needed 12 employees to help him manage a bustling business.

Those days are over. Bazazo now mostly works alone, often in the dark to reduce his electric bill. Regular customers are struggling to make ends meet, and as they buy less so does he, leaving some shelves and refrigerators bare.

With the Lebanese economy in shambles and its currency in free fall, Bazazo spends much of his time trying to keep up with a fluctuating exchange rate. Businesses like his are increasingly leaning on one of the world’s most reliable assets — the U.S. dollar — as a way to cope with the worst financial crisis in its modern history.

“I once lived a comfortable life, and now I’m left with just about $100 after covering the shop’s expenses” at the end of the month, Bazazo said, crunching numbers into a calculator. “Sometimes it feels like you’re working for free.”

The Lebanese pound has lost as much as 98% in value since late 2019, and now most restaurants and many stores are demanding to be paid in dollars. The government recently began allowing grocery stores like Bazazo’s to start doing the same.

While this “dollarization” aims to ease inflation and stabilize the economy, it also threatens to push more people into poverty and deepen the crisis.

That’s because few in Lebanon have access to dollars to pay for food and other essentials priced that way. But endemic corruption means political and financial leaders are resisting the alternative to dollarization: long-term reforms to banks and government agencies that would end wasteful spending and jump-start the economy.

Other countries like Zimbabwe and Ecuador have turned to the dollar to beat back hyperinflation and other economic woes, with mixed success. Pakistan and Egypt also are struggling with crashing currencies but their economic crises are largely tied to an outside event — Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has caused food and energy prices to soar.

Lebanon’s woes are much of its own making.

As the country felt the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, a deadly Beirut port explosion in 2020 and Russia’s invasion Ukraine, its central bank simply printed more currency, eroding its value and causing inflation to soar.

Three-quarters of Lebanon’s 6 million people have fallen into poverty since the 2019 crisis began. Crippling power cuts and medicine shortages have paralyzed much of public life.

Currency shortages prompted banks to limit withdrawals, trapping millions of people’s savings. It’s led some in desperation to hold up banks to forcibly take back their money.

The damage of the last few years was magnified by decades of economic mismanagement that allowed the government to spend well beyond its means. The head of the country’s Central Bank was recently charged with embezzling public funds and other crimes.

The pulverized Lebanese pound fluctuates almost hourly. Though officially pegged to the dollar since 1997, the pound’s value is dictated now by an opaque black-market rate that has become standard for most goods and services.

Last month, its value fell from about 64,000 pounds to the dollar to 88,000 on the black market, while the official rate is 15,000. Making things worse for a country reliant on imported food, fuel and other products priced in dollars, the government recently tripled the amount of tax — in Lebanese pounds — that importers must pay on those goods.

This will likely lead to more price hikes. For small businesses, it could means selling products at a loss just minutes after stacking them on the shelves.

Dollarization could give the impression of greater financial stability, but it also will widen already vast economic inequalities, said Sami Zoughaib, an economist and research manager at Beirut-based think tank the Policy Initiative.

“We have a class that has access to dollars … (and) you have another portion of the population that earns in Lebanese pounds that have now seen their income completely decimated,” Zoughaib said.

The shift to a more dollar-dominated economy happened not by government decree, but by companies and individuals refusing to accept payment in a currency that relentlessly loses value.

First, luxury goods and services were priced in dollars for the wealthy, tourists and owners of private generators, who have to pay for imported diesel. Then it was most restaurants. And now grocery stores.

Caretaker Economy Minister Amin Salam said the Lebanese pound was “used and abused” over the past three years and that dollarizing grocery stores will bring some stability to fluctuating exchange rates.

As more people and businesses reject the local currency, the dollar gradually becomes the de facto currency. The lack of trust in the Lebanese pound has become irreversible, said Layal Mansour, an economist specializing in financial crises in dollarized countries.

“People are fed up with the fluctuation of the dollar rate, and having to spend lots of time changing it, so practically, on a societal level, it’s better to use dollars,” Mansour said. “This is the end of the Lebanese pound as we know it.”

Without a strategy to address the economy’s underlying problems, the government “is allowing this to happen,” said Lawrence White, an economics professor at George Mason University.

Dollarization means the Central Bank can’t keep printing currency that fuels inflation, and having a more reliable currency might create more confidence for businesses. But many people could be further squeezed if Beirut officially adopts the greenback as its currency.

Millions in Lebanon who tolerated the dollarization of luxury items may not respond similarly to groceries, whose prices were already surging at some of the highest rates globally.

Over 90% of the population earns their income in Lebanese pounds, according to a 2022 survey by the International Labor Organization and the Lebanese government’s statistics agency. Families that receive money from relatives abroad spend much of it keeping the lights on and covering medical expenses.

They would have to be paid in dollars to adequately adjust, which most businesses and employers, especially the Lebanese state, are short on.

Public school teachers have been on strike for three months because their salaries barely cover the cost of gasoline to commute. Telecom workers are threatening walkouts because their wages have not been adjusted to the Lebanese pound’s falling value.

Lebanon is nowhere near implementing the kinds of reforms needed for an International Monetary Fund bailout, such as restructuring banks and inefficient government agencies, reducing corruption, and establishing a credible and transparent exchange-rate system.

Zoughaib, the Beirut economist, said he fears the absence of sound policy and economic reforms means that dollarization will likely only deepen poverty, making it even more difficult for families to pay for health care, education and food.

Bazazo, the market owner, acknowledges that pricing in dollars will help him manage his finances and cut a small portion of his losses but worries it will drive away some customers.

“Let’s see what happens,” Bazazo said, sighing. “They’re already complaining.”
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Italy Ministers Fume Over Proposed Smoking Ban

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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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Attorneys General in 45 US States Demand TikTok Hand Over Information

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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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How We Eat Could Add 1 Degree of Warming By 2100

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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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Twitter Suffers Glitches Over Inaccessible Links

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Twitter users reported a string of problems with the social media site on Monday, including broken links and images not loading.

The company’s tech support account said in a tweet, “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed.”

Twitter’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, tweeted Monday: “This platform is so brittle (sigh). Will be fixed shortly.” 

The problems appeared to be resolved about an hour after they began.

“Things should now be working as normal,” the company tweeted around 1 p.m. Eastern time.

The glitches started around midday Monday, with users around the world saying they were unable to read links to articles from outside websites.

Internet observation group NetBlocks said the issue was also affecting image and video content.

Musk tweeted later Monday in response to another user, “A small API change had massive ramifications. The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason. Will ultimately need a complete rewrite.”

API, or Application Programming Interface, refers to software that is made available to outside developers and defines how two software components — in this case, those of Twitter and those belonging to outside platforms — can communicate with each other.

Musk has held several rounds of layoffs at Twitter, letting go more than half of the company’s staff. Some former employees have raised concerns that the mass layoffs could lead to technical problems for the platform.

Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, following a deal to buy the company for $44 billion.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence-France Presse. 
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As Parts of Egyptian Economy Face Crisis, Others Appear More Resilient

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As the Egyptian economy struggles against negative headwinds from many directions, some sectors appear to be performing well.

Ordinary Egyptians are buying lower-end merchandise as their purchasing power is eroded by inflation and the effects of Egypt’s weakening currency on the prices of imported goods.

President Abdel Fattah el Sisi told a gathering of international leaders several months ago that the Russia-Ukraine conflict was seriously affecting Egypt’s economy. Egypt buys most of its grain from Russia and Ukraine and the price of importing wheat for a population of more than 100 million people has gone up drastically.

David Butter, an economist at Britain’s Chatham House research group, told VOA that Egypt’s rocky economy has been affected by a large increase in external and internal debt, made worse by a succession of crises, including COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and increases in U.S. interest rates that have aggravated capital outflows from the country.

“It’s a structural, fiscal deficit, big buildup of external debt, which is allied to large public debt, so there’s a whole lot of heavy burdens that the economy is carrying and it has depended on to get through this situation on having a sustained period of relatively high growth and improved balance of payments. So, as soon as one or two wheels fall off this rather unstable wagon, then they’re in big trouble,” he said.

Butter notes that Gulf states came to Egypt’s rescue by adding $13 billion in deposits to Egypt’s central bank after international investors pulled $14 billion out of the country last year. Gulf states and the international community have helped Egypt out of numerous economic crises in recent years, including a $3 billion IMF loan in December.

Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek told VOA that Egypt has agreed to privatize large portions of its economic sector in the next few years and that Prime Minister Mustapha Madbouli just returned from a trip to Qatar, where he discussed investment opportunities in Egyptian companies.

“Devaluation is expected this month, with the hope that this would push Gulf states to buy Egyptian companies that are listed and that would generate a lot of foreign currency that the government needs to pay debt and interest on debt,” he said.

A shortage of dollars has caused Egypt’s central bank to raise interest rates and triggered a decrease in the value of the Egyptian pound, making prices rise, since the country imports 65% of what its citizens consume.

Many merchants like Abdou, a dry cleaner, said they are downbeat.

“The economy is terrible,” he said. “It’s a struggle to make enough to live on. Lots of people come to rummage through the merchandise,” he said, but that they don’t spend a lot of money because they don’t have a lot of money to spend.

Consumers have complained about how the crisis is affecting them. Jamila, a 45 year-old homemaker, buys chicken from a merchant who sells government-subsidized meat from a trunk along a large boulevard in the Cairo suburb of Dokki. She said that despite the subsidized prices, the meat is still too expensive.

While many people and businesses are struggling, others are flourishing. Jurgen Sterkau, who is the general manager of the Cairo Marriott in the Zamalek area, said that his hotel is completely full and that business has never been better.

“All the major hotels on the River Nile in Cairo,” he said, “are doing extremely well (right now), despite the previous setbacks of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as COVID-19.”

Egypt also has prospects of increasing natural gas revenues from undersea fields.

Said Sadek points out that Egypt is the only country in the eastern Mediterranean that is capable of liquifying natural gas and sending it to Europe by pipeline, giving it a huge economic advantage over regional rivals.
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UN Takes Step Toward New Way of Tracking Greenhouse Gases

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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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Satellites Could Beam Poorest Nations out of Digital Desert 

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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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Nations Reach Accord to Protect Marine Life on High Seas 

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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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US Shoe Polish Stands Lose Some Shine

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On a recent winter weekday at Penn Station Shoe Repair and Shoe Shine, men hop onto shoeshine chairs and pull out newspapers and phones to read while shoeshiners get to work applying polish and elbow grease to loafers, boots and other leather shoes. When finished, these customers hand over $8 in cash at a counter where a sign reads “We’re not God, but we do save soles.”

Shoeshining has a vaunted history in the U.S. In the 1860s, Horatio Alger popularized the “rags-to-riches” American narrative with his book “Ragged Dick” about a shoeshiner (or “bootblack”) who works his way up to wealth. “Shoeshine boys” (and occasional girls) have subsequently been in countless movies and TV shows.

Today, the tradition of getting a quick polish from a rag-toting shoeshiner is greatly diminished, and many stands similar to the one in Penn Station have disappeared across the country. The decline has been exacerbated by the pandemic, remote working and the rise in popularity of more casual workwear when people did return to the office. SC Johnson, which makes the biggest shoe polish brand, Kiwi, even said in January that it had stopped selling the brand in the U.K. due to softening demand (they still sell it in the U.S.) 

The last time the Census listed shoeshining as a discrete business was 2007, when only 30 establishments were counted. The more-encompassing shoe repair market has declined an estimated 23% between 2013 and 2023 to $307 million, according to market research firm IBISWorld. Shoe polish sales in 2022 totaled 27.3 million units, down 29% compared with 2019, according to figures from Nielsen, a sign of the changes brought on by the pandemic. 

Nisan Khaimov, who owns the Penn Station stand, said his stand would shine 80 to 100 shoes each workday before the pandemic. Now it’s between 30 to 50 on Tuesday to Thursday, and even fewer on Mondays and Fridays. Hybrid work is hurting his business.

“Until people come back to work, the problems will not be solved,” said Khaimov, who benefits from commuters traveling in and out of New York City who can’t get their shoes shined where they live. “And it’s not good for landlords and for tenants also like us. So, we’re waiting. But eventually it will go back to normal, we hope. But when we don’t know.”

Rory Heenan, 38, an accountant in Philadelphia, said that as a young boy he would take the train with his father on his way to work one Friday each month and watch him get a shoeshine.

“I would just sit here as a a little guy, you know, observing,” he said. “And here I am, you know, 30 years later, doing the same thing. So, it’s certainly something that’s passed down over time.”

Across town, in the corridor between the subway and The Port Authority bus terminal, Jairo Cardenas is also feeling the pinch. Business at Alpha Shoes Repair Corp., which he’s run for 33 years, is down 75% compared with prior to the pandemic. He’s down to one shoeshiner, from the three he employed before the pandemic. His shoeshiners used to shine 60 or 70 shoes a day. Now a good day is 10 to 15 shines.

Cardenas’ landlord gave him a break on rent, but he’s still struggling, and has seen several other shoeshine stores in the area close. Still, he is noticing an uptick in people returning to work and hopes business slowly returns to normal by the spring.

Shoe repairs typically bring in more money than shines. At David Mesquita’s Leather Spa, which operates five shoe repair and shoeshine businesses, including two in Grand Central, the bulk of the business comes from shoe, handbag and garment repair. But shoeshines are still a key offering to draw people in to Leather Spa locations since they’re not available everywhere.

Pre-pandemic, Leather Spa had four shoeshine chairs in Grand Central and six shoeshiners rotating, who would do about 120 shines a day. Nowadays, there are three shoeshiners who do 40 or 50 shines on the best days.

But Mesquita is seeing people slowly coming back. His December 2022 shoeshine numbers were up 52% compared with December 2021. Mondays and Fridays are less busy than the middle of the week due to office workers’ hybrid schedules.

“Traffic is slowly coming back in, we’re seeing the commuters come in and everything, but we’re still not back 100% of what we were,” Mesquita said.

Mesquita said shoeshining is not something that will go away completely.

“I think it’s just a little luxury,” he said. “People like to treat themselves, you know, whether it’s once a week or twice a week or, you know, once every two weeks. It’s just nice.”

Besides big city transit hubs, airports are one of the few remaining spots to reliably get a shoeshine. Jill Wright owns Executive Shine, which operates shoeshine stations in the Denver and Charlotte airports. Her business was devastated when air travel shut down.

When airports started to reopen, they were empty. The only people getting their shoes shined were pilots and crew, she said, which kept her company in business. Now, Wright says her businesses is still just 35% of what it was in 2019.

“Travel has really changed,” she said. “Companies are starting to come back but not to the degree that they were.”

Business travel is rebounding, but the U.S. Travel Association predicts 2023 business trips will still be down 10% from 2019, and will return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024. Meanwhile, people are dressing differently when they travel. Instead of traveling in workwear, some travelers that still want to get their shoes shined will travel in tennis shoes, pull out their dress shoes to get a shine, and then put them back in their bag, Wright said.

Like Mesquita, Wright expects demand for shoeshines will never go away completely, because it’s more than just a transactional service. A shine is a moment of connection between two people, particularly at an airport where there is a lot of rushing around and stress, she said.

“People come for a shoeshine, but they also come for the connection and for the conversation and just for a place to relax and talk and be seen and feel some compassion,” she said. 
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China Sets Year’s Economic Growth Target ‘Around 5%’

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China’s government announced plans to promote a consumer-led revival of the nation’s struggling economy as its legislature opened a session Sunday that will tighten President Xi Jinping’s control over business and society.

Premier Li Keqiang, the top economic official, set this year’s official growth target “around 5%” following the end of anti-virus controls that kept millions of people at home and triggered protests. Growth last year fell to 3%, the second-weakest level since at least the 1970s.

“We should give priority to the recovery and expansion of consumption,” Li said in a nationally televised speech on government plans before the ceremonial National People’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.

The full meeting of the 2,977 members of the NPC is the year’s highest-profile event but its work is limited to endorsing decisions made by the ruling Communist Party and showcasing official initiatives.

This month, the NPC is set to endorse the appointment of a government of Xi loyalists including a new premier after the 69-year-old president expanded his status as China’s most powerful figure in decades by awarding himself a third five-year term as party general secretary in October, possibly preparing to become leader for life. Li, an advocate of free enterprise, was forced out as the No. 2 party leader in October.

Xi’s new leadership team will face challenges ranging from weak global demand for exports and lingering U.S. tariff hikes in a feud over technology and security to curbs on access to Western processor chips because of security fears. Beijing’s relations with Washington and its Asian neighbors have been strained by disputes over technology, security and control of the South China Sea.

In his report Sunday, the premier called for accelerating industrial and technology development, an area in which Beijing’s state-led efforts have strained relations with Washington and other trading partners. They complain China steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology and improperly subsidizes and shields its fledgling competitors in violation of its market-opening commitments.

Xi earlier singled out encouraging jittery consumers and entrepreneurs to spend and invest as a priority at the ruling party’s economic planning meeting in December.

Beijing needs to “fully release consumption potential,” Xi said, according to a text released last month.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has promoted an even more dominant role for the ruling party. He has called for the party to return to its “original mission” as China’s economic, social and cultural leader and carry out the “rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation.”

Xi has crushed dissent, stepped up censorship and control over information, and tightened control over Hong Kong.

Xi’s government has tightened control over China’s biggest e-commerce and other tech companies with anti-monopoly and data security crackdowns that wiped billions of dollars off their stock market value. Beijing is pressing them to pay for social welfare and official initiatives to develop processor chips and other technology.

That has prompted warnings economic growth will suffer.

Li’s report Sunday reinforced the importance of state industry. It promised to support entrepreneurs who generate China’s new jobs and wealth but also said the government will “enhance the core competitiveness” of state-owned companies that dominate industries from banking and energy to telecoms and steel.

Li also called for “resolute steps” to oppose formal independence for Taiwan, the self-ruled island democracy claimed by Beijing as part of its territory. He called for “peaceful reunification” between China and Taiwan, which split in 1949 after a civil war, but announced no initiatives.

Taiwan never has been part of the People’s Republic of China, but Beijing says it is obligated to unite with the mainland, by force if necessary. Xi’s government has stepped up efforts to intimidate the island by flying fighter jets and bombers nearby and firing missiles into the ocean.

Chinese economic growth has struggled since mid-2021, when tighter controls on debt that Beijing worries is dangerously high triggered a slump in the vast real estate industry, which supports millions of jobs. Smaller developers were forced into bankruptcy and some defaulted on bonds, causing alarm in global financial markets.

Longer term, the workforce has been shrinking for a decade, putting pressure on plans to increase China’s wealth and global influence.

Consumer spending is gradually recovering, but the International Monetary Fund and some private sector economists forecast growth this year as low as 4.4%, well below the official target.

A measure of factory activity rose to a nine-year high in February. Other measures of activity including the number of subway passengers and express deliveries rose.

A central bank official said Friday real estate activity is recovering and lending for construction and home purchases is rising.

A recovery based on consumer spending is likely to be more gradual than one driven by stimulus spending or a boom in real estate investment. But Chinese leaders are trying to avoid reigniting a rise in debt and want to nurture self-sustaining growth based on consumption instead of exports and investment.

The official in line to become premier is Li Qiang, a former party secretary of Shanghai who is close to Xi but has no government experience at the national level. Li Qiang was named No. 2 party leader in October.

That reflects Xi’s emphasis on promoting officials with whom he has personal history and bypassing party tradition that leadership candidates need experience as Cabinet ministers or in other national-level posts.

If achieved, the official growth target would be an improvement over last year but down sharply from 2021’s 8.1%.
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Can’t Take Statins? New Pill Cuts Cholesterol, Heart Attacks

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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 Might Issue Alert on Cough Syrup Exports After Toxins Found

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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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In Britain, ‘Warm Hubs’ Emerge to Beat Soaring Energy Costs

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On a blustery late-winter day in Shakespeare’s birthplace, the foyer of the Other Place theater is a cozy refuge. Visitors are having meetings over coffee, checking emails, writing poetry, learning to sew.

It looks and feels like an arty café in the picturesque streets of Stratford-upon-Avon, but it’s a “warm hub” set up by the Royal Shakespeare Company drama troupe to welcome people struggling to heat their homes because of sky-high energy prices.

Warm hubs have sprouted across Britain by the thousands this winter as soaring food and energy prices drive millions to turn down the thermostat or skimp on hot meals. Research by the opposition Labour Party counted almost 13,000 such hubs, funded by a mix of charities, community groups and the government and nestled in libraries, churches, community centers and even a tearoom at King Charles III’s Highgrove country estate.

Wendy Freeman, an artist, writer and seventh generation Stratfordian, heard about the RSC’s warm hub from a friend. She lives in “a tiny house with no central heating” and relies on a coal fire for warmth. Like many, she has cut back in response to the cost-of-living crisis driven by the highest inflation since the 1980s.

“You just adapt,” said Freeman, 69, who was using the center as a warm, quiet place to work on a poem. “Little things, like putting less water in the kettle. I was brought up with ‘save the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves.’ I always cook from scratch and eat what’s in season.

“But it’s nice to go somewhere warm,” she added.

A perfect storm of Russia’s war in Ukraine, lingering pandemic disruption and economic aftershocks of Brexit is putting more people in Britain under financial strain. Households and businesses were hit especially hard after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove up the cost of natural gas needed for heating and helped push the U.K. to the precipice of a recession.

The U.K.’s annual inflation rate was just above 10% in January, with food prices up almost 17% over the year. Some 62% of adults are using less natural gas or electricity to save money, according to the Office for National Statistics. A quarter of households regularly run out of money for essentials, pollster Survation found.

Though oil and natural gas prices have fallen from last year’s peaks, the average British household energy bill is still double what it was a year ago. Costs for many are due to rise by another 20% on April 1 when a government-set price cap goes up.

Anne Bolger, a retired math teacher, happened across the warm hub during a walk one day and has come back every week since. She drops in to check emails, prep for math tutoring or do a jigsaw puzzle.

“Today’s the day that I’m appreciating it, because home is freezing,” she said.

The hub runs one afternoon a week in the smallest of the RSC’s three theaters. On Tuesday, the space held a mixture of theater staff, actors on the way to rehearsals and visitors looking to get warm. Organizers provide puzzles, games, toys for children, free tea, coffee and Wi-Fi — even a sewing table.

“I like the fact that it’s such a creative space,” said Bolger, 66. “People are having meetings there, they’re talking, they’re working. I just feel a bit more alive than sitting at home, a bit more connected.”

That’s just what organizers want to hear. They say warm hubs exist to ease loneliness as well as energy poverty.

“The warmth is in the welcome as much as a warm building to come to,” said Nicola Salmon, who oversees the hub as the RSC’s creative place-making manager. “There is always somebody here to chat to.”

Stratford, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of London, is a prosperous town that makes a good living from William Shakespeare, its most famous son. Even on a wintry weekday, tourists traipse though streets of half-timbered Tudor buildings to see the house where the Bard was born, visit the schoolroom where he studied and stand over his grave in the medieval Holy Trinity Church.

The RSC is one of Stratford’s main cultural attractions and major employers. Salmon says the warm hub is part of the company’s efforts to get closer to its surrounding community, a town that “is often perceived as affluent and well-off” but contains “areas of great deprivation.”

Like Britain’s food banks — now numbering an estimated 2,500 — warm hubs are a crisis measure showing signs of becoming permanent.

The Warwickshire Rural Community Council, a charity covering the county around Stratford, set up a mobile warm hub — a minibus-turned-pop-up outdoor café — in 2021 as pandemic restrictions plunged many rural residents into isolation.

A year ago, the charity ran five hubs across the county, with backing from Cadent, the private company that distributes much of Britain’s heating gas. As winter hit and energy bills soared, the number mushroomed to 90, providing everything from meals to repair workshops and slow-cooking courses meant to reduce gas use.

About 30 of the hubs will stay open this summer — with a view to becoming permanent — and the mobile hub will be on the road five days a week.

“People say we shouldn’t be in this situation, and we shouldn’t be,” said Jackie Holcroft, the charity’s warm hubs manager. “But we are. And I think one of the most amazing things is that you’ve got hundreds, thousands of volunteers around Warwickshire and they’re all coming together to make a difference.”

The RSC’s warm space will close at the end of March, but the company is already planning for its return next year.

“I’ll miss it like crazy,” said Bolger, one of the regulars. “I’m not hoping that the fuel crisis goes on forever, but I am hoping this place will stay open.”
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South African Scientists Use Bugs in War Against Water Hyacinth Weed

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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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Former President Bush Marks 20 Years of Signature HIV/AIDS Policy

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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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Pharmacy’s Decision on Abortion Pill May Signal Restricted Availability in US

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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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