Los Angeles — On a recent Sunday, Tracy Quinn drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to assess damage wrought upon the coastline by the Palisades Fire.

The water line was darkened by ash. Burnt remnants of washing machines and dryers and metal appliances were strewn about the shoreline. Sludge carpeted the water’s edge. Waves during high tide lapped onto charred homes, pulling debris and potentially toxic ash into the ocean as they receded.

“It was just heartbreaking,” said Quinn, president and CEO of the environmental group Heal the Bay, whose team has reported ash and debris some 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Palisades burn area west of Los Angeles.

As crews work to remove potentially hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous materials from the Los Angeles wildfires, researchers and officials are trying to understand how the fires on land have impacted the sea. The Palisades and Eaton fires scorched thousands of homes, businesses, cars and electronics, turning everyday items into hazardous ash made of pesticides, asbestos, plastics, lead, heavy metals and more.

Since much of it could end up in the Pacific Ocean, there are concerns and many unknowns about how the fires could affect life under the sea.

“We haven’t seen a concentration of homes and buildings burned so close to the water,” Quinn said.

Fire debris and potentially toxic ash could make the water unsafe for surfers and swimmers, especially after rainfall that can transport chemicals, trash and other hazards into the sea. Longer term, scientists worry if and how charred urban contaminants will affect the food supply.

The atmospheric river and mudslides that pummeled the Los Angeles region last week exacerbated some of those fears.

When the fires broke out in January, one of Mara Dias’ first concerns was ocean water contamination. Strong winds were carrying smoke and ash far beyond the blazes before settling at sea, said the water quality manager for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental nonprofit.

Scientists on board a research vessel during the fires detected ash and waste on the water as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) offshore, said marine ecologist Julie Dinasquet with the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Things like twigs and shard. They described the smell as electronics burning, she recalled, “not like a nice campfire.”

Runoff from rain also is a huge and immediate concern. Rainfall picks up contaminants and trash while flushing toward the sea through a network of drains and rivers. That runoff could contain “a lot of nutrients, nitrogen and phosphate that end up in the ash of the burn material that can get into the water,” said Dias, as well as “heavy metals, something called PAHs, which are given off when you burn different types of fuel.”

Mudslides and debris flows in the Palisades Fire burn zone also can dump more hazardous waste into the ocean. After fires, the soil in burn scars is less able to absorb rainfall and can develop a layer that repels water from the remains of seared organic material. When there is less organic material to hold the soil in place, the risks of mudslides and debris flows increase.

Los Angeles County officials, with help from other agencies, have set thousands of feet of concrete barriers, sandbags, silt socks and more to prevent debris from reaching beaches. The LA County Board of Supervisors also recently passed a motion seeking state and federal help to expand beach clean ups, prepare for storm runoff and test ocean water for potential toxins and chemicals, among other things.

Beyond the usual samples, state water officials and others are testing for total and dissolved metals such as arsenic, lead and aluminum and volatile organic compounds.

They also are sampling for microplastics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, that are harmful to human and aquatic life, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a group of man-made chemicals shown to cause cancer in animals and other serious health effects. Now banned from being manufactured, they were used in products like pigments, paints and electrical equipment.

County public health officials said chemical tests of water samples last month did not raise health concerns, so they downgraded one beach closure to an ocean water advisory. Beachgoers were still advised to stay out of the water.

Dinasquet and colleagues are working to understand how far potentially toxic ash and debris dispersed across the ocean, how deep and how fast they sunk and, over time, where it ends up.

Forest fires can deposit important nutrients like iron and nitrogen into the ocean ecosystem, boosting the growth of phytoplankton, which can create a positive, cascading effect across the ecosystem. But the potentially toxic ash from urban coastal fires could have dire consequences, Dinasquet said.

“Reports are already showing that there was a lot of lead and asbestos in the ash,” she added. “This is really bad for people so it’s probably also very bad for the marine organisms.”
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YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Chad health officials have sealed several dozen schools, sent thousands of children and their teachers home, and restricted movements to and from the Bologo district — 400 kilometers south of the capital, N’djamena — to contain a measles epidemic. Officials blame vaccine hesitancy for the rapid measles spread within the past two weeks.

State TV reports that thousands of children in Chad’s Bologo district have been ordered to stay home for a week as their schools remain closed to prevent measles from spreading. Many churches and mosques in the district are closed too.

About 50 cases of measles were confirmed within the past two weeks, said Oumar Mahamat Traore, chief health official in Bologo, appointed by Chad’s central government in N’djamena.

He said the situation is very concerning because all seven of the hospitals in Bologo district have at least five children receiving treatment for measles. He said parents should make sure all children having high fever, runny nose, red and watery eyes and rashes on their faces and bodies accompanied by small white spots inside the mouth are immediately rushed to the nearest hospital, where they will receive free treatment.

Traore spoke to VOA on Saturday by telephone. He said it is difficult to know the number of children affected by the measles epidemic because more than 80% of civilians in Bologo prefer African traditional medicine and go to conventional hospitals only in critical circumstances.

Hospitals have not reported any deaths, but some affected children are in critical condition, according to government officials.

Chad’s government said health workers have been dispatched to Bologo and surrounding towns and villages to educate civilians against popular beliefs that the viral disease is divine punishment for wrongdoing and can be treated only by offering traditional sacrifices to the gods.

Health workers are raising awareness that measles can be treated with conventional medicine.

The United Nations reports that measles is one of the main causes of death among children in Chad. Outbreaks occur often because vaccination coverage remains low throughout the central African state.

Chad’s Health Ministry says vaccine hesitancy is to blame for millions of children not being inoculated against childhood diseases including measles.

In 2023, Doctors Without Borders reported that more than 1.3 million children between the ages of 6 months and 10 years old were inoculated against measles.

Chad said there were plans with its international partners to inoculate at least 4 million children in the country of close to 18 million people.

But armed conflicts and tensions triggered by elections to end a three-year transition that followed the death of President Idriss Deby Itno in 2021 made it impossible for humanitarian agencies to continue vaccination drives.

Officials hope that with peace returning and constitutional order reestablished — with the election of Mahamat Idriss Deby as president and the new parliament — more vaccine campaigns will be organized.

Measles is a highly contagious infection of the respiratory system that can lead to severe complications and death. The U.N. says it is one of the most contagious diseases in the world.

In the absence of specific treatment, vaccination is the most effective medical tool against measles, the World Health Organization said. The vaccine is safe, effective and inexpensive, according to the U.N.  
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U.S. health officials have banned Red Dye No. 3 from American foods, decades after the synthetic coloring was banned in Europe. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, studies have linked the bright red color additive to cancer in male laboratory rats.
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BALTIMORE — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s recent executive order aimed at restricting gender-affirming health care for transgender people under age 19.

The judge’s ruling came after a lawsuit was filed earlier this month on behalf of families with transgender or nonbinary children who allege their health care has been compromised by the president’s order. A national group for family of LGBTQ+ people and a doctors organization are also plaintiffs in the court challenge, one of many lawsuits opposing one of the many executive orders Trump has issued.

Judge Brendan Hurson, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, granted the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order following a hearing in federal court in Baltimore. The ruling, in effect for 14 days, essentially puts Trump’s directive on hold while the case proceeds. The restraining order could also be extended.

Shortly after taking office, Trump signed an executive order directing federally run insurance programs to exclude coverage for gender-affirming care. That includes Medicaid, which covers such services in some states, and TRICARE for military families. Trump’s order also called on the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue litigation and legislation to oppose the practice.

The lawsuit includes several accounts from families of appointments being canceled as medical institutions react to the new directive.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue Trump’s executive order is “unlawful and unconstitutional” because it seeks to withhold federal funds previously authorized by Congress and because it violates anti-discrimination laws while infringing on the rights of parents.

Like legal challenges to state bans on gender-affirming care, the lawsuit also alleges the policy is discriminatory because it allows federal funds to cover the same treatments when they’re not used for gender transition.

Some hospitals immediately paused gender-affirming care, including prescriptions for puberty blockers and hormone therapy, while they assess how the order affects them.

Trump’s approach on the issue represents an abrupt change from the Biden administration, which sought to explicitly extend civil rights protections to transgender people. Trump has used strong language in opposing gender-affirming care, asserting falsely that “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex.”

Major medical groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics support access to gender-affirming care.

Young people who persistently identify as a gender that differs from their sex assigned at birth are first evaluated by a team of professionals. Some may try a social transition, involving changing a hairstyle or pronouns. Some may later also receive puberty blockers or hormones. Surgery is extremely rare for minors.
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NEW YORK — A new study shows that bird flu has silently spread from animals to some veterinarians.

The study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoes two smaller ones that detected evidence of infection in previously undiagnosed farmworkers. In those studies, several of the infected workers remembered having symptoms of H5N1 bird flu, while none of the veterinarians in the new paper recalled any such symptoms.

The new study is more evidence that the official U.S. tally of confirmed human bird flu infections — 68 in the last year — is likely a significant undercount, said Dr. Gregory Gray, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

“This means that people are being infected, likely due to their occupational exposures, and not developing signs of illness and therefore not seeking medical care,” Gray said.

He said it shows that officials cannot fully understand bird flu transmission by only tracking people who go to medical clinics with symptoms.

Evidence of antibodies

CDC researchers went to an American Association of Bovine Practitioners veterinary conference in September 2024 in Columbus, Ohio. They recruited 150 vets from 46 states to fill out a questionnaire and agree to have their blood drawn. None said they had suffered red eyes or other symptoms associated with bird flu.

Testing found three of the vets, or 2%, had evidence of antibodies to H5N1 infection. All three worked with dairy cattle, as well as other animals. None had worked with a herd known to be infected, although one had worked with a flock of infected poultry.

Gray and some colleagues did a study last year of 14 dairy farmworkers and found that two, or 14%, had evidence of past infections. Both had experienced symptoms but were never diagnosed.

Another study published last year by the CDC checked 115 dairy workers. The researchers found that eight of them, or 7%, had evidence in their blood of recent infection. Half recalled feeling ill.

The studies were far too small to use as a basis to provide a solid estimate of how many undiagnosed human infections are out there, Gray said. But even just a very small percentage could translate to hundreds or thousands of Americans who were infected while working with animals, he noted.

That’s not necessarily a reason to be alarmed, said Jacqueline Nolting, an Ohio State University researcher who helped CDC with the latest study.

Available studies suggest people who are infected mount antibody responses and may develop natural immunity, which is “good news,” she said.

However, if the virus changes or mutates to start making people very sick, or to start spreading easily from person to person, that would be “a completely different story,” Nolting said.

Caution around sick birds 

The H5N1 bird flu has been spreading widely among wild birds, poultry, cows and other animals. Its escalating presence in the environment increases the chances people will be exposed and potentially catch it, officials have said.

Right now, the risk to the public is low, the CDC says. But officials continue to urge people who have contact with sick or dead birds to take precautions, including wearing respiratory and eye protection and gloves when handling poultry.

“No one’s really questioning that the virus has been moving around the country more than has been reported,” said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. 

He said he expected to see stepped-up information reminding veterinarians across the country to protect themselves with gloves, masks and other equipment to halt infection.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in control of $1.7 trillion in federal spending, vaccine recommendations and food safety as well as health insurance programs for roughly half the country.

Republicans fell in line behind Trump despite hesitancy over Kennedy’s views on vaccines, voting 52-48 to elevate the scion of one of America’s most storied political — and Democratic — families to secretary of the Health and Human Services Department.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, was the only “no” vote among Republicans, mirroring his stands against Trump’s picks for the Pentagon chief and director of national intelligence. All Democrats opposed Kennedy.

The GOP has largely embraced Kennedy’s vision to “Make America Healthy Again” by directing the public health agencies to focus on chronic diseases such as obesity.

Kennedy, 71, whose name and family tragedies have put him in the national spotlight since he was a child, has earned a formidable following with his populist and sometimes extreme views on food, chemicals and vaccines.

His audience only grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Kennedy devoted much of his time to a nonprofit that sued vaccine makers and harnessed social media campaigns to erode trust in vaccines as well as the government agencies that promote them.

With Trump’s backing, Kennedy insisted he was “uniquely positioned” to revive trust in those public health agencies, which include the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health.

Last week, Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican, said he hoped Kennedy “goes wild” in reining in health care costs and improving Americans’ health. But before agreeing to support Kennedy, potential holdout Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican a doctor who leads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, required assurances that Kennedy would not make changes to existing vaccine recommendations.

During Senate hearings, Democrats tried to prod Kennedy to deny a long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Some lawmakers also raised alarms about Kennedy financially benefiting from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers.

Kennedy made more than $850,000 last year from an arrangement referring clients to a law firm that has sued the makers of Gardasil, a human papillomavirus vaccine that protects against cervical cancer. If confirmed as health secretary, he promised to reroute fees collected from the arrangement to his son.

Kennedy will take over the agency amid a massive federal government shakeup, led by billionaire Elon Musk, that has shut off — even if temporarily — billions of taxpayer dollars in public health funding and left thousands of federal workers unsure about their jobs.

On Friday, the NIH announced it would cap billions of dollars for medical research given to universities and hospitals to develop treatments for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Kennedy, too, has called for a staffing overhaul at the NIH, FDA and CDC. Last year, he promised to fire 600 employees at the NIH, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research.
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The New York State Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed its first case of the new mpox strain, adding to the global concerns over the spread of the little-known variant.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were three confirmed cases in the country — in California, Georgia and New Hampshire — caused by the clade Ib strain. The agency said the three cases were not linked.

The World Health Organization declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years in August, following an outbreak of the viral infection in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has spread to neighboring countries.

The New York State Department of Health declined to provide further information on the case.
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FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA — Scientists have long suspected that Mexican long-nosed bats migrate through southeastern Arizona, but without capturing and measuring the night-flying creatures, proof has been elusive. 

Researchers say they now have a way to tell the endangered species apart from other bats by analyzing saliva the nocturnal mammals leave behind when sipping nectar from plants and residential hummingbird feeders. 

Bat Conservation International, a nonprofit group working to end the extinction of bat species worldwide, teamed up with residents from southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and west Texas for the saliva-swabbing campaign. 

The samples of saliva left along potential migration routes were sent to a lab at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where researchers looked for environmental DNA — or eDNA — to confirm that the bats cycle through Arizona and consider the region their part-time home. 

The Mexican long-nosed bat has been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 1988, and is the only one in Arizona with that federal protection. It is an important species for pollinating cactus, agave and other desert plants. 

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department announced the discovery in late January. While expanding Arizona’s list of bat species to 29 is exciting, wildlife managers say the use of this novel, noninvasive method to nail it down also deserves to be celebrated. 

“If we were trying to identify the species in the absence of eDNA, biologists could spend hours and hours trying to catch one of these bats, and even then, you’re not guaranteed to be successful,” said Angie McIntire, a bat specialist for the Arizona’s Game and Fish Department. “By sampling the environment, eDNA gives us an additional tool for our toolkit.” 

Every spring, Mexican long-nosed bats traverse a lengthy migratory path north from Mexico into the southwestern U.S., following the sweet nectar of their favorite blooming plants like breadcrumbs. They return along the same route in the fall. 

The bat conservation group recruited ordinary citizens for the mission, giving them kits to swab samples from bird feeders throughout the summer and fall. 

Inside the university lab, microbiology major Anna Riley extracted the DNA from hundreds of samples and ran them through machines that ultimately could detect the presence of bats. Part of the work involved a steady hand, with Riley using a syringe of sorts to transfer diluted DNA into tiny vials before popping them into a centrifuge. 

Sample after sample, vial after vial, the meticulous work took months. 

“There’s a big database that has DNA sequences of not every animal but most species, and so we could compare our DNA sequences we got from these samples to what’s in the database,” Riley said. “A little bit like a Google search — you’ve got your question, you’re asking Google, you plug it into the database, and it turns up you’ve got a bat, and you have this kind of bat.” 

Kristen Lear, of the conservation group, said the collection of eDNA has been used successfully for determining the presence of other kinds of wildlife in various environments, so the group proposed trying it with bats. 

“They do apparently leave behind a lot of spit on these plants and hummingbird feeders,” Lear said.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — Europe’s Euclid space telescope has detected a rare halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Monday. The halo, known as an Einstein ring, encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away, considered close by cosmic standards.  

A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. Astronomers have known about this galaxy for more than a century and so were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.  

An Einstein ring is light from a much more distant galaxy that bends in such a way as to perfectly encircle a closer object, in this case a well-known galaxy in the constellation Draco.  

The faraway galaxy creating the ring is more than 4 billion light-years away. Gravity distorted the light from this more distant galaxy, thus the name honoring Albert Einstein. The process is known as gravitational lensing.

“All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful,” lead author Conor O’Riordan of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics said in a statement.

Euclid rocketed from Florida in 2023. NASA is taking part in its mission to detect dark energy and dark matter in the universe.
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PARIS — Nearly all nations missed a UN deadline Monday to submit new targets for slashing carbon emissions, including major economies under pressure to show leadership following the U.S. retreat on climate change.

Just 10 of nearly 200 countries required under the Paris Agreement to deliver fresh climate plans by Feb. 10 did so on time, according to a UN database tracking the submissions.

Under the climate accord, each country is supposed to provide a steeper headline figure for cutting heat-trapping emissions by 2035, and a detailed blueprint for how to achieve this.

Global emissions have been rising but need to almost halve by the end of the decade to limit global warming to levels agreed under the Paris deal.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell has called this latest round of national pledges “the most important policy documents of this century.”

Yet just a handful of major polluters handed in upgraded targets on time, with China, India and the European Union the biggest names on a lengthy absentee list.

Most G20 economies were missing in action with the United States, Britain and Brazil — which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit — the only exceptions.

The US pledge is largely symbolic, made before President Donald Trump ordered Washington out of the Paris deal.

Accountability measure

There is no penalty for submitting late targets, formally titled nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

They are not legally binding but act as an accountability measure to ensure governments are taking the threat of climate change seriously.

Last week, Stiell said submissions would be needed by September so they could be properly assessed before the UN COP30 climate conference in November.

A spokeswoman for the EU said the 27-nation bloc intended to submit its revised targets “well ahead” of the summit in Belem.

Analysts say China, the world’s biggest polluter and also its largest investor in renewable energy, is also expected to unveil its much-anticipated climate plan in the second half of the year.

The United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, Saint Lucia, New Zealand, Andorra, Switzerland and Uruguay rounded out the list of countries that made Monday’s cut-off.

The sluggish response will not ease fears of a possible backslide on climate action as leaders juggle Trump’s return and other competing priorities from budget and security crises to electoral pressure.

Ebony Holland from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said the US retreat was “clearly a setback” but there were many reasons for the tepid turnout.

“It’s clear there are some broad geopolitical shifts underway that are proving to be a challenge when it comes to international cooperation, especially on big issues like climate change,” she said.
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Climate change is rapidly altering the Arctic region, creating environmental danger, economic opportunity and geopolitical tension as the world’s major powers scramble to control newly accessible shipping lanes and resource deposits.
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JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Economists are raising concerns about the viability of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s program launched this year to combat child nutrition.

According to an Indonesian Ministry of Health Nutritional Status Study report, 21.6% of children ages 3 and 4 experienced stunting caused by malnutrition in 2022.

The first stage of the Free Nutritious Meal Program, extending through March, is intended to provide around 20 million Indonesian school children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers meals to improve their health and prevent stunting.

The effort was initially projected to cost $28 billion over five years. However, Coordinating Minister for Food Zulkifli Hasan said on Jan. 9 during a meeting on food security that the $4.4 billion budgeted for this year will run out in June and that $8.5 billion more will be requested to fund the program through December.

China, Japan, the United States and India have expressed support for the program, although it is unclear how much money will be provided or what form that support will take. Japan and India have said their help will be in the form of training.

Officials plan to implement the program in stages, eventually reaching 83 million people — more than a quarter of Indonesia’s 280 million population — by 2029, Muhammad Qodari, deputy chief of the presidential staff told reporters on Feb. 3.

The program is part of a long-term strategy to develop the nation’s youth to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generation, referring to a plan to make Indonesia a sovereign, advanced and prosperous nation by its 2045 centennial.

The program’s cost could make Prabowo politically vulnerable, according to Dinna Prapto Raharja, a professor of international relations at Jakarta’s Bina Nusantara University and a senior policy adviser at Jakarta consulting firm Synergy Policies.

“In order to finance this program, Prabowo has taken steps to implement major cutbacks in his government budget with some ministries seeing 50% cuts,” Dinna said.

“Now he is forced to seek financial assistance from overseas sources.” she told VOA on Jan. 31.

The Finance Ministry said the spending cuts would amount to $18.7 billion, 8% of this fiscal year’s approved spending.

While other nations said they would support the program, officials from the National Nutrition Agency — which manages the program — said internal talks about the level of foreign aid, type of assistance and technical aspects of its implementation have not begun.

Support from China, Japan, US and India

In November, China committed to supporting free nutritious meals but did not pledge a specific amount.

The Chinese Embassy in Jakarta did not respond to VOA requests for further information on the value and form of the assistance. It remains unclear whether China’s financial assistance will be in the form of a loan or grant.

The United States is providing training to Indonesian dairy farmers to support the program, which has increased the demand for locally produced milk. Indonesia, so far, can provide milk only two to three times a week to school children, according to Deddy Fachrudin Kurniawan, CEO of Dairy Pro Indonesia and project leader of U.S. Dairy Export Council training.

Deddy told VOA on Jan. 8 that Indonesia has had to import 84% of its milk in the past, and that demand will double because of the food program.

In January, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced Japan will support the meal program by helping the Indonesian government increase its ability to combat childhood malnutrition.

Ishiba offered Japan’s support by training Indonesian cooks and sending Japanese chefs to assist. Prabowo added that Japan will also assist in improving the fishery and agriculture sectors, based on Japan’s experience.

More recently, India reaffirmed support for the program through the sharing of knowledge of the government’s Food Corporation of India and other institutions with Indonesian officials.

“India shares its experiences in the fields of health and food security, including the [free] lunch scheme and public [service] distribution system to the Indonesia government,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on his YouTube channel on Jan. 25.

Other support and reaction

Other countries have said they support the program. France and Brazil expressed their support on the sidelines of the recent G20 Leaders Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Prabowo instructed his team to arrange a visit of an Indonesian delegation to Brazil to take notes from the South American country’s similar program. France, which has a similar school feeding program, intends to share its expertise and help Indonesia modernize its agricultural sector.

Teuku Rezasyah, an associate professor of international relations at Bandung’s Universitas Padjajaran, noted that India exported 20,000 metric tons of water buffalo meat to Indonesia last year while Brazil exported 100,000 metric tons of beef to Indonesia.

British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Reynar showed similar interest during her meeting with Prabowo in London in November. However, it remains unclear what type of support the U.K will offer.

Mohammad Faisal, executive director of the Center of Reform on Economics, told VOA in Jakarta on Jan. 31 that countries offering support will have their own interests in mind, as well.

“I believe there’s no free lunch,” Faisal said. “The donations may be partly altruistic, but not entirely. Donor countries consider it as strengthening bilateral ties, but they may also expect to reap the benefits in the future, such as enjoying ease of investing in Indonesia through incentives and getting better penetration of export markets as a reward.”

Rezasyah agreed.

“Donor countries are probably hoping Indonesia will import more products from their countries to support this multibillion-dollar supplemental food program,” he said. “On the other hand, they see Indonesia becoming a middle power that could contribute to finding solutions to global affairs.”
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NEW YORK — All live poultry markets in New York City and some of its suburbs were ordered Friday to close for a week after the detection of seven cases of avian flu, which has also hit farms nationwide.

Governor Kathy Hochul said that there was no immediate threat to public health and that the temporary closure of bird markets in the city and its Westchester County and Long Island suburbs came out of an abundance of caution. No cases of avian flu have been detected among humans in New York, officials said. 

The birds infected with the virus were found during routine inspections of live bird markets in the New York City boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the virus poses low risk to the general public. The agency said there have been 67 confirmed cases of bird flu in humans in the U.S., with illnesses mild and mostly detected among farmworkers who were exposed to sick poultry or sick dairy cows. 

The first bird flu death in the U.S. was reported last month in Louisiana, with health officials saying the person was older than 65, had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. 

In New York, live bird markets where the virus was detected have to dispose of all poultry in a sanitary manner, according to the state’s order. Other bird markets that do not have cases will have to sell off remaining poultry within three days, clean and disinfect their operations, and then remain closed for at least five days and be inspected by state officials before reopening. 

Ahead of the mandatory disposal order for markets with no cases, employees at La Granja, a halal-certified poultry market in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood, raced to sell the remaining inventory: around 200 live chickens of different varieties, along with turkeys, quail, ducks, roosters, pigeons and rabbits. 

Any remaining animals would be slaughtered and given to employees and longtime customers, according to Jose Fernandez, the owner. 

“We’re going to lose money, for now,” he said. “But the law is the law. They know what they’re doing.” 

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has been spreading among wild birds, poultry, cows and other animals. Officials have urged people who come into contact with sick or dead birds to wear respiratory and eye protection and gloves when handling poultry. 

More than 156 million birds nationwide have been affected by the outbreak, many at large farming operations that have had to slaughter their entire flocks. 

Despite growing attention on the avian flu, New York City’s poultry markets appeared to be doing brisk business Friday. 

Outside the Wallabout Poultry market in Brooklyn, a line of customers took numbers and picked their chickens, which employees snatched from crowded cages, weighing them upside down, before taking them to a back room to be slaughtered. 

“I’m not worried about any bird flu,” said Stan Tara, 42, of Brooklyn, as he purchased a large chicken for $22.50. “It’s the same as you buy from the supermarket. A little more expensive, but at least it’s fresh.” 

Some animal rights groups, meanwhile, questioned the purpose of a state order that allowed the markets to continue selling fowl, rather than shutting them down immediately. 

“The public is going into markets where no one knows if there are outbreaks of avian flu, then taking home dead birds that may or may not be infected,” said Edita Birnkrant, executive director of NYCLASS, which has long raised alarms about conditions within the city’s roughly 70 live animal markets. “It’s ludicrous.” 

U.S. egg prices are likely to remain high past Easter and well into 2025, largely because of avian flu, according to CoBank, a Denver-based provider of loans and other financial services to the agriculture sector. 

The highly contagious virus has affected nearly 100 million egg-laying hens in the U.S. since 2022. 

But CoBank said other factors are also causing supply constraints and driving up prices, such as skyrocketing consumer demand for eggs in recent years. Fast-growing breakfast and brunch chains are also eating up supplies. 
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JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — Some South African organizations that assist people with HIV are in limbo, after the United States put a 90-day freeze on most foreign aid. The U.S. State Department later added a waiver for “lifesaving” aid, but NGOs that have already shut their doors say the next steps aren’t clear, and they are worried this could set back years of progress.

South Africa has the highest number of HIV-positive people in the world — about 8 million — but has also been a huge success story in terms of treatment and preventing new infections.

That’s largely due to the money poured into expert HIV care here, 17% of which comes from a U.S. program called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR.

But, a 90-day foreign aid funding freeze is in effect, following an executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump last month to check if U.S.-funded programs overseas are aligned with U.S. policies. This has caused some confusion in South Africa with health care organizations and their patients.

Thamsanqa Siyo, an HIV-positive transgender woman in South Africa, is anxious.

“People are frustrated, they’re living in fear, they don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Siyo. “They don’t know if it’s stopped temporarily or not temporarily.”

The Cape Town clinic that Siyo used to go to has now been closed for two weeks.

While the State Department has issued a waiver to continue paying for “lifesaving” services, what that includes remains unclear to many South African organizations that receive funding from PEPFAR.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that the waiver was clear.

“If it saves lives, if it’s emergency lifesaving aid — food, medicine, whatever — they have a waiver,” said Rubio. “I don’t know how much clearer we can be.”

The State Department also issued written clarification and guidance on February 1 regarding which activities are and are not covered by the waiver for PEPFAR programs.

The South African government said it was blindsided by the U.S. aid freeze, according to Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, who convened a meeting about PEPFAR on Wednesday.

Motsoaledi also said he has sought clarity on the waiver.

“If you say American money cannot be used for LGBTQWI+ and we do the counseling and testing and somebody who falls within that category, transgender, tests positive, can they not be helped?” he asked. “Even if it’s lifesaving?”

Linda-Gail Bekker is a doctor and scientist who heads the Desmond Tutu HIV Center in South Africa.

“This is not one homogenous picture,” said Bekker. “In some places, it’s parts of services that have been stopped. In other places, the whole clinic, if it was supplied by PEPFAR, has been closed down.”

She also said that some transgender health services have been completely closed, and in other areas, counselors haven’t been able to come in.

In addition, she said some services and drugs are no longer available, such as community-based testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis, a medicine that prevents people at high risk from contracting HIV.

Ling Sheperd, who works for Triangle Project, an nongovernmental organization that provides services for the queer community, said there’s a risk of “undoing decades of progress.”

“The impact is devastating,” said Sheperd. “The PEPFAR funding has been a lifeline for millions and it ensures access to HIV treatment, prevention services, and of course community-based health care. And without it we are seeing interruptions in medication supply, clinics are scaling back services, and community health workers have literally been losing their livelihoods.”

About 5.5 million South Africans are on anti-retroviral medication for HIV. Motsoaledi noted that most of that is funded by the government here.

However, he said, a PEPFAR shortfall will affect training, facilities and service delivery. The government said it is working on contingency plans that would reduce dependence on foreign aid in the HIV sector.

On Wednesday, a group of health organizations sent a letter to the South African government saying at least 900,000 patients with HIV were directly affected by the U.S. stop-work orders.
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U.S. dairy cattle tested positive for a strain of bird flu that previously had not been seen in cows, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday, ramping up concerns about the persistent spread of the virus. 

The H5N1 virus has reduced milk output in cattle, pushed up egg prices by wiping out millions of hens, and infected nearly 70 people since April as it has spread across the country. 

Genome sequencing of milk from Nevada identified the different strain, known as the D1.1 genotype, in dairy cows for the first time, the USDA said. Previously, all 957 bird flu infections among dairy herds reported since last March had been caused by another strain, the B3.13 genotype, according to the agency. 

Reuters reported news of the detection of the second strain on Wednesday ahead of USDA’s announcement. 

The second strain was the predominant genotype among wild birds this past fall and winter and has also been found in poultry, the USDA said. It was identified in dairy cattle through an agency program that began testing milk for bird flu in December. 

“We’re seeing the H5N1 virus itself be smarter than all of us,” said Beth Thompson, South Dakota’s state veterinarian.  

“It’s modifying itself so it’s not just staying in the poultry and the wild waterfowl. It’s picking up a home in the mammals.”  

Wild birds likely transmitted the second strain to cattle in Nevada, said J.J. Goicoechea, Nevada’s agriculture director. Farmers need to ramp up safety and security measures to protect their animals, he said. 

“We obviously aren’t doing everything we can and everything we should or the virus wouldn’t be getting in,” he said. 

The Nevada Department of Agriculture said on Jan. 31 that herds in two counties had been placed under quarantine because of bird flu detections.  

It is important for the USDA to contain the outbreak in the state quickly, so the strain does not spread to dairy cattle elsewhere, said Gail Hansen, a veterinary and public health consultant. 

Last year, bird flu spread across the country as infected cattle were shipped from Texas after the virus first leapt to cows from wild birds. 

“We didn’t get a hold on it before,” Hansen said. “We want to avoid that same scenario from happening in Nevada.” 

Dairy herds that were formerly infected may be at risk again from the second strain, experts said. 

“Now it looks like we have new strains of virus that may escape some of the immunity associated with the other strains of viruses that could exacerbate the epidemics among animals and wildlife,” said Gregory Gray, a University of Texas Medical Branch professor studying cattle diseases.  

“It’s alarming.”
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BUENOS AIRES — President Javier Milei has ordered Argentina’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization due to profound differences with the U.N. agency, a presidential spokesperson said Wednesday.

Milei’s action echoes that of his ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, who began the process of pulling the United States out of the WHO with an executive order on his first day back in office on Jan. 21.

Argentina’s decision is based on “profound differences in health management, especially during the [COVID19] pandemic,” spokesperson Manuel Adorni said at a news conference in Buenos Aires. He said that WHO guidelines at the time had led to the largest shutdown “in the history of mankind.”

He also said that the WHO lacked independence because of the political influence of some countries, without elaborating which countries.

Argentina will not allow an international organization to intervene in its sovereignty “and much less in our health,” Adorni said.

The WHO is the United Nations’ specialized health agency and is the only organization mandated to coordinate global responses to acute health crises, particularly outbreaks of new diseases and persistent threats such as Ebola, AIDS and mpox.
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Scientists are testing a novel technique to deter poachers targeting endangered rhinoceroses for their prized horns. As part of a pilot study in South Africa, researchers have injected small, radioactive pellets into the horns of live rhinos. The goal is to make the horns radioactive so there is less demand for them on the black market. Marize de Klerk reports from the UNESCO Waterberg Biosphere Reserve.
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Washington — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the controversial environmental lawyer turned public health critic, cleared his first hurdle on Tuesday to become the nation’s top health official when the senate finance committee voted to advance his nomination for a floor vote. 

Republicans voted together to advance his nomination, while Democrats all opposed. 

His nomination now will face a full senate vote, despite concerns about the work he’s done to sow doubts around vaccine safety and his potential to profit off lawsuits over drugmakers. 

To gain control of the $1.7 trillion Health and Human Services agency, Kennedy will need support from all but three Republicans if Democrats uniformly oppose him. 

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is also a physician and sits on the finance committee, voted to advance Kennedy’s confirmation. Last week, during Kennedy’s hearings, Cassidy repeatedly implored Kennedy to reject a disproven theory that vaccines cause autism, to no avail. He ended the hearing by saying he was “struggling” with the vote. 

“Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me,” Cassidy told Kennedy. 

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are all seen as potential no votes, too, because they voted against President Donald Trump’s defense secretary nominee and have expressed concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine work. 

In a CBS “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, McConnell declined to say how he would vote on Kennedy’s nomination but reiterated “vaccines are critically important.” 

Democrats, meanwhile, continue to raise alarms about Kennedy’s potential to financially benefit from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers if confirmed as health secretary. 

“It seems possible that many different types of vaccine-related decisions and communications — which you would be empowered to make and influence as Secretary — could result in significant financial compensation for your family,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in a letter sent over the weekend to Kennedy. 

Kennedy said he’ll give his son all of the referral fees in legal cases against vaccine makers, including the fees he gets from referring clients in a case against Merck. Kennedy told the committee he’s referred hundreds of clients to a law firm that’s suing Merck’s Gardasil, the human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. He’s earned $2.5 million from the deal over the past three years. 

As secretary, Kennedy will oversee vaccine recommendations and public health campaigns for the $1.7 trillion agency, which is also responsible for food and hospital inspections, providing health insurance for millions of Americans and researching deadly diseases. 

Kennedy, a longtime Democrat, ran for president but withdrew last year to throw his support to Trump in exchange for an influential job in his Republican administration. Together, they have forged a new and unusual coalition made up of conservatives who oppose vaccines and liberals who want to see the government promote healthier foods. Trump and Kennedy have branded the movement as “Make America Healthy Again.” 
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Uganda began a vaccine trial Monday against the Sudan strain of Ebola that has killed one person in the outbreak declared last week.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday in a post on the X social media platform that the trial was “initiated with record speed, only three days since the outbreak was declared, while ensuring full compliance with international and national regulatory and ethical requirements.”

Officials have not identified the vaccine manufacturer that is providing the East African country with access to more than 2,000 doses of the candidate vaccine.

WHO is supporting Uganda’s response to the outbreak with a $1 million allocation from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies.

So far, there has been only one death attributed to the virus — a nurse who worked at the Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. Two more cases were confirmed on Monday. The Associated Press reported they were members of the nurse’s family.

The nurse sought treatment at several hospitals and had also consulted with a traditional healer before tests confirmed an Ebola diagnosis, according to authorities.

Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa said in a statement after the outbreak was confirmed, “We welcome the prompt declaration of this outbreak, and as a comprehensive response is being established, we are supporting the government and partners to scale up measures to quicky identify cases, isolate and provide care, curb the spread of the virus and protect the population.”

Uganda’s Health Ministry has identified at least 234 of the nurse’s contacts, according to the AP. Containing the virus could prove challenging in Kampala with its population of 4 million people.

The symptoms of Ebola, an often-fatal disease, include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health care workers and family members caring for someone with Ebola are at high risk for contracting the disease.

WHO said Ebola “is transmitted to people from wild animals (such as fruit bats, porcupines and non-human primates) and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g., bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.”

Ebola’s fatality rate is around 50%, WHO said on its website, but it also said that fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in some outbreaks.

The outbreak in Uganda is the first Ebola outbreak since U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

Some information was provided by The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
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The recent outbreak of the H5N1 avian influenza virus in the U.S. and the potential for it to mutate has raised concerns among the scientific community that it could result in human-to-human transmission and a new pandemic. Farmers are also concerned about the potential impacts on their livelihood. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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