New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has tested positive for COVID-19 and will work remotely while isolating, his office said Sunday, just two weeks before a general election in which his Labour party is struggling.

The positive test will temporarily sideline Hipkins in the campaign for the Oct. 14 election. Labour has been sliding in the opinion polls, with the center-right National party leading by 31.9% to 26.5% in a recent survey.

Hipkins has cold and flu symptoms that began Saturday and will isolate for five days or until he returned a negative test, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“He will continue with engagements he can undertake via Zoom,” the statement said.

Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni would stand in for Hipkins at a Samoan church service in Auckland on Sunday, a spokesperson said.

“Thanks to all of Labour’s great volunteers and supporters who I know will keep our campaign going in my absence,” Hipkins said on his official Facebook page. “There’s a lot at stake this election, and I’ll be working doubly hard when I can get back out there to make sure Labour is reelected.”

The prime minister’s office said further updates on his schedule “will be provided in due course.”

The government removed its last COVID restrictions in August, but health authorities still recommend that people stay home for five days if feeling unwell or if they have tested positive.
…

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday laid out a proposal to begin regulating laboratory medical tests, a multibillion-dollar industry that the agency says poses a growing risk to patients because of potentially inaccurate results.

The proposed rule would end decades of regulatory ambiguity and formally bring thousands of tests performed in large laboratories under FDA oversight. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said the change will help ensure tests used to diagnose cancer, heart disease and many other conditions are safe, accurate and reliable.

“A growing number of clinical diagnostic tests are being offered as laboratory-developed tests without assurance that they work,” Califf said in a statement. He added that the agency has long worried that many tests offered by laboratories are not as accurate or reliable as those that undergo FDA review.

Here’s a look at the history and background of the testing issue:

What are laboratory-developed tests?

Most Americans are familiar with medical tests like those used to screen for COVID-19, strep throat and other health conditions. Those tests are developed by a handful of large manufacturers that undergo FDA review before selling their test kits to hospitals, doctors offices or pharmacies.

The tests targeted by the FDA’s latest action are developed and used by high-tech laboratories, including those at academic medical centers and companies such as Quest Diagnostics. They include tests for complex diseases like cancer, as well as simpler conditions like high cholesterol and sexually transmitted infections.

Over time, laboratory-developed tests have grown into a multibillion-dollar nationwide business, with labs processing thousands of blood, urine and other samples per week from hospitals and clinics. Others advertise directly to consumers — including some claiming to measure the risk of developing ailments like Alzheimer’s and autism.

Laboratory-developed tests have long skirted FDA oversight, though the agency has maintained that it has the authority to step in. The debate over regulating the space stretches back to the 1990s, with several government advisory groups recommending greater FDA oversight.

Why does the FDA want to regulate them now?

Many lab-developed tests are staples of medical care, used to make important decisions about pregnancy, nutrition and many other health issues.

FDA officials have long voiced concerns about the accuracy of some tests, pointing to patients who have received inaccurate results for heart disease, Lyme disease, cancer and other conditions. Inaccurate tests can lead to patients getting an incorrect diagnosis, skipping treatments or receiving unnecessary medication or surgery.

More than a decade ago, the agency drafted tougher guidelines for the industry, but they were never finalized.

The tests attracted new scrutiny with the downfall of Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes, who was sentenced to prison last year for misleading investors about the potential of her company’s blood testing technology.

What do test makers say?

The laboratory industry has long argued that FDA regulation would stifle their ability to quickly innovate and develop new tests. They also say that additional federal regulation is unnecessary because it would duplicate existing requirements.

Under a quirk of federal law, testing laboratories are overseen by the same agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid, the government health plans for seniors, the disabled and the poor. Inspectors evaluate the general conditions and procedures at labs, but not specific tests or the claims used to market them.

Lawmakers in Congress drafted a bill last year — backed by FDA officials — that would have given the FDA explicit authority to regulate high-risk tests. But the measure failed to pass the House or the Senate amid opposition by testing industry lobbyists.

What is the FDA proposing?

Under the new proposal, FDA would gradually phase in tighter regulation of lab tests over five years. The agency is considering exempting some existing tests from review but is seeking public input on its approach. At the end of the process, most new tests would be subject to FDA standards and regulatory review before launching.
…

In pockets of Europe’s Alpine mountains, glaciers are abundant enough that ski resorts operate above the snow and ice.

Ski lifts, resorts, cabins and huts dot the landscape — and have done so for decades. But glaciers are also one of the most obvious and early victims of human-caused climate change, and as they shrink year by year, the future of the mountain ecosystems and the people who enjoy them will look starkly different.

Glaciers — centuries of compacted snow and ice — are disappearing at an alarming rate. Swiss glaciers have lost 10% of their volume since 2021, and some glaciers are predicted to disappear entirely in the next few years.

At the Freigerferner glacier in Austria, melting means the glacier has split into two and hollowed out as warm air streamed through the glacier base, exacerbating the thaw.

Gaisskarferner, another glacier that forms part of a ski resort, is only connected to the rest of the snow and ice by sections of glacier that were saved over the summer with protective sheets to shield them from the sun.

But the losses go beyond a shorter ski season and glacier mass.

Andrea Fischer, a glaciologist with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, said the rate of glacier loss can tell the world more about the state of the climate globally and how urgent curbing human-caused warming is.

“The loss of glaciers is not the most dangerous thing about climate change,” said Fischer. “The most dangerous thing about climate change is the effect on ecosystems, on natural hazards, and those processes are much harder to see. The glaciers just teach us how to see climate change.”

From a vantage point above the mountains in a light aircraft, the changing landscape is obvious. The glaciers are noticeably smaller and fewer, and bare rock lies in their place.

Much of the thawing is already locked in, so that even immediate and drastic cuts to planet-warming emissions can’t save the glaciers from disappearing or shrinking in the short term.

While the extent of glacier melt can create awareness and concern for the climate, “being only concerned does not change anything,” Fischer said.

She urged instead that concern should be channeled into “a positive attitude toward designing a new future,” where warming can successfully be curbed to stop the most detrimental effects of climate change.
…

The U.S. West Coast produces over 90% of America’s wine, but the region is also prone to wildfires — a combustible combination that spelled disaster for the industry in 2020 and one that scientists are scrambling to neutralize.

Sample a good wine and you might get notes of oak or red fruit. But sip on wine made from grapes that were penetrated by smoke, and it could taste like someone dumped the contents of an ashtray into your glass.

Wine experts from three West Coast universities are working together to meet the threat, including developing spray coatings to protect grapes, pinpointing the elusive compounds that create that nasty ashy taste, and deploying smoke sensors to vineyards to better understand smoke behavior.

The U.S. government is funding their research with millions of dollars.

Wineries are also taking steps to protect their product and brand.

The risk to America’s premier wine-making regions — where wildfires caused billions of dollars in losses in 2020 — is growing, with climate change deepening drought and overgrown forests becoming tinderboxes.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, grapes are the highest-value crop in the United States, with 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of grape-bearing land, 96% of it on the West Coast.

Winemakers around the world are already adapting to climate change, including by moving their vineyards to cooler zones and planting varieties that do better in drought and heat. Wildfires pose an additional and more immediate risk being tackled by scientists from Oregon State University, Washington State University and the University of California, Davis.

“What’s at stake is the ability to continue to make wine in areas where smoke exposures might be more common,” said Tom Collins, a wine scientist at Washington State University.

Researcher Cole Cerrato recently stood in Oregon State University’s vineyard, nestled below forested hills near the village of Alpine, as he turned on a fan to push smoke from a Weber grill through a dryer vent hose. The smoke emerged onto a row of grapes enclosed in a makeshift greenhouse made of taped-together plastic sheets.

Previously, grapes exposed to smoke in that setup were made into wine by Elizabeth Tomasino, an associate professor leading Oregon State’s efforts, and her researchers.

They found sulfur-containing compounds, thiophenols, in the smoke-impacted wine and determined they contributed to the ashy flavor, along with “volatile phenols,” which Australian researchers identified as factors more than a decade ago. Bush fires have long impacted Australia’s wine industry. Up in Washington state, Collins confirmed that the sulfur compounds were found in the wine that had been exposed to smoke in the Oregon vineyard but weren’t in samples that had no smoke exposure.

The scientists want to find out how thiophenols, which aren’t detectable in wildfire smoke, appear in smoke-impacted wine, and learn how to eliminate them.

“There’s still a lot of very interesting chemistry and very interesting research, to start looking more into these new compounds,” Cerrato said. “We just don’t have the answers yet.”

Wine made with tainted grapes can be so awful that it can’t be marketed. If it does go on shelves, a winemaker’s reputation could be ruined — a risk that few are willing to take.

When record wildfires in 2020 blanketed the West Coast in brown smoke, some California wineries refused to accept grapes unless they had been tested. But most growers couldn’t find places to analyze their grapes because the laboratories were overwhelmed.

The damage to the industry in California alone was $3.7 billion, according to an analysis that Jon Moramarco of the consulting firm bw166 conducted for industry groups. The losses stemmed mostly from wineries having to forego future wine sales.

“But really what drove it was, you know, a lot of the impact was in Napa [Valley], an area of some of the highest priced grapes, highest priced wines in the U.S.,” Moramarco said, adding that if a ton of cabernet sauvignon grapes is ruined, “you lose probably 720 bottles of wine. If it is worth $100 a bottle, it adds up very quickly.”

Between 165,000 to 325,000 tons of California wine grapes were left to wither on the vine in 2020 due to actual or perceived wildfire smoke exposure, said Natalie Collins, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers.

She said she hasn’t heard of any growers quitting the business due to wildfire impacts, but, “Many of our members are having an extremely difficult time securing insurance due to the fire risk in their region, and if they are able to secure insurance, the rate is astronomically high.”

Some winemakers are trying techniques to reduce smoke impact, such as passing the wine through a membrane or treating it with carbon, but that can also rob a wine of its appealing nuances. Blending impacted grapes with other grapes is another option. Limiting skin contact by making rosé wine instead of red can lower the concentration of smoke flavor compounds.

Collins, over at Washington State University, has been experimenting with spraying fine-powdered kaolin or bentonite, which are clays, mixed with water onto wine grapes so it absorbs materials that are in smoke. The substance would then be washed off before harvest. Oregon State University is developing a spray-on coating.

Meanwhile, dozens of smoke sensors have been installed in vineyards in the three states, financed in part by a $7.65 million USDA grant.

“The instruments will be used to measure for smoke marker compounds,” said Anita Oberholster, leader of UC Davis’ efforts. She said such measurements are essential to develop mitigation strategies and determine smoke exposure risk.

Greg Jones, who runs his family’s Abacela winery in southern Oregon’s Umpqua Valley and is a director of the Oregon Wine Board, applauds the scientists’ efforts.

“This research has really gone a long way to help us try to find: Are there ways in which we can take fruit from the vineyard and quickly find out if it has the potential compounds that would lead to smoke-impacted wine?” Jones said.

Collins predicts success.

“I think it’s increasingly clear that we’re not likely to find a magic bullet,” he said. “But we will find a set of strategies.”
…

How do you cook a meal when a staple ingredient is unaffordable? 

This question is playing out in households around the world as they face shortages of essential foods like rice, cooking oil and onions. That is because countries have imposed restrictions on the food they export to protect their own supplies from the combined effect of the war in Ukraine, El Nino’s threat to food production and increasing damage from climate change. 

For Caroline Kyalo, a 28-year-old who works in a salon in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, it was a question of trying to figure out how to cook for her two children without onions. Restrictions on the export of the vegetable by neighboring Tanzania has led prices to triple. 

Kyalo initially tried to use spring onions instead, but those also got too expensive. As did the prices of other necessities, like cooking oil and corn flour. 

“I just decided to be cooking once a day,” she said. 

Despite the East African country’s fertile lands and large workforce, the high cost of growing and transporting produce and the worst drought in decades led to a drop in local production. Plus, people preferred red onions from Tanzania because they were cheaper and lasted longer. By 2014, Kenya was getting half of its onions from its neighbor, according to a U.N. Food Agriculture Organization report. 

At Nairobi’s major food market, Wakulima, the prices for onions from Tanzania were the highest in seven years, seller Timothy Kinyua said. 

Some traders have adjusted by getting produce from Ethiopia, and others have switched to selling other vegetables, but Kinyua is sticking to onions. 

“It’s something we can’t cook without,” he said. 

Tanzania’s onion limits this year are part of the “contagion” of food restrictions from countries spooked by supply shortages and increased demand for their produce, said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. 

Globally, 41 food export restrictions from 19 countries are in effect, ranging from outright bans to taxes, according to the institute. 

India banned shipments of some rice earlier this year, resulting in a shortfall of roughly a fifth of global exports. Neighboring Myanmar, the world’s fifth-biggest rice supplier, responded by stopping some exports of the grain. 

India also restricted shipments of onions after erratic rainfall — fueled by climate change — damaged crops. This sent prices in neighboring Bangladesh soaring, and authorities are scrambling to find new sources for the vegetable. 

Elsewhere, a drought in Spain took its toll on olive oil production. As European buyers turned to Turkey, olive oil prices soared in the Mediterranean country, prompting authorities there to restrict exports. Morocco, also coping with a drought ahead of its recent deadly earthquake, stopped exporting onions, potatoes and tomatoes in February. 

This isn’t the first time food prices have been in a tumult. Prices for staples like rice and wheat more than doubled in 2007-2008, but the world had ample food stocks it could draw on and was able to replenish those in subsequent years. 

But that cushion has shrunk in the past two years, and climate change means food supplies could very quickly run short of demand and spike prices, said Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

“I think increased volatility is certainly the new normal,” he said. 

Food prices worldwide, experts say, will be determined by the interplay of three factors: how El Nino plays out and how long it lasts, whether bad weather damages crops and prompts more export restrictions, and the future of Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

The warring nations are both major global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food, especially to developing nations where food prices have risen and people are going hungry. 

An El Nino is a natural phenomenon that shifts global weather patterns and can result in extreme weather, ranging from drought to flooding. While scientists believe climate change is making this El Nino stronger, its exact impact on food production is impossible to glean until after it’s occurred. 

The early signs are worrying. 

India experienced its driest August in a century, and Thailand is facing a drought that has sparked fears about the world’s sugar supplies. The two are the largest exporters of sugar after Brazil. 

Less rainfall in India also dashed food exporters’ hopes that the new rice harvest in October would end the trade restrictions and stabilize prices. 

“It doesn’t look like [rice] prices will be coming down anytime soon,” said Aman Julka, director of Wesderby India Private Limited. 

Most at risk are nations that rely heavily on food imports. The Philippines, for instance, imports 14% of its food, according to the World Bank, and storm damage to crops could mean further shortfalls. Rice prices surged 8.7% in August from a year earlier, more than doubling from 4.2% in July. 

Food store owners in the capital of Manila are losing money, with prices increasing rapidly since September 1 and customers who used to snap up supplies in bulk buying smaller quantities. 

“We cannot save money anymore. It is like we just work so that we can have food daily,” said Charina Em, 32, who owns a store in the Trabajo market. 

Cynthia Esguerra, 66, has had to choose between food or medicine for her high cholesterol, gallstones and urinary issues. Even then, she can only buy half a kilo of rice at a time — insufficient for her and her husband. 

“I just don’t worry about my sickness. I leave it up to God. I don’t buy medicines anymore, I just put it there to buy food, our loans,” she said. 

The climate risks aren’t limited to rice but apply to anything that needs stable rainfall to thrive, including livestock, said Elyssa Kaur Ludher, a food security researcher at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Vegetables, fruit trees and chickens will all face heat stress, raising the risk that food will spoil, she said. 

This constricts food supplies further, and if grain exports from Ukraine aren’t resolved, there will be additional shortages in feed for livestock and fertilizer, Ludher said. 

Russia’s July withdrawal from a wartime agreement that ensured ships could safely transport Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea was a blow to global food security, largely leaving only expensive and divisive routes through Europe for the war-torn country’s exports. 

The conflict also has hurt Ukraine’s agricultural production, with analysts saying farmers aren’t planting nearly as much corn and wheat. 

“This will affect those who already feel food affordability stresses,” Ludher said. 
…

Many millions of Chinese tourists are expected to travel within their country, splurging on hotels, tours, attractions and meals in a boost to the economy during the 8-day autumn holiday period that began Friday.

This year’s holiday began with the Mid-Autumn Festival on Friday and also includes the Oct. 1 National Day. The public holidays end Oct. 6.

Typically hundreds of millions of Chinese travel at home and overseas during such holidays. The eight-day-long holiday is the longest week of public holidays since COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted in December. Outbound tourism has lagged domestic travel, with flight capacities lagging behind pre-pandemic levels.

Big cities like the capital, Beijing, Shanghai, and southern cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou are favored destinations. Smaller cities, such as Chengdu and Chongqing in southwest China also are popular.

All that travel is a boon for the world’s No. 2 economy: During the week-long May holiday this year, 274 million tourists spent 148 billion yuan ($20.3 billion).

“Over the last few years with the pandemic, there’s been really strong pent-up demand,” said Boon Sian Chai, managing director at the online travel booking platform Trip.com Group. Both domestic and outbound travel have “recovered significantly,” but travel within China accounted for nearly three-quarters of total bookings, Chai said.

China Railway said it was expecting about 190 million passenger trips during the Sept. 27-Oct. 8 travel rush, more than double the number of trips last year and an increase from 2019, before the pandemic started.

In Guangzhou and Shenzhen, extra overnight high-speed trains will operate for 11 days to cope with a travel surge during the long holiday, according to the China Railway Guangzhou Group Co., Ltd.

Another 21 million passengers are expected to travel by air during the holiday, with an average of about 17,000 flights per day, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. More than 80% of those flights are domestic routes.

Jia Jianqiang, CEO of Liurenyou International Travel Agency, said Chinese are splurging on more luxurious travel.

“Many people are now also inclined towards more customized, high-end tours compared to the large group tours that were popular (before the pandemic),” Jia said.

For many Chinese, long public holidays such as Golden Week are the best time to travel, since paid vacation can be as few as five days a year.

“Most Chinese don’t have long holidays, so this time of the year is when everyone can take the longest break and the only time to travel for fun,” said Fu Zhengshuai, an IT engineer and photography enthusiast who often travels alone to remote areas in China such as far western Qinghai and Xinjiang.

The downside of traveling during such big holidays is that everyone else is out there, too, and prices of tickets to attractions, food, and accommodations are high, Fu said.

For student Ma Yongle, traveling during big holidays means long waiting times, huge crowds, and heavy traffic. Train tickets often are sold out.

“I saw more people than scenery. I spent longer time waiting than eating. Train tickets were sold out quickly and traffic was heavy,” Ma said. “More time was wasted and little was left for enjoying the scenery, which spoiled my mood.”

She has since adopted what is referred in China as a “special forces travel trend” where tourists don’t stay overnight at a destination, but only take day trips to save money.

A growing but still relatively small number of Chinese are venturing abroad. According to Trip.com data, outbound travel orders this year are nearly 20 times those during last year’s autumn holidays, when many pandemic restrictions were still in place. Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia are popular destinations, as are more distant places such as Australia and the United Kingdom.

Overseas travel is bound to bounce back, Chai said.

“If you look at flight capacity, it has only recovered to about half of pre-pandemic levels,” he said. “As flight capacity starts to pick up toward the end of this year and next year, outbound travel will continue to increase.”
…

The streets of cities across Latin America were bathed in green Thursday as tens of thousands of women marched to commemorate International Safe Abortion Day.

Latin American feminists have spent decades fighting to roll back strict prohibitions, although there are still few countries with a total ban, like El Salvador and Dominican Republic.

In Mexico, marchers celebrated the recent decision by Mexico’s Supreme Court to decriminalize abortions at the federal level. In Argentina, marchers had a more somber tone, worrying that the strength of a populist far-right presidential candidate going into elections in October could signal peril after years of work by feminists.

Abortion was the heart of the protests, but crowds of women also raised alarm about the region’s high rates of gender-based violence as well as abuses aimed at LGBTQ+ communities.

Green smoke floated over a roaring crowd of thousands of women in Mexico City who waved green handkerchiefs, which have become the symbol of Latin America’s “green wave” abortion movement. Signs reading “It’s my decision” and “Free and safe abortions for everyone” speckled the crowd.

The march came just weeks after Mexico’s Supreme Court knocked down all federal criminal penalties for abortion, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights. The move will also require federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

“It’s absolutely an achievement,” said Fernanda Castro, an organizer at GIRE, the women’s rights organization that brought forward the lawsuit before Mexico’s high court. “And now we have another even more important fight — decriminalizing abortion in the minds of the people.”

While 20 Mexican states still have abortion bans on the books, the decision by the Supreme Court greatly expanded access to the procedure in a country where reproductive laws were long defined by its religious and conservative roots.

Latin American feminists have spent decades fighting to roll back strict prohibitions.

Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 15 years ago. The trend picked up speed in Argentina, which in 2020 legalized the procedure. In 2022, Colombia, a highly conservative country, did the same.

Brazil may be next. Currently, abortion is a crime with exceptions for cases of rape and birth defects in a fetus, but a case before the nation’s Supreme Court could potentially decriminalize the procedure up to 12 weeks of gestation.

“The green wave is going to keep growing and (Brazilian women) are not alone,” Castro said.

While marches in Mexico and other parts of the region were celebratory, in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires, the demonstration was marked with unease.

As elections loom in October, many in the crowd marching toward the Congress building fear their legal gains may soon get rolled back with the rise of right-wing candidate Javier Milei.

Now the leading candidate in polls, Milei, has spoken out against abortion, compulsory sex education in schools and free medical coverage for sex change treatments, among other issues. If he wins, he has promised to hold a referendum to repeal the decriminalization of abortion nationwide approved by Congress in 2022.

“More than winning more rights, this is about protecting them. The most important thing is to protect what’s already there,” said Sara Rivas, an art student. “Milei is a denialist. We’ve seen him deny everything from femicides to the years-long struggle that has brought us to this green wave.”

Still, Rivas, who carried a sign with a drawing of Milei hanging from a green bandana, said women will turn to the same approach they have used for decades to press for their goals.

“Our answer is that we are here. We are not going to leave the streets, because these gains, we conquered them in the streets,” she said.
…

Federal health advisers voted overwhelmingly against an experimental treatment for Lou Gehrig’s disease at a Wednesday meeting prompted by years of patient efforts seeking access to the unproven therapy.

The panel of Food and Drug Administration experts voted 17-1 that drugmaker Brainstorm’s stem cell-based treatment has not been shown effective for patients with the fatal, muscle-wasting disease known as ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. One panel member abstained from voting.

While the FDA is not bound by the vote, it largely aligns with the agency’s own strikingly negative review released earlier this week, in which staff scientists described Brainstorm’s application as “scientifically incomplete” and “grossly deficient.”

“Creating false hope can be considered a moral injury and the use of statistical magic or manipulation to provide false hope is problematic,” said Lisa Lee, a bioethics and research integrity expert from Virginia Tech who voted against the treatment. The lone positive vote came from a panel member representing patients.

Wednesday’s public meeting was essentially a longshot attempt by Brainstorm and the ALS community to sway FDA’s thinking on the treatment, dubbed NurOwn.

Brainstorm’s single 200-patient study failed to show that NurOwn extended life, slowed disease or improved patient mobility. But the FDA agreed to convene the panel of outside advisers after ALS patients and advocates submitted a 30,000-signature petition seeking a public meeting.

In the last year, the FDA has approved two new drugs for ALS, after a nearly 20-year drought of new options. The approvals followed intense lobbying by advocacy groups.

FDA leaders have recently emphasized a new level of “regulatory flexibility” when reviewing experimental treatments for fatal, hard-to-treat conditions, including ALS, Alzheimer’s and muscular dystrophy.

But the agency appears unwilling to overlook the failed study results and missing information in Brainstorm’s submission, including key details on manufacturing and quality control needed to establish the product’s safety.

“It really is a disease that needs a safe and effective treatment and there are a lot of other prospects out there that we need to encourage. Approving one like this would get in the way of that,” said Dr. Kenneth Fischbeck of the National Institutes of Health.

ALS destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord needed to walk, talk, swallow and — eventually — breathe. Most people die within three to five years of their first symptoms.

More than a dozen people spoke during a public comment session Wednesday, including ALS patients, their family members and physicians who implored FDA to grant approval. Several speakers presented before-and-after videos showing patients who participated in Brainstorm’s study walking, climbing stairs and performing other tasks that they attributed to NurOwn.

“When Matt is on NurOwn it helps him, when he’s off of it he gets worse,” said Mitze Klingenberg, speaking on behalf of her son, Matt Klingenberg, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2018.

The FDA is expected to issue a decision on the therapy by December 8.

Israel-based Brainstorm Cell Therapeutics’ stock price has lost more than 90% of its value over the last year, falling to 39 cents per share before being halted ahead of Wednesday’s FDA meeting.
…

Environmental experts are ringing alarm bells, saying decades-long climate and environmental changes in Sudan have exacerbated social and political instability, fueling the monthslong conflict in the country centered around access to land, water and other vital resources.

The current conflict in Sudan, rooted in global geopolitics and the historical legacy of the previous leadership of now-deposed authoritarian leader Omar al-Bashir, is increasingly being attributed to climate change.

In a May report, Practical Action, a Britain-based international development organization, highlighted the impact of climate change in Sudan, which includes the encroachment of the desert southward and a stark reduction in rainfall.

Akinyi Walender, Practical Action Africa director, underscored the consequences of climate change in Sudan, including heightened drought, extreme rainfall variability, depletion of water sources and desertification spanning millions of hectares of land.

Speaking to VOA via WhatsApp, Walender said the conversion of migratory routes and pastureland into farmland has significantly disrupted “the natural balance” and accelerated desertification.

The United Nations says desertification is the persistent degradation of dryland ecosystems by climate change and mainly human activities — unsustainable farming, mining, overgrazing and clear-cutting of land.

The U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification says approximately 65% of Sudan’s land is affected by desertification.

Walender said climate change and conflict in Sudan are caught in a destructive cycle, potentially worsening the situation in the East African nation.

“The effects of war, such as the destruction of infrastructure, displacement of communities, and the use of airstrikes and heavy artillery, intensify the environmental damage in Sudan,” she said.

The International Organization for Migration, the U.N.’s migration agency, says nearly 7.1 million people are internally displaced within Sudan, 3.8 million being newly displaced due to the country’s monthslong conflict between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Force.

Awadalla Hamid, an environmental conservation manager at Practical Action in Sudan’s North Darfur State, said human activities have taken a toll on natural resources and ecosystems, intensifying environmental degradation.

Hamid said the displacement of communities in Sudan has led to further environmental damage.

“As people are forced to flee their homes, they often settle in temporary camps or new areas, leading to uncontrolled land-use changes, overexploitation of resources and increased pressure on fragile environments,” Hamid said. “The influx of displaced populations can also result in deforestation, soil erosion and pollution.”

The U.N. Environment Program says environmental destruction during conflicts has a direct impact on public health due to air and water pollution. The use of airstrikes and heavy artillery, while causing immediate destruction, also results in long-term environmental consequences, the U.N says.

Walender said addressing the environmental consequences of conflict requires a holistic approach —peacebuilding, conflict resolution and sustainable environmental practices.

Swar Adam, who fled violence in South Darfur and currently resides in Kosti, White Nile State, Sudan, told VOA his displacement has left him unable to tend to his livestock, which is his livelihood.

“It is very difficult at the moment to go and identify your cattle in such a situation,” Adam said. “I am not sure if they are now being fed on good grazing land or not. This is the situation I am in now.”

This story originated in VOA English to Africa’s South Sudan In Focus Program.
…

India’s moon lander and rover, which made a historic landing on the south pole of the moon, have not “woken up” after being put in sleep mode earlier this month to survive the freezing lunar night temperatures.

Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization have not succeeded in reestablishing communication with the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover, which were part of India’s pioneering Chandrayaan-3 mission.

After the spacecraft soft-landed on the little-explored lunar south pole on Aug. 23 — five days after a Russian spacecraft on an identical mission crashed — the rover spent 10 days traveling more than 100 meters on the lunar surface gathering scientific data.

Tasked with “the pursuit of lunar secrets” by the ISRO, the spacecraft transmitted images and scientific data back to Earth and confirmed the presence of sulfur, iron, titanium and oxygen on the moon.

Before the sun set on the moon Sept. 2, ISRO scientists switched the rover to sleep mode to hibernate and protect the spacecraft’s sensitive components from the freezing lunar night conditions. The lander was switched to sleep mode on Sept. 4.

A lunar day and night each lasts a little over 14 Earth days. During the lunar night, the temperature on the moon can drop between minus 200 degrees Celsius and minus 250 degrees Celsius.

After switching the lander and rover to sleep mode, ISRO said in a statement that the rover had completed its first set of assignments — Chandrayaan-3 mission’s primary goal — and they were confident the spacecraft could survive the extreme lunar night.

The ISRO said that after the spacecraft reawakened Friday, the sun would shine on its solar panels, and its batteries would recharge. The agency also said that if the spacecraft did not reawaken it would “forever stay there as India’s lunar ambassador.”

In a Friday post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the ISRO scientists explained their attempts to reawaken the robotic explorers.

“Efforts have been made to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition. As of now, no signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue,” ISRO said, raising doubts about whether communication with the spacecraft would be reestablished and the mission’s scientific exploration of the lunar surface would be resumed.

In its latest update on Chandrayaan-3, ISRO said it would continue attempting to make contact with the spacecraft at least until the lunar night begins Oct. 6.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission made India the fourth country in the world to land on the moon, and the first to reach the south pole region. The achievement, hailed as “a victory cry of a new India” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sparked a feeling of national pride among millions of Indians, who watched the touchdown of the spacecraft live on television. 
…

Half of the world’s children breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke, and about 51,000 children die each year from illnesses related to second-hand smoke. Lisa Schlein reports from Geneva about the World Health Organization’s call to schools to protect children from the harmful effects of tobacco.
…

The World Health Organization is calling on schools to protect children from the harmful health impacts of tobacco use by creating nicotine- and tobacco-free zones on their campuses.

Tobacco kills more than 8 million people every year, most in low- and middle-income countries, which account for about 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users.

The United Nations health agency reports that roughly half of the world’s children breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke and that about 51,000 children die each year from illnesses related to secondhand smoke.

“Young people are not only threatened by secondhand smoke,” said Kerstin Schotte, medical officer at WHO, “they are also aggressively targeted by the tobacco and related industries and their deadly products.”

As more than half of all smokers die prematurely, and in a bid to keep profits high, she said, the tobacco industry “tries to replace all the customers they lose by recruiting new users.”

“Given that an overwhelming 90% of smokers pick up the habit before turning 18, teenagers become prime targets,” Schotte said.

She said one tactic employed by the tobacco industry to entice young people to become new users is through marketing addictive, sweet and fruity flavored nicotine products. She said, “These products are sold near schools, online and in vending machines, where age verification can be circumvented.”

She said the industry also has made its product more affordable for young people “through the sale of single-use vape sticks, as they are called. They usually do not bear any health warnings, and children often do not know that they contain nicotine and are dangerous.”

Ruediger Krech, WHO director of health promotion, said this is a problem throughout the world, in rich and poor countries alike. He noted that last month the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned 15 online retailers to stop selling illegal e-cigarettes that are packaged to appeal to young people.

He said these dangerous products are being sold in class, at bus stops — everywhere young people congregate. “We must protect young people from deadly secondhand smoke and toxic e-cigarette emissions, as well as ads promoting these products,” he said.

E-cigarettes are marketed by the tobacco industry as products that help adult smokers quit the habit. However, medical officer Schotte said this isn’t proven science.

“We think there is not enough evidence to say for sure that these products can help smokers to quit,” she said. “If anything, we see another double use. The majority of smokers who try to quit smoking with these devices do not quit all products. But they just switch to these products.

“And our definition of quitting is not that you switch to another addictive product,” she said.

To counter this, the World Health Organization has launched a new guide and toolkit for school administrators and teachers about how to create tobacco- and nicotine-free schools. The guides provide best-practice examples of what countries, cities and schools have done to become tobacco and nicotine free.

“Schools are in a unique position to create this healthy tobacco- and nicotine-free environment because children spend a third of their waking time in schools,” Schotte said.

“This is the place where children encounter a lot of this peer pressure about using these products, and this is why it is important that schools provide this safe and healthy environment for children,” she said.

The WHO guide highlights four ways to promote a nicotine- and tobacco-free environment for young people. They include banning nicotine and tobacco products on school campuses, prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes and other toxic commodities near schools, and banning the advertisement and promotion of tobacco products near schools. The guide also calls on schools to refuse sponsorships or engagement with tobacco and nicotine industries.

“We want children to be in a safe place,” Schotte said, “so schools should be completely smoke and nicotine free indoors.”

She noted that 149 countries already have put legislation in place prohibiting smoking inside educational facilities. She said the WHO guide also recommends turning the entire school campus — indoors and outdoors — into a smoke-free zone.

“We want to de-normalize the act of smoking in public places,” she said.
…

Deeply entrenched gender norms, biases and perceptions are affecting the ability of girls and young women to use the internet, influencing their online activity and hurting their access to information and work, a new report has found.

A survey of more than 10,000 users aged 14-21, and their parents, in over half a dozen countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and India, found that girls are constantly being monitored and told they are vulnerable and not competent online, “creating a crisis of confidence.”

“This is resulting in girls setting up more protections and behaving more conservatively when connecting with others and sharing personal information online,” said the report by nonprofit Girl Effect, the Malala Fund, the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF and the Vodafone Americas Foundation.

“These attitudes are not just impacting girls’ access and usage, they are influencing their self-confidence and shaping their own perceptions of their ability to use these tools to pursue their social, educational, and intellectual interests,” said the report.

The gender digital divide has persisted despite efforts by governments worldwide. A UNICEF study earlier this year showed that in 54 countries, the median gender parity ratio is 71, meaning that for every 100 adolescent boys and young men who use the internet, only 71 adolescent girls and young women do.

At the same time, women experience more online abuse, and harassment is driving girls to quit social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, recent studies have found.

Among digitally connected youth, 12% more girls than boys said that they feel self-conscious while using social media and are 11% less likely to post photos or comments online compared to boys of the same age, the report by Girl Effect found.

Vicious cycle

As girls’ exposure to the internet is restricted by biases and fear of abuse, they do not see themselves as tech-savvy, and do not see the internet as something that is for them, the report from Girl Effect said.

“This creates a vicious cycle whereby girls avoid tech because they don’t think it’s for them, and then tech is seen as ‘not for them’ because they have been avoiding it,” it said.

As teenagers who scrutinize, regulate and limit their behavior online, women “often carry these traits to their workplace, where they face difficulties in demonstrating their skills and building strategic connections,” said Mitali Nikore, a gender policy specialist at research group Nikore Associates.

“This negatively affects women’s behavior at workplaces, constraining their labor market opportunities and professional advancement … and their access to potential sources of revenue-generating activities,” Nikore told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Besides better smartphone access for girls and young women, digital literacy programs and an end to discrimination based on gender norms are needed, said Nikore.

Girls must also be involved in creating digital products for their needs, said a spokesperson for Girl Effect.

For example, Girl Effect developed artificial intelligence-enabled chatbots in South Africa and India — Big Sis and Bol Behen (“tell me, sister”) — with girls, as a source of accurate information on general health and sexual wellbeing for girls.

While new laws such as Britain’s Online Safety Act and the proposed Kids Online Safety Act in the United States can help protect children somewhat, “regulations can only go so far, and often lag behind technological advances,” the spokesperson for Girl Effect said.

“Adolescent girls and young women want to be involved in co-creating solutions; they have clear ideas for the functions, experiences, and strategies that could be applied to make the internet a safer, more accessible place.”
…

Sea ice that packs the ocean around Antarctica hit record low levels this winter, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said Monday, adding to scientists’ fears that the impact of climate change at the southern pole is ramping up. 

Researchers warn the shift can have dire consequences for animals like penguins who breed and rear their young on the sea ice, while also hastening global warming by reducing how much sunlight is reflected by white ice back into space. 

Antarctic sea ice extent peaked this year on September 10, when it covered 16.96 million square kilometers (6.55 million square miles), the lowest winter maximum since satellite records began in 1979, the NSIDC said. That’s about 1 million square kilometers (about 621,371 square miles) less ice than the previous winter record set in 1986. 

“It’s not just a record-breaking year, it’s an extreme record-breaking year,” said NSIDC senior scientist Walt Meier. 

NSIDC in a statement said that the figures were preliminary with a full analysis to be released next month. 

Seasons are reversed in the Southern hemisphere with sea ice generally peaking around September near the end of winter and later melting to its lowest point in February or March as summer draws to a close. 

The summer Antarctic sea ice extent also hit a record low in February, breaking the previous mark set in 2022. 

The Arctic has been hit hard by climate change over the last decade, with sea ice rapidly deteriorating as the northern region warms four times faster than the global average. 

While climate change is contributing to melting glaciers in Antarctica, it has been less certain how warming temperatures are impacting sea ice near the southern pole. Sea ice extent there grew between 2007 and 2016. 

The shift in recent years toward record-low conditions has scientists concerned climate change may finally be presenting itself in Antarctic sea ice. 

While Meier cautioned it is too soon to say, an academic article published earlier this month in the journal Communications Earth and Environment pointed to climate change as a potential factor. 

The study found that warming ocean temperatures, driven mainly by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, are contributing to the lower sea ice levels seen since 2016. 

“The key message here is that to protect these frozen parts of the world that are really important for a whole number of reasons,” said Ariaan Purich, a sea ice researcher at Australia’s Monash University who co-authored the study, “we really need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.” 
…

Outbreaks of dengue fever and acute watery diarrhea have “killed hundreds” in war-torn Sudan, medics reported on Monday, warning of “catastrophic spreads” that could overwhelm the country’s decimated health system. 

In a statement, the Sudanese doctors’ union warned that the health situation in the southeastern state of Gedaref, on the border with Ethiopia, “is deteriorating at a horrific rate,” with thousands infected with dengue fever. 

Although Gedaref has been spared the direct effects of the brutal war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), it has nonetheless been impacted by mass displacement and other humanitarian crises. 

More than five months into the war, 80% of the hospitals in Sudan are out of service, according to the United Nations. 

Even before the war, the fragile health care system struggled to contain the annual disease outbreaks that accompany the country’s rainy season starting in June, including malaria — endemic in Sudan — and dengue fever. 

This year, with Gedaref hosting upwards of 250,000 internally displaced persons, according to the U.N., the situation is much worse. 

“The hospital’s beds are all full, but the cases keep coming in, particularly children,” a medical source told AFP from Gedaref Hospital, requesting anonymity out of concern for his safety. 

“But the number of those receiving treatment at home are much more than those at the hospital,” he said. 

Gedaref resident Amal Hussein told AFP that “in each home, there are at least three people sick with dengue.” 

Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease that causes high fever, headaches, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain and, in the most serious cases, bleeding that can lead to death. 

Medics and the U.N. have repeatedly warned that the violence in Sudan, combined with the rainy season and devastated infrastructure, would cause disease outbreaks. 

More than 1,200 children have died in refugee camps since May, due in part to a measles outbreak, according to the U.N. refugee agency. 

‘Disaster is knocking’ 

In El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, “13 cases of malaria were reported in one week,” the health ministry said. 

In Khartoum, “three people died of acute watery diarrhea” — suspected cases of cholera — in the Hajj Youssef district in the east of the capital, the local resistance committee said on Monday. 

“Take precautions to avoid infection,” urged the committee — one of many that used to organize pro-democracy demonstrations before the war and that now volunteers to help those caught in the crossfire. 

Health crises have compounded the dire humanitarian situation in Sudan, where half of the population of 48 million relies on aid to survive and with 6 million on the brink of starvation, according to the U.N. 

Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the U.N.’s humanitarian representative in Sudan, warned on Monday that “disaster is knocking on the door in Sudan.” 

She urged “donors to immediately disburse pledged funds to sustain life-saving humanitarian aid.” 

By early September, the conflict between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, had killed nearly 7,500 people, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. 

Dozens of hospitals have been bombed or occupied by fighters, in what the U.N. has called “cruel disregard for civilians.” 

The medics and aid workers who remain are themselves regularly targeted and their stocks looted as more people demand help.

The health ministry said on Monday RSF forces had seized control of the main medical supplies warehouse.

“Medicines and medical equipment amounting to $500 million have been lost,” ministry spokesman Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said, adding that “70% of the equipment in specialized centers in Khartoum … has been lost.”

Even before the war, 1 in 3 Sudanese needed to walk more than an hour to gain access to medical care, and just 30% of vital medicines were available, according to the U.N. 
…