U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took his global message urging immediate climate action to officials gathered in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, where production of hydrocarbons remains a key driver of the economy.   Guterres is calling on governments to stop building new coal plants by 2020, cut greenhouse emissions by 45% over the next decade and overhauling fossil fuel-driven economies with new technologies like solar and wind. The world, he said, is facing a grave climate emergency.”   In remarks at a summit in Abu Dhabi, he painted a grim picture of how rapidly climate change is advancing, saying it is outpacing efforts to address it.    He lauded the Paris climate accord, but said even if its promises are fully met, the world still faces what he described as a catastrophic three-degree temperature rise by the end of the century.   Arctic permafrost is melting decades earlier than …

Sometimes, modern problems require ancient solutions.     A 1,400-year-old Peruvian water-diverting method could supply up to 40,000 Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth of water to present-day Lima each year, according to new research published in Nature Sustainability.   It’s one example of how indigenous methods could supplement existing modern infrastructure in water-scarce countries worldwide.    More than a billion people across the world face water scarcity. Artificial reservoirs store rainwater and runoff for use during drier times, but reservoirs are costly, require years to plan and can still fail to meet water needs. Just last week, the reservoirs in Chennai, India, ran nearly dry, forcing its 4 million residents to rely on government water tankers.    Animation showing monthly rainfall in the tropical Andes. Humid air transports water vapor from the Amazon and is blocked by the Andean mountain barrier, producing extreme differences between the eastern and western slopes. (B. Ochoa-Tocachi, 2019)Peru’s capital, …

The Trump administration has agreed to postpone implementing a rule allowing medical workers to decline performing abortions or other treatments on moral or religious grounds while the so-called “conscience” rule is challenged in a California court.  The rule was supposed to take effect on July 22 but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its opponents in a California lawsuit mutually agreed Friday to delay a final ruling on the matter until Nov. 22. The agency called it the “most efficient way to adjudicate” the rule. A federal judge in San Francisco permitted the change on Saturday. A California lawsuit alleges that the department exceeded its authority with the rule, which President Trump announced in May.  The measure known as Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority would require institutions that receive money from federal programs to certify that they comply with some 25 federal …

A self-declared “caravan” of Americans bused across the Canada-U.S. border on Saturday, seeking affordable prices for insulin and raising awareness of “the insulin price crisis” in the United States. The group called Caravan to Canada started the journey from Minneapolis, Minn., on Friday and stopped at London, Ontario, on Saturday to purchase lifesaving type 1 diabetes medication at a pharmacy. About 20 people made the trip, according to Nicole Smith-Holt, a member of the group. Smith-Holt said her 26-year-old son died in June 2017 because he was forced to ration costly insulin.Caravan to Canada trekked across the border in May for the same reason, and Smith-Holt was on that trip, too. She said the previous group was smaller than this week’s group. Americans have gone to countries like Mexico and Canada for more affordable medications in the past and continue to do so, she added.’Resurgence’ in visitorsThe Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported in May that Canadian pharmacists have seen a “quiet resurgence” in Americans coming to Canada looking for cheaper pharmaceuticals. Insulin prices in the United States …

A leader in the fight for health benefits for emergency personnel who responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. has died.Former New York City Police detective Luis Alvarez died from colorectal cancer Saturday, his family announced in a post On Facebook.The 53-year-old Alvarez appeared with American comedian and political activist Jon Stewart before a House Judiciary subcommittee on June 11 to appeal for an extension of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund.A frail Alvarez told the panel, “This fund is not a ticket to paradise, it’s to provide our families with care.” He went on to say “You all said you would never forget. Well, I’m here to make sure that you don’t.”Alvarez was diagnosed with cancer in 2016. His illness was traced to the three months he spent searching for survivors in the toxic rubble of the World Trade Center’s twin towers that were destroyed …

A senior World Health Organization official warns efforts to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo will remain elusive unless the vicious cycle of violence in the region is broken.  Latest WHO figures put the number of Ebola cases at 2284, including 1540 deaths and 637 survivors. WHO Assistant Director-General for Emergency Response Ibrahima Soce Fall says there has been good progress in scaling up operations to contain the spread of the deadly ebola virus in conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces.Eastern DRC has been politically unstable since 1998.   There are an estimated 4.5 million internally displaced people in the country.  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says new displacements are occurring mainly in the eastern provinces of Ituri and North and South Kivu.  More than 100 armed groups reportedly are engaged in sporadic fighting in the region.  Fall says constant and skilled negotiations …

Australia’s national science agency says years of concern about the health of the Great Barrier Reef have created a type of ‘grief’ among tourists.  A survey of thousands of visitors to the reef has found they consider the world’s largest coral system to be less beautiful now, and worry about its decline.  The study is published in the journal, Nature Climate Change. The Great Barrier Reef is nature’s gift to Australia, but it is in trouble because of climate change and pollution.“But now the largest living structure on the planet is becoming the largest dying structure.  Vast amounts of coral is being killed off by rising ocean temperatures.”A new study says that media coverage of damage to the reef is causing some tourists to start mourning its loss.  But researchers want to move beyond the despair and focus instead on positive changes that can help the world’s largest coral system from …

A group of New York bikers has set out to save the environment by starting a bike-powered composting service. They collect food waste from restaurants and households for composting, and then use that compost as fertilizer to grow vegetables. In a city with a population of 8.5 million people, this might seem like a drop in the bucket, but while the scope might be small now, the organizers have big  and green  plans for the project. Nina Vishneva has the story narrated by Anna Rice. …

In a mission to clean up trash floating in the ocean, environmentalists pulled 40 tons (36 metric tons) of abandoned fishing nets this month from an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.Mariners on a 140-foot (43-meter) cargo sailboat outfitted with a crane voyaged from Hawaii to the heart of the Pacific Ocean, where they retrieved the haul of mostly plastic fishing nets as part of an effort to rid the waters of the nets that entangle whales, turtles and fish and damage coral reefs. Crew includes volunteersThe volunteers with the California-based nonprofit Ocean Voyages Institute fished out the derelict nets from a marine gyre location where ocean currents converge between Hawaii and California during their 25-day expedition, the group’s founder, Mary Crowley, announced Friday. The group is among a handful of nonprofits working to collect plastic trash from the open ocean, an endeavor that can be dangerous, time consuming and expensive. “Our …

Video games aren’t just for fun — they can also be used to fight disease, new research shows.Scientists combined video games and computer models to show that the spread of a deadly pig disease can be slowed if farmers avoid risky behaviors. The authors say insights from the video games could be used to encourage people to follow rules, in the swine industry and beyond.Since its emergence 40 years ago, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) has swept through pig farms in Europe, Asia and North America. When PEDV erupted in the U.S. in 2013, it wiped out 7 million pigs. “A thimbleful of this virus could infect every single pig in the United States,” said Scott Merrill, a professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at the University of Vermont who was second author on the study.PEDV is especially harmful to young pigs.”More than 90 percent of [infected] …

The World Health Organization is asking Ugandans to have faith in the trial vaccine being used to contain the Ebola outbreak near the border with Congo. This follows reports that 13 people who came in contact with the virus declined to be vaccinated.Since 2018 Uganda has vaccinated nearly 5,000 people including medical officers, frontline health workers and most recently, people who came into contact with the virus in the western Kasese districtHowever, 13 out of the 94 confirmed contact persons in Kasese district declined to be vaccinated.  Village health coordinator Mbusa Geoffrey tells VOA the 13 believe that only prayer can protect them from the virus.FILE – Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa attends a briefing for World Health Assembly (WHA) delegates on the Ebola outbreak response in the DRC, Geneva, May 23, 2018.In an interview with VOA, Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization regional director …

Traditional cancer treatments often include chemotherapy, radiation or both. But chemo and radiation kill healthy cells as well as malignant ones, and the side effects are legendary.Sometimes surgery is the best option, but most people have some combination of chemo, radiation and surgery.Overall, cancer treatment is becoming more focused. For example, women with early stage breast cancer can have focused radiation after the tumor is removed.In these cases, weak radiation beams from many different angles, hit the place where the tumor was. Dr. Julia White at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center recently completed a study that showed these results. Plus, White says, partial radiation takes less time.“The short five-day treatment is just as good as the whole breast irradiation for four to six weeks,” she said.ImmunotherapyDr. William Nelson, at Johns Hopkins Medicine, says immunotherapy where the body’s own immune system fights the cancer is going to get wider use.“It’s …

Vaccination against the virus that causes almost all cervical cancer is having a major impact on stopping infections and should significantly reduce cases of the disease within a decade, researchers said Wednesday.Presenting results of an international analysis covering 60 million people in high-income countries, scientists from Britain and Canada said they found “strong evidence” that vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) works “to prevent cervical cancer in real-world settings.”“We’re seeing everything that we’d want to see. We’re seeing reductions in the key HPV infections that cause most cervical disease, and we’re seeing reductions in cervical disease,” said David Mesher, principal scientist at Public Health England, who worked on the research team.Marc Brisson, a specialist in infectious disease health economics at Canada’s Laval University who co-led the study, said the results suggested “we should be seeing substantial reductions in cervical cancer in the next 10 years.”Vaccines in 100 countriesHPV vaccines were …