Bleak news from the Centers for Disease Control shows that Americans are dying younger and that life expectancy in the U.S. is down. It might be time to call dogs to the rescue. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports that research on dogs may help us reverse the aches and pains of aging …
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are stepping down from their roles within the parent company, Alphabet.Sundar Pichai, who has been leading Google as CEO for more than four years, will stay in his role and also become CEO of Alphabet.Page was Alphabet’s CEO, while Brin was its president. Both have been noticeably absent from Google events in the past year. Both stopped making appearances at the weekly question-and-answer sessions with employees, and Page didn’t attend this summer’s Alphabet shareholder’s meeting even though he was still in the CEO role.Alphabet has been positioning Pichai as the de facto leader for quite some time making him the top executive voice at company shareholders meetings, on earnings call and as a spokesperson at Congressional hearings.Page and Brin announced the news in a Google blog post Tuesday, saying the company has “evolved and matured” in the two decades since its founding.”Today, in …
U.S. health officials say the progress in the Trump administration’s goal of wiping out the HIV epidemic by 2030 has stalled.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 38,000 new cases of HIV occur every year. HIV is the virus that can lead to AIDS.The CDC’s report says white Americans at risk of contracting HIV are up to seven times more likely than blacks and Hispanics to receive a drug called PrEP, which has been shown to cut the risk of getting HIV through sex by as much as 99%.But the CDC says less than half of at-risk whites use the PrEP, which requires a doctor’s prescription.The CDC says 40% of HIV infections involve people who don’t know they have the virus. It urges everyone to get tested and those who test positive to take daily medication to control the virus. …
Human health is paying the price of the world’s failure to curb global warming, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, urging governments at U.N. climate talks to cut climate-changing emissions faster and provide funds to address growing threats.Those range from lung and heart problems caused by toxic air to deaths in storms and wildfires, and the expansion of dengue, malaria, cholera and other diseases spread by mosquitoes and contaminated water.”The cost of not taking enough action at the climate summit … is paid by my lungs and your lungs,” said Maria Neira, director of the department of environment, climate change and health at the World Health Organization (WHO), a U.N. agency.The causes of climate change and air pollution overlap, she added, calling for societies to “decarbonize,” including by ditching coal as a source of power and heat, and ending subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels.According to the …
Carbon dioxide emissions rose in 2019 for the third straight year, according to the latest Global Carbon Project estimate, and do not look set to fall before the end of the next decade.This is more bad news for United Nations negotiators in Madrid to consider as they aim to hammer out rules for implementing the 2015 Paris international agreement on limiting climate change.This year’s 0.6% growth in CO2 emissions is slower than the previous two years. Steep declines in coal use in the United States and Europe, combined with weaker global economic growth, were behind the slowdown, the report says.But slowing growth is not enough. A recent United Nations report said emissions must decline by at least 2.7% per year to keep the planet from overheating. Emissions look likely to continue in the wrong direction for years to come, according to Stanford University Earth scientist Rob Jackson, chair of the Global …
Imagine if your car can sense your emotions and play happy music when you are sad. That’s what a team of researchers at Texas A&M University is working on — to look at brain waves that correlate to different human emotions and ultimately teach that to an autonomous vehicle. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details from College Station, Texas. …
From the surface, these 22 square miles of water are unexceptional.But dip beneath the surface — go down 60 or 70 feet — and you’ll find a spectacular seascape. Sponges, barnacles and tube worms cover rocky ledges on the ocean floor, forming a “live bottom.”Gray’s Reef is little more than a drop in the ocean 19 miles off the Georgia coast, but don’t confuse size for significance. In one of his last official acts, President Jimmy Carter declared the reef a national marine sanctuary at the urging of conservationists who said its abundance of life was unique and worth saving for future generations.For nearly 40 years, the U.S. government has protected the reef, home to more than 200 species of fish and an amazing array of nearly 1,000 different kinds of invertebrates. Recreational fishing and diving are allowed, but commercial fishing and other kinds of exploitation are not.And Gray’s Reef …
The U.N.’s trade and development agency estimates that Europe, led by the Netherlands, leads the world in readiness for online shopping.UNCTAD’s annual business-to-consumer e-commerce index ranked the United States again in the teens, at 13th — largely because of its relatively low share of people using the internet compared to other developed countries.Russia ranked 40th and China 56th, while Hong Kong came in at No. 15.The agency said Tuesday over 80% of internet users in six European countries shop online, versus under 10% in some poorer countries.The rankings are based on use of the internet as well as access to secure internet servers, reliable postal services, and financial institution or mobile-money-service providers. UNCTAD called the report provisional, cautioning that some data dates to 2017. …
Four workers fired from Google last week are planning to file a federal labor complaint against the company, claiming it unfairly retaliated against them for organizing workers around social causes.The former employees said Tuesday they are preparing to file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board this week. All four were fired Nov. 25 for what Google said were violations of its data security policy.Company officials wrote in a memo — without confirming the employees’ names — that the four were “searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs.”But the four workers — Laurence Berland, Sophie Waldman, Rebecca Rivers and Paul Duke — say they believe they did not violate company policies and claim that Google is using the alleged violations as an excuse to terminate them for labor activity.“This is an expression of Google’s management power,” Duke said. “They are scared …
Climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in Portugal on Tuesday after a three-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, telling cheering supporters that the journey had “energized” her for the fight against climate change. The Swedish teen, whose one-woman protests outside the Swedish parliament helped inspire a global youth movement, sailed into the port of Lisbon after making a last-minute dash back from the United States to attend this year’s U.N. climate conference. Thunberg has been steadfast in her refusal to fly because of the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by planes, a stance that put her planned appearance at the meeting in doubt when the venue was moved from Chile to Spain a month ago. “We’ve all been on quite an adventure,” Thunberg told reporters shortly after stepping off the catamaran La Vagabonde, on which she’d hitched a ride back home to Europe. “It feels good to be back.” Thunberg’s appearances …
