The U.S. space agency NASA has awarded contracts to three American companies to develop spacecraft to land humans on the moon by 2024. In a remote news conference Thursday, NASA announced it had selected Blue Origin, the space exploration company owned by Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, and owner and founder of Amazon; Dynetics, a subsidiary of research company Leidos that is based in the city of Huntsville, Alabama; and SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, and owned by businessman Elon Musk. NASA says the companies will compete to design and develop systems for the agency’s Artemis program, which has the goal of landing men and women on the surface of the moon for the first time since the 1970s. The project would also develop systems by 2028 that could be used for people to explore the solar system. NASA’s statement says the three commercial partners will refine their moon lander concepts through …

Two United Nations agencies called on the global community Wednesday to prevent hunger and malnutrition among the 370 million children who are not receiving school meals due to the closure of schools worldwide in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.The U.N. said school meals are particularly vital for girls, especially those in poor countries, whose struggling parents often send them to school to get meals, allowing them to avoid domestic responsibilities or early marriage.”For millions of children around the world, the meal they get at school is the only meal they get in a day,” said David Beasley, executive director of the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP). “Without it, they go hungry, they risk falling sick, dropping out of school and losing their best chance of escaping poverty. We must act now to prevent the health pandemic from becoming a hunger catastrophe.”The U.N. said children in impoverished countries also are missing out …

Children could be the biggest victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the fact that the disease affects mostly older people, according to human rights groups.  It is estimated that 1.5 billion children worldwide are missing school. The outbreak is having myriad other impacts on young people, with hundreds of thousands orphaned by the disease that the coronavirus causes.  “More and more children are going to be left without parents,” said Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch. “We’ve seen from the Ebola crisis, for example, the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, that when children are orphaned, they become much more vulnerable to sex trafficking, to child labor and other forms of exploitation.” A recent report from the International Labor Organization warned that 200 million people could lose their jobs as a result of the pandemic.  “As parents lose their employment, especially in developing countries, we often see more and more children pushed into child labor to try and help families just meet their basic needs,” Becker said. “And correspondingly, there’s also a trend towards early …

The World Health Organization says Niger has been struck by a new outbreak of polio, following the suspension of immunization activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.N. health agency reported that two children were infected by the highly infectious, water-borne disease and that one was paralyzed. The outbreak was sparked by a mutated virus that originated in the vaccine and was not connected to a previous polio epidemic Niger stopped last year, WHO said, in a statement last week.   “The poliovirus will inevitably continue to circulate and may paralyze more children as no high-quality immunization campaigns can be conducted in a timely manner,” said Pascal Mkanda, WHO’s coordinator of polio eradication in Africa.   In rare cases, the live virus in oral polio vaccine can evolve into a form capable of igniting new outbreaks among non-immunized children; stopping the epidemic requires more targeted vaccination.   Earlier this month, WHO …

An asteroid just over two kilometers wide will pass close to earth Wednesday. But scientists with the U.S. space agency, NASA, say the object poses no threat to the planet.The asteroid is known as 1998 OR2, named for the year it was first discovered. It will safely pass at a distance of 6.3 million kilometers from Earth — about 16 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.NASA scientists say by astronomical standards, that distance still classifies the asteroid as a “near-earth” object and worth watching. The space agency considers objects that pass within 48 million kilometers of our planet a “near-earth” object. NASA maintains a planetary defense coordination office that keeps track of such objects and plots their courses through space. In an interview posted on the space agency’s website, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies manager Paul Chodas say they believe they have found and tracked about 90% of …

An asteroid just over two kilometers wide will pass close to earth Wednesday. But scientists with the U.S. space agency, NASA, say the object poses no threat to the planet.The asteroid is known as 1998 OR2, named for the year it was first discovered. It will safely pass at a distance of 6.3 million kilometers from Earth — about 16 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.NASA scientists say by astronomical standards, that distance still classifies the asteroid as a “near-earth” object and worth watching. The space agency considers objects that pass within 48 million kilometers of our planet a “near-earth” object. NASA maintains a planetary defense coordination office that keeps track of such objects and plots their courses through space. In an interview posted on the space agency’s website, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies manager Paul Chodas say they believe they have found and tracked about 90% of …

A decision by India to suspend the use of Chinese rapid testing kits for COVID-19 on the grounds that they are faulty has been slammed by the Chinese embassy in New Delhi as “unfair and irresponsible.”    The Indian government medical research agency that is dealing with the coronavirus outbreak has said it planned to return the test kits to the two Chinese firms from where they were procured and asked health authorities across the country to stop using them due to “wide variations” in their performance.    India had procured half a million antibody test kits earlier this month in a bid to ramp up testing amid concerns that its fight to slow the pandemic is being hampered by extremely low levels of testing. They are meant to detect antibodies in people who may have had the infection and were to serve as surveillance tools in hotspots.     The kits, which deliver a …

Doctors in Britain, Italy, Portugal and Spain are exploring a possible link between a severe inflammatory disease in children and the coronavirus. A growing number of children of various ages in several European countries have been admitted to hospitals with high fever and heart issues. Some also have suffered from gastrointestinal problems, such as vomiting and diarrhea. The children appear to be suffering from Kawasaki disease, which is more common in parts of Asia where it afflicts children younger than 5. Symptoms include skin rashes, gland swelling and in severe cases inflammation of the heart and blood vessels. The cause of the illness is not clear. COVID-19, a disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus, is rare in children. But an unusual spike in the number of children suffering from Kawasaki-type symptoms at the time of the coronavirus pandemic has put health authorities in Europe on alert. After hearing from pediatricians, British National Health System issued a warning saying: “Over the last three weeks there has been an apparent rise in the number of children of all ages presenting with a multisystem inflammatory state requiring intensive care across London and also in …

Amid a three-week suspension of public and private transport in Uganda due to the coronavirus, some HIV-positive Ugandans have struggled to get hold of needed antiretroviral medications. Noticing a higher risk for HIV patients with compromised immune systems, health worker Simon Bukenya jumped on his bicycle and began making home deliveries, even going long distances to do it.Simon Peter Bukenya has been living with HIV for 30 years and understands the importance of taking antiretroviral drugs. A lockdown due to the coronavirus has stranded Ugandans in need of medical attention, including people who are HIV-positive. Bukenya says on a daily basis, he bicycles more than 80 kilometers to deliver medications to those who need them. He says he started with three patients, and word of his services spread after he posted a notice on Facebook.“There’s even a client that called me and sent me a WhatsApp, when she had gotten herpes zoster, and …

From a hill four miles outside Boston, World Resources Institute economist Michelle Manion says she can read the letters on top of the Prudential building, a city landmark.”I’ve never been able to do that,” she said. “It’s really amazing.”Since FILE – Gas prices are listed for unleaded at a gas station in Oklahoma City.Don’t expect it to last.”The general expectation is that most of this will pick up once the crisis is over,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Saban Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Satellite imagery already shows air pollution rebounding over China. In the meantime, the pandemic has slowed the transition to cleaner energy.BloombergNEF, an energy research organization, lowered its 2020 forecast for new wind power construction globally by 12% and new solar power by 8%. Investment in renewables has dried up. Electric vehicle sales are down by two-fifths compared to last year.The downturn is likely temporary. …

By 2025, Indonesia is expected to generate 150 thousand tons of trash per day, much of it plastic. Indonesian entrepreneur David Christian is developing everyday products to edge the world’s 4th most populous nation toward producing zero waste. But with COVID-19 wreaking havoc on businesses around the world, some outlets are finding environmentally friendly packaging a luxury they can’t afford. VOA’s Rendy Wicaksana and Ahadian Utama report from Jakarta, Indonesia. …

A song urging Cameroonians not to relent in the fight against malaria blasted through speakers Saturday — World Malaria Day — at road junctions and popular neighborhoods, as well as from publicity vans driving through Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.Dr. Daniel Etoundi of Cameroon’s public health ministry said health teams were being taken to every neighborhood to try to discourage patients from buying roadside drugs or resorting to African traditional healers for malaria treatment, because those can lead to severe health complications.”If the product is toxic, the liver will be spoiled [destroyed]. Same with the kidney,” he said. “Most of the products that we consume are eliminated through the kidney by urine. Now, if the drug is toxic, it will spoil the kidney function.”The Cameroon Ministry of Public Health reported that since March 5, when the first case of the coronavirus was reported in the central African state, many people with suspected …

An unmanned cargo spacecraft with food, fuel and supplies docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday.Russian Progress 75 cargo ship left the Baikonur Cosmodrom in Kazakhstan, a few minutes before 1 a.m. GMT and transported almost 3 tons of food and other supplies to the ISS.Scientists and staff, both in Baikonur and at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, monitored the three-hour journey and the docking.The cargo ship is set to remain at the station until December, when it will leave and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.    …

U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that disinfectants could be used to treat coronavirus patients is triggering alarm among health experts, and warnings from a maker of the sanitizing solutions.Trump said at his regular White House coronavirus media briefing Thursday that scientists should investigate inserting disinfectants into patients’ bodies to cure COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.”I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute,” Trump said. “And is there a way we can do something like that by injection, inside, or almost a cleaning?”With coronavirus response coordinator and physician Deborah Birx looking on, Trump noted the virus “does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.” However, physicians and other health experts are warning against Trump’s suggestion to use disinfectants to treat the virus.”(This is an) absolutely dangerous, crazy suggestion,” said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University …