As few as three major criminal groups are responsible for smuggling the vast majority of elephant ivory tusks out of Africa, according to a new study. Researchers used analysis of DNA from seized elephant tusks and evidence such as phone records, license plates, financial records and shipping documents to map trafficking operations across the continent and better understand who was behind the crimes. The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior. “When you have the genetic analysis and other data, you can finally begin to understand the illicit supply chain — that’s absolutely key to countering these networks,” said Louise Shelley, who researches illegal trade at George Mason University and was not involved in the research. Conservation biologist Samuel Wasser, a study co-author, hopes the findings will help law enforcement officials target the leaders of these networks instead of low-level poachers who are easily replaced by criminal …

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has begun a two-week meeting to consider a report that assesses the impact of the world’s changing climate and how humans might adapt. Hundreds of scientists meeting virtually will lay out the latest evidence on how past and future changes to the Earth’s climate system are affecting the planet. The report under review is the second of three installments that will comprise the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which will be released later this year. In August, the scientific body approved the first contribution of Working Group I, which dealt with the physical science basis of climate change. The second part, currently under review, highlights the role of social justice and diverse forms of knowledge, such as indigenous and local knowledge, might play to strengthen climate change action and reduce the risks. The chair of the IPCC, Hoesung Lee, said the report focuses …

A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday began its review of Japan’s plan to begin releasing more than a million tons of treated radioactive water into the sea from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant — a review that Japan hopes will instill confidence in the plan. The 15-member team is to visit the Fukushima plant on Tuesday and meet with government and utility officials during its five-day mission. The government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings announced plans last year to begin gradually releasing the still-contaminated water in spring 2023 after its further treatment and dilution. The water is being stored in about 1,000 tanks at the damaged plant which officials say need to be removed so the reactors can be decommissioned. The tanks are expected to reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons later this year. The release of the water into the sea has been fiercely …

A vault built on an Arctic mountainside to preserve the world’s crop seeds from war, disease and other catastrophes will receive new deposits on Monday, including one from the first organization that made a withdrawal from the facility. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, on Spitsbergen island halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, is only opened a few times a year to limit its seed banks’ exposure to the outside world. On Monday, gene banks from Sudan, Uganda, New Zealand, Germany and Lebanon will deposit seeds, including millet, sorghum and wheat, as back-ups to their own collections. The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), which moved its headquarters to Beirut from Aleppo in 2012 because of the war in Syria, will deposit some 8,000 samples. ICARDA made the first seed withdrawal from the vault in 2015 to replace a collection damaged by the war, and two …

The World Health Organization warns a sharp rise in measles cases in Afghanistan is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of malnourished children.  More than 35,300 suspected cases of measles and 156 deaths have been reported in Afghanistan from January 2021 through January of this year.  What is setting off alarm bells ringing is the sharp, rapid rise in cases last month. The World Health Organization reports a 40% increase in the number of measles cases in the last week of January.  Although the number of deaths is relatively low, the WHO warns many children are likely to die from the disease in the coming weeks. WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier says measles-related deaths are not always reported in Afghanistan, so the toll is likely to be much higher than the figures suggest. “The rise in measles cases is especially concerning because of the extremely high levels of malnutrition in …

At the Tokyo Olympics, mental health was the breakout star. Amplified by some of the world’s top athletes, it shook up those Games and made everyone take notice. Six months later, in Beijing, the conversation has evolved: The subject pops up regularly, but no one is shocked when it does. Many athletes have spoken about their struggles, but often in a no-biggie, nothing-to-see-here way. A difficulty is mentioned, then the conversation moves on. After star gymnast Simone Biles pulled out of competition in Tokyo because she wasn’t in the right headspace, retired Olympic swimming phenom Michael Phelps memorably said that “It’s OK to not be OK.” And now, thanks in part to people like Biles, it seems it’s OK to talk about it, too. “I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned after the last Olympics is being as open as possible,” snowboarding sensation Chloe Kim told reporters after she took …

NASA’s new space telescope has captured its first starlight and taken a selfie of its giant, gold mirror.   All 18 segments of the primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope seem to be working properly 1½ months into the mission, officials said Friday.   The telescope’s first target was a bright star 258 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.   “That was just a real wow moment,” said Marshall Perrin of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.   Over the next few months, the hexagonal mirror segments — each the size of a coffee table — will be aligned and focused as one, allowing science observations to begin by the end of June.  The $10 billion infrared observatory — considered the successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope — will seek light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe nearly 14 billion …

The COVID-19 infection rate for Africa may be as much as seven times higher than reported, while death counts could be two to three times higher, according to the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa. “We’re very much aware that our surveillance systems problems that we had on the continent, with access to testing supplies, for example,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said Thursday, “have led to an underestimation of the cases.” Public health officials have warned for some time that Africa’s COVID infection and death tolls were likely undercounted. India’s health ministry reported 58,077 new COVID cases on Friday. Like Africa, public health officials have also cautioned that India’s COVID figures are probably under-calculated, as well. As many as 3,000 New York City municipal workers are facing termination Friday if they do not adhere to the city’s mandate requiring city workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Workers have staged protests, …

The COVID-19 infection rate for Africa may be as much as seven times higher than reported, while death counts could be two to three times higher, according to the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa. “We’re very much aware that our surveillance systems problems that we had on the continent, with access to testing supplies, for example,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said Thursday, “have led to an underestimation of the cases.” Public health officials have warned for some time that Africa’s COVID infection and death tolls were likely undercounted. India’s health ministry reported 58,077 new COVID cases on Friday. Like Africa, public health officials have also cautioned that India’s COVID figures are probably under-calculated, as well. As many as 3,000 New York City municipal workers are facing termination Friday if they do not adhere to the city’s mandate requiring city workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Workers have staged protests, …

Trucker-led protests against coronavirus restrictions in Canada shut down another U.S. border crossing Thursday, as copycat movements gathered steam overseas and Washington called on its northern neighbor to use federal powers to end the blockades. The border obstructions have already impacted business, with the key Ambassador Bridge linking Ontario and Detroit out of service for several days — and major automakers forced to cut back production at several plants as a result. A second crossing in the western province of Alberta has been blocked for days, and on Thursday protesters closed down a third — in central Manitoba. Citing supply shortages, Ford said it was forced to slow down production at factories in Canada, while some Stellantis factories in the United States and Canada halted work Wednesday evening, General Motors canceled several shifts, and Toyota said its plants were also hit. In the Canadian capital, police said Thursday they were …

An international collaboration led by researchers in Canada and Brazil is applying innovative funding and testing methods to determine whether existing medications can provide cheaper and more effective treatments for COVID-19 and is encouraged by its initial results. Calling it the “TOGETHER Trial,” researchers predominantly in Brazil and Canada refer to their method as “adaptive platform clinical trial,” which permits several potential treatments to be tested simultaneously, reducing costs and the number of people who need to be tested. The researchers have also speeded up the search for effective COVID treatments by relying on financing and support from private foundations, universities and the private sector, rather than the time-consuming process of seeking government funding. One such trial conducted in Brazil beginning in June 2020 found fluvoxamine, a common anti-depressant, helped reduce hospitalization and death of COVID-19 patients by 32%. Ed Mills, a clinical epidemiologist who teaches at Ontario’s McMaster University, …

The U.S. needs a nimble, multipronged strategy and Cabinet-level leadership to counter its festering overdose epidemic, a bipartisan congressional commission advises. With vastly powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl driving record overdose deaths, the scourge of opioids awaits after the COVID-19 pandemic finally recedes, a shift that public health experts expect in the months ahead. “This is one of our most pressing national security, law enforcement and public health challenges, and we must do more as a nation and a government to protect our most precious resource — American lives,” the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking said in a 70-page report released Tuesday to Congress, President Joe Biden and the American people. The report envisions a dynamic strategy. It would rely on law enforcement and diplomacy to shut down sources of chemicals used to make synthetic opioids. It would offer treatment and support for people who become addicted, creating pathways …

Paris — Plastic has infiltrated all parts of the ocean and is now found “in the smallest plankton up to the largest whale” wildlife group WWF said on Tuesday, calling for urgent efforts to create an international treaty on plastics. Tiny fragments of plastic have reached even the most remote and seemingly pristine regions of the planet: it peppers Arctic sea ice and has been found inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean, the Mariana Trench. There is no international agreement in place to address the problem, although delegates meeting in Nairobi for a United Nations environment meeting this month are expected to launch talks on a worldwide plastics treaty. WWF sought to bolster the case for action in its latest report, which synthesizes more than 2,000 separate scientific studies on the impacts of plastic pollution on the oceans, biodiversity and marine ecosystems. The report acknowledged that there …

Millions of people around the world enjoy a daily cup of coffee; however, their daily caffeine fix could be under threat because climate change is killing coffee plants, putting farmers’ livelihoods at risk. Inside the vast, steamy greenhouses at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the leafy suburbs of west London, Aaron Davis leads the research into coffee. “Arabica coffee, our preferred coffee, provides us with about 60% of the coffee that we drink globally. It’s a delicious coffee, it’s the one we love to drink. The other species is robusta coffee, which provides us with the other 40% of the coffee we drink – but that mainly goes into instant coffees and espresso mixes,” Davis explains. The cultivation of arabica and robusta coffee beans accounts for millions of livelihoods across Africa, South America and Asia. “These coffees have served us very well for many centuries, but under climate …

Pope Francis on Sunday decried the genital mutilation of millions of girls and the trafficking of women for sex, including openly on city streets, so others can make money off of them.  In remarks to the public in St. Peter’s Square, the pope noted that the day was dedicated worldwide to ending the ritual mutilation, and he told the crowd that some 3 million girls each year undergo the practice, “often in conditions very dangerous for the health.” “This practice, unfortunately widespread in various regions of the world, humiliates the dignity of women and gravely attacks their physical integrity,” Francis said. Female genital mutilation comprises all procedures that involve changing or injuring female genitalia for non-medical reasons and violates the human rights, health and the integrity of girls and women, the United Nations says in championing an end to the practice. The practice can cause severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, …

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in an address on the nation’s Waitangi Day observance that the country has an obligation to make sure everyone has access to the health care they need, and that no one dies younger than everyone else in New Zealand because they are Maori.” The commemorative day is named for the region on the North Island where representatives of the British Crown and more than 500 Indigenous Maori chiefs signed a founding treaty in 1840. The Maori, however, lost most of their land during British colonization and have staged demonstrations on Waitangi Day to rally for their civil and social rights. Last year New Zealand established the Maori Health Authority to ensure better health care access for the Maori who have been overwhelmed by COVID pandemic. “We all have a duty to do everything we can to protect our communities with all the tools …

In the two years since COVID-19 began ravaging the United States, virtually every aspect of the pandemic has been politicized, often to the detriment of efforts to bring the disease under control and to treat its victims. Now, though, members of Congress are taking the first steps toward a bipartisan effort to understand the pandemic’s origins and to assess the federal government’s response. The two most senior members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions have begun circulating a proposal to create a 12-member commission of private citizens with broad authority to investigate the origins of the disease – and how the Trump and Biden administrations responded to it. The initiative appears to have broad support among members of both parties. The two lawmakers, Health Committee Chair Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and the committee’s senior Republican, Richard Burr of North Carolina, have modeled the effort …

The oceans got even warmer last year than the year before, supercharging already extreme weather patterns worldwide, according to a recent report published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Twenty-three international scientists analyzed thousands of ocean temperature measurements. Since 2018, when the group first began publishing their findings, they have found that ocean temperatures are rising each year. But the warming isn’t consistent around the planet. In 2021, the researchers discovered that because of wind patterns and currents, some parts of the Atlantic, Indian and northern Pacific oceans warmed more quickly. “The motion of water in the world’s oceans distributes the heat in a nonuniform way, so some areas get more heat and others less, meaning certain parts of the oceans warm faster than others,” said John Abraham, a co-author of the study and climate scientist at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases …

The Philippines has suspended a heavily criticized policy banning the unvaccinated from public transportation in Metro Manila as a COVID-19 surge, caused by omicron variant, has subsided. Daily cases in the Philippines rose from 400 in December to more than 39,000 in just a matter of days. The positivity rate, or percentage of positive cases out of those tested, peaked at more than 47%, as the country’s testing capacity remained low. Hospitals were quickly overwhelmed after a brief holiday lull, but the Health Department said 85% of those admitted to intensive care units had not been vaccinated. Health care workers are exhausted, and many of those testing positive for the virus had to return to work immediately after recovering. Despite the record-breaking COVID-19 cases, the government did not impose a lockdown. The Transportation Department implemented the “no vaccination, no ride” policy in Metro Manila, covering anyone taking public transportation starting …