Better catch the moon’s disappearing act Tuesday — there won’t be another like it for three years. The total lunar eclipse will be visible throughout North America in the predawn hours — the farther west, the better — and across Asia, Australia and the rest of the Pacific after sunset. As an extra treat, Uranus will be visible just a finger’s width above the moon, resembling a bright star. Totality will last nearly 1 1/2 hours — from 5:16 a.m. to 6:42 a.m. EST — as Earth passes directly between the moon and sun. Known as a blood moon, it will appear a reddish orange from the light of Earth’s sunsets and sunrises. At the peak of the eclipse, the moon will be 390,653 kilometers away, according to NASA scientists. Binoculars and telescopes will enhance viewing, provided the skies are clear. South America will get a glimpse of Tuesday’s lunar …

When world leaders, diplomats, campaigners and scientists descend on Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt for talks on tackling climate change, don’t expect them to part the Red Sea or other miracles that would make huge steps in curbing global warming. Each year there are high hopes for the two-week United Nations climate gathering and, almost inevitably, disappointment when it doesn’t deliver another landmark pact like the one agreed 2015 in Paris. But those were different days, marked by a spirit of cooperation between the world’s two biggest polluters — the United States and China — as well as a global realization that failure to reach an agreement would put humanity on a self-chosen track to oblivion. This November the geopolitical tiles have shifted: a devastating war in Ukraine, skyrocketing energy and food prices, and growing enmity between the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other make …

World health officials are linking a significant rise in African Ebola outbreaks in this century to climate change.     Uganda’s September 20 Ebola outbreak is just the latest in a growing number of eruptions of this deadly hemorrhagic disease in Africa. Since 2000, the World Health Organization has reported 32 outbreaks of Ebola, 19 in the last decade compared to 13 in the preceding one. Ebola is one of a range of zoonotic diseases — infections originating in animals and jumping to humans. A WHO analysis finds Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers constitute nearly 70% of these outbreaks. The remaining 30% include dengue fever, anthrax, plague, and monkeypox.   WHO Africa incident manager for the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, Patrick Otim, says the number of zoonotic diseases occurring in the region in the last decade has increased by more than 63%. “There have been a couple of researchers that have shown …

Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light-years away. Scientists reported Friday that this black hole is 10 times more massive than our sun. And it’s three times closer than the previous record-holder. It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun. The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way. Named Gaia BH1, it’s located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer. …

More than 120 world leaders will attend this year’s U.N. climate talks, and requests by environmental activists to stage a rally during the event would be responded to “positively,” host Egypt said. Veteran diplomat Wael Aboulmagd, who heads the Egyptian delegation, told reporters Friday that his country had been working for months to set the scene for “meaningful outcomes” at the two-week meeting in the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh starting Sunday. “We have, I think about 121 maybe, and the number is growing, heads of state and government here,” he said during an online briefing. “We hope that it will be a watershed moment.” Leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed their attendance, but Aboulmagd said other major heads of state such as China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi would not be going. Aboulmagd said recent scientific reports highlighted …

In South Africa, a country where ‘braai’ all-day barbecuing is a national pastime, plant-based substitutes are making surprising inroads despite a deep cultural love of meat and hostility from the regulator. That could be heartening for climate scientists, who say shifting diets from emissions-heavy meat and dairy towards more plant-based foods is vital to the fight against climate change. Plant-based meat substitutes are growing by 6.5% a year and sales are expected to reach $561 million by 2023, according to Research and Markets – more than half Africa’s share of a global market forecast to hit $162 billion by 2030. That is still pretty niche – South Africans spent $15 billion on meat products in 2018 and is now the world’s 9th biggest per capita consumer of beef. But the popularity of veggie alternatives would have been unthinkable even a decade ago and the market is outstripping forecast growth for …

The lone volunteer in a study involving a gene-editing technique has died, and those behind the trial are now trying to figure out what killed him. Terry Horgan, a 27-year-old who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last month, according to Cure Rare Disease, a Connecticut-based nonprofit founded by his brother, Rich, to try and save him from the fatal condition. Although little is known about how he died, his death occurred during one of the first studies to test a gene editing treatment built for one person. It’s raising questions about the overall prospect of such therapies, which have buoyed hopes among many families facing rare and devastating diseases. “This whole notion that we can do designer genetic therapies is, I would say, uncertain,” said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University who is not involved in the study. “We are out on the far edge of experimentation.” …

The U.S. flu season is off to an unusually fast start, adding to an autumn mix of viruses that have been filling hospitals and doctors’ waiting rooms. Reports of flu are already high in 17 states, and the hospitalization rate hasn’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, there have been an estimated 730 flu deaths, including at least two children. The winter flu season usually ramps up in December or January. “We are seeing more cases than we would expect at this time,” the CDC’s Dr. José Romero said Friday. A busy flu season is not unexpected. The nation saw two mild seasons during the COVID-19 pandemic, and experts have worried that flu might come back strong as a COVID-weary public has moved away from masks and other measures that tamp the spread of …

U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said Friday a new study indicates their COVID-19 booster vaccination provides significant antibody protection against the omicron variant and its subvariants among adults. The companies introduced a new booster targeting the omicron variant in September, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it for use last month, along with a similar vaccine produced by U.S. drug company Moderna, as have several other countries. In their statement, the companies said the new data show the COVID-19 booster, adapted to target the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, generated four times the neutralizing antibodies against the omicron variants among adults ages 55 and older than their original vaccine. The study also showed after one month, the booster dose generated more than 13 times the number of neutralizing antibodies against the variants in patients older than 55 than patients who received the original vaccine; …

Australia can expect another wave of COVID-19 infections in coming weeks, according to experts, as new variants circulate. Coronavirus cases are rising quickly in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia’s most populous states. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. The declaration is still active. In Australia, life is resembling what it was before the virus. Most disease-control measures, such as mandatory mask-wearing on public transport and self-isolation for people testing positive to COVID-19, have been scrapped. Some restrictions, however, still apply to health, disability and aged-care facilities. Public health authorities in the states of New South Wales and Victoria have warned that another surge in infections is approaching. Official data has shown that in the last week of October, coronavirus case numbers increased in all Australian states and territories except Queensland. There were 9,707 positive diagnoses in the week ending Oct. 29 in …

Tanzania’s Ministry of Tourism released a census this week showing the country’s elephant population has stabilized. Tanzania’s elephants were among the hardest hit by poaching in Africa, with numbers dropping 60 percent between 2009 and 2014. But authorities say joint efforts with conservation groups and local communities have drastically reduced poaching and helped to attract tourist dollars. Just under 20,000 elephants were recorded in a survey that covered about 90,000 square kilometers of the Katavi-Rukwa and Ruaha-Rungwa landscapes in western Tanzania, including parks, game reserves and other protected areas. The government said the results confirm that the landscape remains the most important in East Africa in terms of elephant numbers and contains the largest population on the continent outside Zimbabwe and Botswana. Ernest Mjingo, a managing director of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, a department of the Ministry of Tourism, said the world would now see Tanzania as very serious …

A private spaceflight giant has a busy week sending satellites into orbit. Plus, massive meteor strikes on Mars, and the Pillars of Creation get an eerie makeover. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …

A landmark deal to allow grain exports from Ukraine, which was back on track Wednesday after being briefly suspended, has played a crucial role in easing a global food crisis sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Brokered by the United Nations and Turkey and signed by Moscow and Kyiv on July 22, the agreement established a protected sea corridor to allow grain shipments to resume for the first time since the fighting began in February Here is what we know about the deal, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative: Why was it needed? When Russian troops attacked in late February, Moscow imposed a blockade on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, halting all agricultural exports from one of the world’s breadbaskets. The move left 20 million metric tons of grain stranded in Ukraine’s ports, causing food prices to surge worldwide. Before the war, up to 90% of Ukraine’s wheat, corn …

Europe has warmed more than twice as much as the rest of the world over the past three decades and has experienced the greatest temperature increase of any continent, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization.  The report on the state of the climate in Europe follows a summer of extremes. A record-breaking heat wave scorched Britain, Alpine glaciers vanished at an unprecedented rate and a long-lasting marine heat wave cooked the waters of the Mediterranean.   “Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and reminds us that even well-prepared societies are not safe from impacts of extreme weather events,” WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said in a statement.   From 1991 to 2021, temperatures over Europe warmed at an average of 0.5 degree Celsius per decade, the report said, while the global average was just 0.2 degree C.  Last year, extreme weather events made worse by climate change …

The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that Ebola’s arrival in the Ugandan capital highlighted the high risk of further spread of the deadly virus, calling on neighboring countries to boost their preparedness.  Since Uganda’s health ministry first declared the outbreak on September 20, the country has registered more than 150 confirmed and probable cases, including 64 deaths, WHO said.  And since the deadly disease spread to Kampala last week, 17 cases have been confirmed there, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.  “Although these cases are linked to known clusters, the very fact that there are cases in a densely populated city underscores the very real risk of further transmission,” he said, speaking from WHO headquarters in Geneva.  There is a “very urgent need for increased readiness in districts and surrounding countries,” he warned.  Ebola is spread through bodily fluids, with common symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea. It …

Ahead of the COP27 climate talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh next week, there are concerns that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reversed progress on tackling climate change. But as Henry Ridgwell reports, some say the war could have a positive impact in the longer term …

Three of the largest U.S. pharmacy chains — CVS, Walgreens and Walmart — are reported to have tentatively agreed to pay more than $13 billion to settle more than 3,000 state and local lawsuits involving the dispensing of opioid painkillers.  Sources close to the negotiations report CVS will pay $5 billion over 10 years, Walgreens will pay $5.7 billion over 15 years and Walmart will pay $3.1 billion, mostly up front. The sources remained anonymous as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the agreement.    In a statement released Wednesday, CVS Health said it has agreed it will pay approximately $5 billion — with $4.9 billion to states and political subdivisions and approximately $130 million to Native American tribes — over the next 10 years beginning in 2023.  In the statement, CVS Health Chief Policy Officer and General Counsel Thomas Moriarty said, “We are committed to working with …