Britain’s Conservative government on Wednesday approved the United Kingdom’s first new coal mine in three decades, a decision condemned by environmentalists as a leap backwards in the fight against climate change. Hours earlier, the government reversed a ban on building new onshore windfarms in Britain. Opponents called that announcement a cynical attempt to offset criticism of the mine decision. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove decided the mine in the Cumbria area of northwest England would have “an overall neutral effect on climate change and is thus consistent with government policies for meeting the challenge of climate change,” the government said. It said coal from the mine would be used to make steel — replacing imported coal — rather than for power generation. The mine will extract coking coal, the type used in steelmaking, from under the Irish Sea and process it on the site of a shuttered chemical plant in Whitehaven, …

Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland. Today, it’s a barren Arctic desert, but back then it was a lush landscape of trees and vegetation with an array of animals, even the now extinct mastodon. “The study opens the door into a past that has basically been lost,” said lead author Kurt Kjaer, a geologist and glacier expert at the University of Copenhagen. With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses. Studying really old DNA can be a challenge because the genetic material breaks down over time, leaving scientists with only tiny fragments. But with the latest technology, researchers were …

A law allowing limited euthanasia in Canada is set to expand to make the procedure available to people with mental illness. As Craig McCulloch reports, this is causing a variety of reactions. Canada’s law permitting euthanasia, or Medical Assistance in Dying, became personal for Vancouver-area resident Marcia McNaughton in November. Suffering from metastasized stomach cancer, her 80-year-old aunt Ella Tikenheinrich chose to end her life with medical assistance. McNaughton was not aware of her aunt’s choice until almost the end, and the extended family supported it. “As a family, all we did was support her and love her decision,” McNaughton said. “And I have to say one thing — to be in control of your own time, it is an amazing thing.” On March 17, the law permitting what is termed Medical Assistance in Dying — commonly called MAiD — will expand to include those suffering from mental illness. Currently, …

Negotiators are meeting in Geneva this week to thrash out a pandemic treaty aimed at ensuring the flaws that turned COVID-19 into a global crisis could never happen again.  As the third anniversary of the emergence of the virus rolls around, negotiators are raking over an early concept draft of what might eventually make it into an international agreement about how to handle future pandemics.  “The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the negotiating panel at the start of three days of talks, which conclude Wednesday.  An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way toward a global agreement that would regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats.  They are gathered for their third meeting, refining and going over their ideas so far.  A progress report will be put before WHO member states next year, with the final outcome …

Price increases among seven out of 10 drugs in 2021 are behind an $805 million increase in U.S. spending from the year before and were not supported by clinical evidence, an influential U.S. pricing research firm said on Tuesday.  The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) said the spending increase in 2021 was less than the $1.67 billion rise in the previous year. This is the third year the group has looked at the top 250 drugs by spending and assessed if those driving U.S. spending increases were justified. “Last year, a huge part of the (increase in) spending was all one drug … this year, we saw the increase was more spread out across different drugs,” ICER’s Chief Medical Officer David Rind told Reuters.  In 2020, Abbvie’s rheumatoid arthritis therapy Humira led to an almost $1.4 billion increase in U.S. drug spending, accounting for more than 80% of …

Aid groups say measles and cholera outbreaks at Kenya’s congested Dadaab refugee camp have killed at least five people and sickened more than 400.  The outbreaks come as thousands of Somalis have been arriving at the camp this year to escape record drought back home, stretching camp resources.  Juma Majanga reports from Dadaab refugee camp in northeast Kenya. …

NASA’s Orion spaceship made a close pass by the moon and used a gravity assist to whip itself back toward Earth on Monday, marking the start of the return journey for the Artemis-1 mission. At its nearest point, the uncrewed capsule flew less than 130 kilometers from the moon’s surface, testing maneuvers that will be used during later Artemis missions that return humans to the rocky celestial body. Communication with the capsule was interrupted for 30 minutes when it was behind the far side of the moon, an area more cratered than the near side and first seen by humans during the Apollo era, although they didn’t land there. The European Service Module, which powers the capsule, fired its main engine for more than three minutes to put the gumdrop-shaped Orion on course for home. “We couldn’t be more pleased about how the spacecraft is performing,” Debbie Korth, Orion Program …

Beijing is taking its first steps toward recovering from years of setbacks to its scientific, land-based projects in the Arctic, sending personnel to two outposts that have been vital to its policy of establishing China as a “near-Arctic” state. China’s Arctic policy document, published in 2018, said scientific research to “explore and understand” the Arctic is the “priority and focus” of Chinese participation in Arctic affairs. Over a 14-year period since 2004, China launched scientific projects in Arctic regions of four Western European nations — Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland — and sought to do the same in a fifth, Denmark’s autonomous island of Greenland. The Biden administration, which published its own “National Strategy for the Arctic Region” in October, said those scientific projects have helped China to increase its influence in the Arctic and “exacerbated” strategic competition in a region where the U.S. has long been a major power. …

“Today, there are more children in need of humanitarian assistance than at any other time in recent history,” according to UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.  Monday, UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, launched an emergency appeal for $10.3 billion, designed to help 173 million people, including 110 million children, that the agency says have been impacted by “humanitarian crises, the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide and the growing threat of climate-impacted severe weather events.”  The agency says climate change “is also worsening the scale and intensity of emergencies,” with the last 10 years being the hottest on record. In the last 30 years, the number of climate-related disasters has tripled, UNICEF says.   “Today, over 400 million children live in areas of high or extremely high-water vulnerability,” according to UNICEF.   Russell said, “The devastating impacts of climate change are an ever-present threat to children” and that is why UNICEF …

In a remote corner of the Western Australian outback, work has begun on the world’s largest radio telescope. Astronomers say the Square Kilometre Array will be capable of searching the stars for signals of intelligent life and listening back to the start of the universe. It is an international scientific collaboration. 130,000 antennas and 200 satellite dishes will make up the Square Kilometre Array project, or SKA. It will comprise two giant and super sensitive telescopes at observatories in Australia and South Africa. By listening and looking deep into space, scientists hope the project can help answer some fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe? How did the first stars come to shine? and What exactly is “dark energy” — the mysterious phenomena that appears to be pulling the cosmos apart? Experts have said the SKA needs to be set up far away from the disturbances of radio frequencies …

China on Sunday reported two additional deaths from COVID-19 as some cities move cautiously to ease anti-pandemic restrictions following increasingly vocal public frustrations. The National Health Commission said one death was reported each in the provinces of Shandong and Sichuan. No information was given about the ages of the victims or whether they had been fully vaccinated. China, where the virus first was detected in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, is the last major country trying to stop transmission completely through quarantines, lockdowns and mass testing. Concerns over vaccination rates are believed to figure prominently in the ruling Communist Party’s determination to stick to its hard-line strategy. While nine in 10 Chinese have been vaccinated, only 66% of people over 80 have gotten one shot while 40% have received a booster, according to the commission. It said 86% of people over 60 are vaccinated. Given those figures …

It’s now a lot easier — and cheaper — for many hard-of-hearing Americans to get help. Hearing aids can now be sold without a prescription from a specialist. Over-the-counter, or OTC, hearing aids started hitting the market in October at prices that can be thousands of dollars lower than prescription hearing aids. About 30 million people in the United States deal with hearing loss, according to the Food and Drug Administration. But only about 20% of those who could use a hearing aid seek help. Here’s a closer look: Who might be helped The FDA approved OTC hearing aids for adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. That can include people who have trouble hearing phone calls or who turn up the TV volume loud enough that others complain. It also can include people who have trouble understanding group conversations in noisy places. OTC hearing aids aren’t intended for people with deeper …

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unwilling to accept Western vaccines despite the challenges China is facing with COVID-19, and while recent protests there are not a threat to Communist Party rule, they could affect his personal standing, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Saturday. Although China’s daily COVID cases are near all-time highs, some cities are taking steps to loosen testing and quarantine rules after Xi’s zero-COVID policy triggered a sharp economic slowdown and public unrest. Haines, speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California, said that despite the social and economic impact of the virus, Xi “is unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine in China that’s just not nearly as effective against omicron.” “Seeing protests and the response to it is countering the narrative that he likes to put forward, which is that China is …

The director-general of the World Health Organization said Friday that due to COVID-19 “more than 8,500 people lost their lives last week — which is not acceptable three years into the pandemic, when we have so many tools to prevent infections and save lives.” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last Saturday marked the anniversary of WHO’s announcement of COVID-19’s omicron variant, which he said “has proved to be significantly more transmissible than its predecessor, delta, and continues to cause significant mortality due to the intensity of transmission.” The WHO chief said omicron has evolved and there are now “over 500 sublineages of omicron circulating” and all of them are “highly transmissible” and “have mutations that enable them to escape built-up immunity more easily.” While WHO believes the world is “closer to being able to say that the emergency phase of the pandemic is over,” Tedros said, “we are not there yet,” …

Days after protests erupted in China over the country’s strict zero-COVID policy, there are signs the government is beginning to ease its testing requirements and quarantine rules in some cities, but it is unclear whether the measures will go far enough to appease those who have been in lockdown for so long. Some called for more protests in China this weekend, but it remains to be seen if people will take to the streets like they did last weekend, when demonstrations broke out in more than 20 cities in a display of civil disobedience rarely seen in China. “It’s hard to predict” what will happen this weekend, Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, told VOA’s Mandarin Service. Few people last weekend had been expecting to see Chinese residents “come out onto the streets in cities across the country, unmasked and calling for an end to lockdowns,” she …

Prayer. Bombs. Walls. Over the decades, people have tried all of them to stanch the flow of lava from Hawaii’s volcanoes as it lumbered toward roads, homes and infrastructure. Now Mauna Loa — the world’s largest active volcano — is erupting again, and lava is slowly approaching a major thoroughfare connecting the Big Island’s east and west sides. And once more, people are asking if anything can be done to stop or divert the flow. “It comes up every time there’s an eruption and there’s lava heading towards habited areas or highways,” said Scott Rowland, a geologist at the University of Hawaii. “Some people say, ‘Build a wall’ or ‘Board up,’ and other people say, ‘No, don’t!” Humans have rarely had much success stopping lava and, despite the world’s technological advances, doing so is still difficult and dependent on the force of the flow and the terrain. But many in …

Britain’s Prince William capped a three-day visit to Boston by meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday, ahead of announcing his Earthshot Prize environmental award winners at a gala event. The Prince of Wales shook hands with Biden and spoke quietly in the winter cold near the water outside of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library and Museum. He also met Caroline Kennedy, the late president’s daughter, and told her that the stories of the Earthshot Prize winners were an inspiration. William once again paid homage to President Kennedy, “the man who inspired our mission,” and said the “game-changing” solutions were being offered to protect the planet. Kennedy’s legacy loomed large during the visit by William and his wife, Kate. William named his environmental award the Earthshot Prize, drawing inspiration from Kennedy’s moonshot speech that mobilized the nation in 1962 by declaring astronauts would set foot on the moon …

The lava flowing from Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, which is the world’s largest active volcano and erupted this week, is edging closer to the Big Island’s main highway. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported Friday that the main front of the lava flow was 5.2 kilometers away from the Daniel K. Inouye Highway, also known as Saddle Road, and could possibly reach it in a week. But the USGS also said that because of the unpredictable nature of lava flows, it’s “difficult to estimate when or if the flow will impact” the highway, which is the island’s main east-west road. If the main highway is cut off, Hawaii county officials say, traffic will be forced onto coastal roads, crowding them and adding hours onto a trip from Hilo, the largest city on the Big Island, to Kona, a tourist magnet, which takes just 90 minutes on the Daniel K. …

Cities across China further unwound COVID restrictions Friday, loosening testing and quarantine rules in the wake of nationwide protests calling for an end to lockdowns and greater political freedoms. Anger and frustration with China’s hardline pandemic response spilled out onto the streets last weekend in widespread demonstrations not seen in decades. In the wake of the unrest across China, a number of cities have begun loosening COVID-19 restrictions, such as moving away from daily mass testing requirements, a tedious mainstay of life under Beijing’s stringent zero-COVID policy. At the same time, authorities are continuing to seek to contain protests with heavy security on the streets, online censorship in full force, and surveillance of the population heightened. As of Friday, the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu will no longer require a recent negative test result to enter public places or ride the metro, instead only requiring a green health code confirming they …