Currently spreading COVID-19 variants such as EG.5, or Eris, do not represent a major shift in COVID variants, and updated vaccines in September will offer protection, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.  “Right now, what we’re seeing with the changes in the viruses, they’re still susceptible to our vaccine, they’re still susceptible to our medicines, they’re still picked up by the tests,” Dr. Mandy Cohen said in an interview on former Biden administration adviser Andy Slavitt’s “In the Bubble” podcast. “We’re seeing small changes that are what I would call subtypes of what we’ve seen before.”  Updated vaccines should be available by mid- to late September, she said.  COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have created new versions of their vaccine, which were updated to target the so-called XBB.1.5 subvariant that was dominant earlier this year, in order to more closely resemble the circulating virus.   …

Indonesia’s capital Jakarta topped the list as the world’s most polluted city on Wednesday, having consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May, according to data by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.   Jakarta, which has a population of over 10 million, registers unhealthy air pollution levels nearly every day, according to IQAir.   Resident Rizky Putra lamented that the worsening air quality was putting his children’s health at risk.   “I think the situation is very worrying,” Rizky, 35, told Reuters TV by the side of a road in downtown Jakarta.   “So many children are sick with the same complaints and symptoms such as coughs and cold,” he said.   Jakarta residents have long complained of toxic air from chronic traffic, industrial smoke and coal-fired power plants. Some of them launched and won a civil lawsuit in 2021 demanding the government take action to …

U.N. agencies warn health conditions are deteriorating in Sudan and neighboring countries as growing numbers of people flee escalating fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Before the conflict erupted on April 15, 4.5 million Sudanese already were displaced — more than 3.7 million inside Sudan and another 800,000 as refugees in Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia. Since the rival generals went to war, the U.N. refugee agency says nearly an equal number — more than four million people — have become newly displaced. “The situation inside Sudan, where UNHCR teams are present, is untenable as needs far outweigh what is humanly possible to deliver with available resources,” said William Spindler, UNHCR spokesman. He said a lack of medicine and a shortage of staff to care for the sick and wounded in White Nile State severely hampered health and nutrition services in all 10 refugee camps, “where …

Darwin, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory, can be brutally hot and humid.   Many of its 150,000 residents seek refuge from the tropical elements in air-conditioned homes, offices and cars. But research from the Australian National University, the ANU, suggests that air-conditioning, which is often set at 21 degrees Celsius, is making people more vulnerable to heat-related death. Heatwaves are Australia’s deadliest natural hazard.  They kill more people than bushfires, floods and storms put together. The ANU asserts that “climate change is increasing heat-associated mortality particularly in hotter parts of the world.”  Simon Quilty, the study’s lead author, is from the Australian National University’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. He told VOA that avoiding the heat and humidity may prevent people from adapting to the climate. “Being exposed regularly to the prevailing climate in which you live actually acclimatizes your body,” he said. “e know that acclimatization …

The World Meteorological Organization says the global average temperature for July 2023 is confirmed to be the highest on record for any month. “The month is estimated to have been around 1.5 degrees warmer than the average for 1850 to 1900s. So, the average of pre-industrial times,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Some measurements began in 1850, but it was not until 1880 that scientists started to estimate average temperatures for the entire planet. Burgess said scientists who look at historical and paleoclimate and proxy records from cave deposits and other calcifying organisms, such as corals and shells, find that the observational records go back tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. “So, the longest records we have are ice core records that go back 800,000 years, which give us changes in concentrations …

Here we go again: COVID-19 hospital admissions have inched upward in the United States since early July in a small-scale echo of the three previous summers. With an updated vaccine still months away, this summer bump in new hospitalizations might be concerning, but the number of patients is far lower than before. A look at what we know: How bad is the spike? For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week. But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022. “It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns …

Leaders of eight South American nations that share the Amazon rainforest convene a two-day summit in Brazil Tuesday to reach a broad agreement on preserving the critical region. The meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Belem, capital of the Amazon state of Para, takes place as more than ten percent of the rainforest has been lost in recent decades due to unregulated cattle ranching and farming, illegal mining and logging and oil drilling.  Much of the loss is in Brazil, which is home to two-thirds of the rainforest.   The Amazon region has been described as a “carbon sink” that can easily absorb pollution from emissions, making it a vital resource in reducing the effects of climate change. Scientists say the loss of between 20% and 25% of the Amazon region would be a “tipping point” that would transform it into a source of carbon emissions.   The ACTO member …

Now that July’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin.   July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.   “These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia. Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning …

Indigenous leaders from across South America called Monday for bold steps to protect the Amazon and their ancestral lands, ahead of a summit on saving the world’s biggest rainforest. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will host fellow regional leaders Tuesday and Wednesday for the first summit in 14 years of the eight-nation Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, seeking a roadmap to stop the destruction of one of Earth’s crucial buffers against climate change. Native leaders who took part in pre-summit talks last weekend in the host city, Belem, called on Lula and his counterparts to create new Indigenous reservations — one of the best ways to protect nature, according to experts — and rethink the way the world views the rainforest. “The forest isn’t an oil well, it’s not a gold mine. It’s our temple,” said Nemo Guiquita, head of Ecuadoran Indigenous confederation CONFENIAE, which represents 1,500 Amazon communities. …

Raging waters that ate away at riverbanks, destroyed at least two buildings and undermined others were receding Monday in Alaska’s capital city after a glacial dam outburst last weekend, authorities said.  Levels along the Mendenhall River had started falling by Sunday, but the city said the riverbanks remained unstable. Onlookers gathered on a bridge over the river and along the banks of the swollen Mendenhall Lake to take photos and videos Sunday. A home was propped precariously along the eroded riverbank as milky-colored water whisked past.  There were no reports of any injuries or deaths. The city said it was working to assess the damage.  Such floods occur when glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes. A study released earlier this year found such floods pose a risk to about 15 million people worldwide, more than half of them in India, Pakistan, Peru and China.  Suicide …

Nigeria’s unreliable power grid is not only slowing down the country’s economic growth, but health workers say it can lead to unwanted hospital shutdowns at night. But one startup is giving hospitals hope. Alhassan Bala has this report, narrated by Haruna Shehu. …

During Europe’s heat wave last month, Floriana Peroni’s vintage clothing store had to close for a week. A truck of rented generators blocked her door as they fed power to the central Roman neighborhood hit by a blackout as temperatures surged. The main culprit: air conditioning.  The period — in which temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) — coincided with peak electricity use that came close to Italy’s all-time high, hitting a peak load of more than 59 gigawatts on July 19. That neared a July 2015 record.  Intensive electricity use knocked out the network not only near the central Campo de Fiori neighborhood, where Peroni operates her shop, but elsewhere in the Italian capital. Demand in that second July week surged 30%, correlating to a heat wave that had persisted already for weeks, according to the capital’s electricity company ARETI.  Like many Romans, Peroni herself does not …