Thousands of meters beneath the Pacific Ocean lie vast deposits of the metals needed for the shift to renewable energy. Mining companies are ready to scoop up this sunken treasure strewn across an area more than half the size of the continental United States. But not much is known about the ecosystem deep beneath the ocean and what impacts mining these rocks might have. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more. …

A top U.N. agency is warning that if calls for a cease-fire in Gaza are not heeded, causalities will continue to mount, putting children in the densely populated Palestinian enclave at even greater risk. “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, Tuesday. “It is a living hell for everyone else.” The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says that more than 8,300 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 3,457 children, have been killed since Israel began a punishing bombing campaign following the horrific massacre of its civilians by Hamas militants October 7. “From the earliest days of the unprecedented hostilities in the Gaza Strip, UNICEF has been forthright on the need for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, for the aid to flow and for children abducted to be released,” he said. “Like many others, we have pleaded for the killing of children to stop.” While Washington …

With White House funding to put more electric cars on the road, some states are using the money to build out their part of a fast-charging EV network. Deana Mitchell has the story. …

In a little more than five years – sometime in early 2029 – the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says. The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s. Beyond that temperature increase, the risks of catastrophes increase, as the world will likely lose most of its coral reefs, a key ice sheet could kick into irreversible melt, and water shortages, heat waves and death from extreme weather dramatically increase, according to an earlier United Nations scientific report. Hitting that threshold will happen sooner than initially calculated because the world has made progress in cleaning up a different type of air pollution …

The US-based National Kidney Foundation says that each year, kidney disease kills millions of people worldwide because they don’t have access to affordable or available care. This problem of cost and access to care is also seen in Ghana, where kidney-related cases are on the rise in the Northern region’s Tamale Teaching Hospital. Alhassan Abdul Washeed reports. Camera: Eyor Zamani …

State and local health departments across the U.S found out in June they’d be losing the final two years of a $1 billion investment to strengthen the ranks of people who track and try to prevent sexually transmitted diseases — especially the rapid increase of syphilis cases. The fallout was quick. Nevada, which saw a 44 percentage-point jump in congenital syphilis from 2021 to 2022, was supposed to get more than $10 million to bolster its STD program budget. Instead, the state’s STD prevention budget fell by more than 75%, reducing its capacity to respond to syphilis, according to Dawn Cribb at the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health. Several states told The Associated Press the loss of funding is affecting efforts to expand their disease intervention workforce. These are people who do contact tracing and outreach and are key in stopping the spread of syphilis, which reached a …

Mouse embryos have been grown on the International Space Station and developed normally in the first study indicating it could be possible for humans to reproduce in space, a group of Japanese scientists said. The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, professor of University of Yamanashi’s Advanced Biotechnology Centre, and a team from the Japan Aerospace Space Agency (JAXA), sent frozen mouse embryos on board a rocket to the ISS in August 2021. Astronauts thawed the early-stage embryos using a special device designed for this purpose and grew them on the station for four days. “The embryos cultured under microgravity conditions developed” normally into blastocysts, cells that develop into the foetus and placenta, the scientists said. The experiment “clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect,” the researchers said in a study that was published online in the scientific journal iScience on Saturday. They also said there were no significant changes in …

Runners undeterred by thick smog engulfing the Chinese capital ran the Beijing Marathon maskless on Sunday, many wearing shorts in one of the warmest Octobers on record. Despite a greyish brown smog settling, some 30,000 marathoners set off at 7:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) from Tiananmen Square on the route through four districts of the Chinese capital over 42.195 km (26.2 miles). Beijing was the second most-polluted major city in the world on Sunday, according to Swiss air-quality technology firm IQAir. In the Haidian district on Beijing’s outskirts, the sky looked dreary, but hikers and visitors showed up at the Fragrant Hills Park where many go to enjoy autumn foliage, according to a Reuters witness. China’s national forecaster advised the public to wear masks, warning on Sunday morning that air quality was reaching moderate or severe pollution. Smog and fog will blanket parts of China for the next few days, reducing …

The Australian Capital Territory, which includes Canberra and surrounding areas, Saturday became Australia’s first jurisdiction to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illegal drugs. The Australian Capital Territory, or ACT, now considers illegal drug use a health, not criminal, issue. While the ACT government has promised to remain tough on dealers and traffickers, it wants low-level cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine users to receive treatment, a police caution or a fine rather than going to court. Drugs will be confiscated. The law was passed in 2022 by the ACT Legislative Assembly. Hard drugs, including LSD, cocaine and methamphetime, remain illegal. Welfare and health campaigners welcomed the new measures, saying they will lead to more drug users getting help rather than being treated as criminals. Alice Salomon, the Head of Media and Advocacy at Uniting ACT, a community services organization, said in a statement Thursday that “a shift to a focus on …

Fighting the global environmental impacts of climate change unfortunately requires local impacts from mining the minerals needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines and power grids. The Biden administration aims to increase U.S. production of these critical minerals that China and other countries with weaker environmental standards have come to dominate. But local opposition is complicating the effort. VOA’s Steve Baragona looks at the battle over one such mine in the northern U.S. state of Minnesota. …

Iceland’s meteorological office reported Friday the Nordic Island nation’s southwestern Reykjanes Peninsula has been experiencing a “seismic swarm” of small earthquakes over the last three days, with at least 5,800 recorded since it began and around 1,000 since midnight Thursday. In a series of reports on its website, the meteorological office — known as the “Met” office — said the vast majority of the quakes have been under magnitude 3, although two in the last three days were over 4. The largest tremor, on Wednesday, measured 4.5 north of the town of Grindavík. While small earthquakes are a daily occurrence in the nation, situated between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, the so-called seismic swarm is unusual. The earthquakes prompted the national police commissioner to declare a Civil Protection “Level of Uncertainty,” encouraging residents to secure loose objects in their homes and noting that the earthquakes could trigger rocks …

Wu Zunyou, an epidemiologist who helped drive the country’s strict zero-COVID measures in China that suspended access to cities and confined millions to their homes, died on Friday. He was 60. An announcement from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention about Wu’s death gave no cause but said that “rescue measures failed.” Wu’s health had been poor. He disappeared from the public eye for months last year while battling cancer. Wu, who earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, had spent much of his early career working on HIV/AIDS prevention in China. Wu was instrumental in developing China’s flagship policy in the HIV epidemic among intravenous drug users, according to his biography on the UCLA website. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the 2005 International Rolleston Award. Later, he was also awarded a UNAIDS Gold Medal in 2008 for his overall …

The United Nations has begun an effort to help the world manage the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday launched a 39-member advisory body of tech company executives, government officials and academics from countries spanning six continents. The panel aims to issue preliminary recommendations on AI governance by the end of the year and finalize them before the U.N. Summit of the Future next September. “The transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp,” Guterres said. He pointed to possible uses including predicting crises, improving public health and education, and tackling the climate crisis. However, he cautioned, “it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion and threaten democracy itself.” Widespread concern about the risks associated with AI has grown since tech company OpenAI launched ChatGPT last year. Its ease of use …

A month after federal officials recommended new versions of COVID-19 vaccines, 7% of U.S. adults and 2% of children have gotten shots. The numbers, presented Thursday at a meeting held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come from a national survey of thousands of Americans conducted two weeks ago.  The data also indicated that nearly 40% of adults said they probably or definitely would not get the shot. A similar percentage of parents said they did not plan to vaccinate their children.  In late summer, government health officials made the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign more like the annual flu campaign.  Officials approved updated shots that have a single target, an omicron descendant named XBB.1.5. They replaced vaccines that targeted the original coronavirus strain and a much earlier omicron version. Last month, the CDC recommended the new shots for everyone 6 months and older.  The government also transitioned to …

China launched its youngest-ever crew for its orbiting space station on Thursday as it seeks to put astronauts on the moon before 2030. The Shenzhou 17 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China atop a Long March 2-F rocket at 11:14 a.m. (0314 GMT) According to the China Manned Space Agency, the average age of the three-member crew is the youngest since the launch of the space station construction mission, state broadcaster CCTV earlier reported. Their average age is 38, state media China Daily said. Beijing is pursuing plans to place astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade amid a rivalry with the U.S. for reaching new milestones in outer space. This reflects the competition for influence between the world’s two largest economies in the technology, military and diplomatic fields. The trio — Tang Hongbo, …

Malawi is seeing a spike in cholera cases. This, just two months after the government lifted a public health emergency declaration that had been in place since early 2022. Chimwemwe Padatha has this story from Lilongwe, Malawi …

According to a 2023 report by the Global Action for Sustainable Development, Liberia is losing an entire generation to drug abuse, with its capital, Monrovia, alone having more than 800 drug hubs and an estimated 100,000 drug users. An older generation of rehabilitated child soldiers have moved to join the fight against drugs, using a behavioral therapy approach. Senanu Tord reports from Monrovia. Video editor: Henry Hernandez. …

Japan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a law requiring transgender people to undergo sterilization surgery in order to officially change their gender is unconstitutional. The decision by the top court’s 15-judge Grand Bench was its first on the constitutionality of Japan’s 2003 law requiring the removal of sex organs for a state-recognized gender change, a practice long criticized by international rights and medical groups. The decision, which requires the government to reconsider the law, is a first step toward allowing transgender people to change their identity in official documents without getting sterilized. But it was not a full victory because the Supreme Court sent the case back to the high court to further examine the requirement for gender-affirmation surgery. The case was filed in 2020 by a claimant whose request for a gender change in her family registry — to female from assigned male at birth — was turned …

The UK Space Agency and a U.S. spaceflight services company have signed an initial agreement as they bid to send British astronauts into orbit for two weeks, the agency said Wednesday. The memorandum of understanding with Houston-based Axiom Space sets out plans for a flight that would see British astronauts conduct a two-week mission in space. “On this future flight, the UK astronauts would launch to space, spending up to two weeks on orbit to carry out scientific research, demonstrate new technologies, and participate in education and outreach activities,” the agency said. Axiom was founded by its chief executive Michael Suffredini, who served as NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) program manager from 2005 to 2015. It has sent two crewed missions into orbit with SpaceX rockets in April 2022 and in May this year. The first mission carried an astronaut and three “investors” with the crew spending 17 days in …