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Montreal — A 10-year global study of positive doping tests by children and young teenagers showed most were tied to Russia, India and China, and in sports like weightlifting, athletics and cycling, the World Anti-Doping Agency said Wednesday. Diuretics, stimulants and anabolic steroids were the most commonly found substances in more than 1,500 positive tests involving more than 1,400 minors since 2012. The youngest athlete tested was 8 years old, and the youngest sanctioned in a doping case was a 12-year-old, WADA said in the Operation Refuge study. “Operation Refuge reports in heartbreaking detail the deep trauma and isolation child athletes experience following a positive test and a doping sanction,” the chair of WADA’s athlete council, Ryan Pini, said in a statement. It cited the testimony of a female minor “who recalled the extreme pressure she and other female athletes felt from the male coaches to keep their weight down,” the …

Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwean health authorities — battling a cholera outbreak that has infected about 20,000 people and killed more than 370 — say they hope donated vaccines will ease the spread of waterborne disease now affecting 60 of the country’s 64 districts.     Zimbabwean Health Minister Douglas Mombeshora told reporters in Harare on Wednesday that the country had recorded 20,121 suspected cholera cases and 376 deaths — six of them since Tuesday. He said the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund had secured 2.3 million cholera vaccine doses for the country, with nearly 900,000 of them to be administered next week.   “The vaccination campaign is expected to start from the 29th of January in [a] phased approach to the hot spots,” he said. “This is because the doses are not enough to cover the whole country. And then roll on to the other affected districts …

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO — A federal judge is being asked to issue a stop-work order on a $10 billion transmission line being built through a remote southeastern Arizona valley to carry wind-generated electricity to customers as far away as California.  A 32-page lawsuit filed on January 17 in U.S. District Court in Tucson, Arizona, accuses the U.S. Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management of refusing for nearly 15 years to recognize “overwhelming evidence of the cultural significance” of the remote San Pedro Valley to Native American tribes, including the Tohono O’odham, Hopi, Zuni and San Carlos Apache Tribe.  The suit was filed shortly after Pattern Energy received approval to transmit electricity generated by its SunZia wind farm in central New Mexico through the San Pedro Valley east of Tucson and north of Interstate 10.  The lawsuit calls the valley “one of the most intact, prehistoric and historical … landscapes in …

Abortion is on the ballot in 2024, the White House says, with Vice President Kamala Harris crisscrossing the country to equate the Biden campaign with protection and expansion of reproductive rights, and Republican candidates speaking of possible federal abortion bans. This leaves the ultimate choice on this sensitive issue to American voters. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House. …

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washington — Scientists have mapped the largest coral reef deep in the ocean, stretching hundreds of miles off the U.S. Atlantic Coast.  While researchers have known since the 1960s that some coral were present off the Atlantic, the reef’s size remained a mystery until new underwater mapping technology made it possible to construct 3D images of the ocean floor.  The largest yet known deep coral reef “has been right under our noses, waiting to be discovered,” said Derek Sowers, an oceanographer at the nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust.  Sowers and other scientists, including several at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently published maps of the reef in the journal Geomatics.  The reef extends for about 310 miles (499 kilometers) from Florida to South Carolina and at some points reaches 68 miles (109 kilometers) wide. The total area is nearly three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.  “It’s eye-opening — it’s …

LAHORE, Pakistan — The air smells burnt in Lahore, a city in Pakistan’s east that used to be famous for its gardens but has become infamous for its terrible air quality. Toxic smog has sickened tens of thousands of people in recent months. Flights have been canceled. Artificial rain was deployed last December to battle smog, a national first. Nothing seems to be working. Lahore is in an airshed, an area where pollutants from industry, transportation and other human activities get trapped because of local weather and topography so they cannot disperse easily. Airsheds also contribute to cross-border pollution. Under certain wind conditions, 30% of pollution in the Indian capital New Delhi can come from Pakistan’s Punjab province, where Lahore is the capital. There are six major airsheds in South Asia, home to many of the world’s worst polluted cities. Experts are calling for greater cross-border cooperation among countries such as …

Tokyo, Japan — Japan on Saturday became only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing, but its Moon Sniper spacecraft was running out of power because of a problem with its solar battery. After a nail-biting 20-minute descent, space agency JAXA said its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had touched down and communication had been established. But without the solar cells functioning, JAXA official Hitoshi Kuninaka said the craft, dubbed the Moon Sniper for its precision technology, would only have power for “several hours.” As mission control scientists prioritized acquiring data while they could, Kuninaka suggested that once the angle of the sun changed, the batteries might work again. “It is unlikely that the solar battery has failed. It’s possible that it is not facing in the originally planned direction,” he told a news conference. “If the descent was not successful, it would have crashed at a very …

TOKYO — Japan landed a spacecraft on the moon Saturday, an attempt at the world’s first “pinpoint lunar landing.” The milestone puts Japan in a club previously occupied by only the United States, the Soviet Union, India and China. A raft of countries and companies are also plotting moon missions. Success means international scientific and diplomatic accolades and potential domestic political gains. Failure means a very expensive, and public, .Here’s a look at high-profile recent and upcoming attempts, and what they might mean. The United States NASA plans to send astronauts to fly around the moon next year, and to land there in 2026. Just this week, however, a U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, said its lunar lander will soon burn up in Earth’s atmosphere after a failed moonshot. The lander, named Peregrine, developed a fuel leak that forced Astrobotic to abandon its attempt to make the first U.S. lunar landing in …

tokyo — Japan’s spacecraft arrived on the surface of the moon early Saturday, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the landing was a success, because the Japanese space agency said it was still “checking its status.” More details about the spacecraft, which is carrying no astronauts, would be given at a news conference, officials said. If the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed successfully, Japan would become the fifth country to accomplish the feat after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India. SLIM came down onto the lunar surface at around 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time Saturday (1520 GMT Friday). As the spacecraft descended, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s mission control said that everything was going as planned and later said that SLIM was on the lunar surface. But there was no mention of whether the landing was successful. Mission control kept repeating that it was “checking its …

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Turkey’s first astronaut and three other crew members representing Europe were launched from Florida on Thursday on a voyage to the International Space Station in the latest commercially arranged mission from Texas startup Axiom Space.  A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom quartet lifted off about an hour before sunset from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, beginning a planned 36-hour flight to the orbiting laboratory.  The launch was shown live on an Axiom webcast.  The autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the space station early Saturday morning and dock with the orbiting outpost 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.  The mission was the third such flight organized by Houston-based Axiom over the past two years as the company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by foreign governments and private enterprise into Earth’s orbit.  The company charges its customers at least …

The American Red Cross has declared a critical blood shortage, with supplies running the lowest in 20 years. The number of donors in the country has declined by 40%, for reasons that include COVID, seasonal infections, and bad weather. Angelina Bagdasaryan visited a blood donation station in Los Angeles and talked with some of the donors. Anna Rice narrates her story. …

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