NASA tries to save the world. Plus, the agency inches closer to its next moon mission, and geopolitical rivals unite in space. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Day: September 22, 2022
A new study released this week “conservatively” estimates there are 20 quadrillion ants on the planet Earth—or about 2.5 million ants for every person.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Germany’s University of Wuerzburg, who noted ants are some of the most successful and dominant forms of life on earth but found most estimates of their numbers to be lacking, and, essentially, educated guesses.
In the study, published this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they explain they compiled data on both ground and tree-dwelling ants from 489 studies, spanning “all continents, major biomes, and habitats” to arrive at what they call a “conservative” estimate of 20 quadrillion ants, representing a biomass of 12 megatons.
The researchers say this is more than the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and is equivalent to 20% of human biomass.
In a release from the University of Hong Kong, the researchers explain that having an accurate count of the world’s ants and an understanding of their abundance patterns may help preserve ecosystems and species around the world
The study also found ants are unevenly distributed over the global land surface. As a general pattern, ants are more common in tropical regions, but their numbers vary from place to place depending on the ecosystem.
University of Hong Kong School of Biological Sciences researcher Sabine Nooten, a co-lead author on the study, said the ants perform “ecological services” such as decomposition of organic material and pest control in whichever habitat they live.
The senior author of the study, University of Hong Kong researcher Benoit Guenard, said the ant count reflects the scarcity of data on so much of the natural world. He urged governments and societies to be more proactive in getting citizens involved in helping to fill those knowledge gaps.
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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A movie portraying an all-female warrior unit that centuries ago defended the West African kingdom of Dahomey, what is today the country of Benin, is drawing both praise and criticism. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports, “The Woman King” has an all-black and mostly female cast, a first for a major Hollywood motion picture. But some critics note it had little African involvement.
Produced by: Penelope Poulou
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Uganda has confirmed seven cases of Ebola including that of a 24-year-old man who died earlier this week, and an additional seven deaths are being investigated as suspected Ebola cases, a health ministry official said on Thursday.
The man who died had developed a high fever, diarrhea and abdominal pains, and was vomiting blood. After initially being treated for malaria, he was diagnosed as having contracted the Sudan strain of the Ebola virus.
“As of today, we have seven confirmed cases, of whom we have one confirmed death,” Dr Kyobe Henry Bbosa, Ebola Incident Commander at the Ugandan Ministry of Health, told a briefing.
“But also we have seven probable cases that died before the confirmation of the outbreak.”
Uganda last reported an outbreak of Ebola Sudan strain in 2012.
In 2019, the country experienced an outbreak of Ebola Zaire. The virus was imported from neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo which was battling a large epidemic in its north-eastern region.
In August, a new case of Ebola virus was confirmed in the city of Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. An Ebola vaccination campaign was launched last month in the Congolese city of Beni last month.
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Displaced by some of the worst flooding in years, hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis now face the threat of disease. Infections are on the rise due to unsanitary conditions, and health facilities damaged by historic rains are struggling to cope. VOA’s Sarah Zaman has more.
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Commenters in China’s tightly controlled online communities are raising an angry howl at what they see as the latest outrage stemming from President Xi Jinping’s draconian zero-COVID policy.
After at least 27 people died when a bus in southwest China’s Guizhou Province crashed while transporting them to a coronavirus quarantine facility, online comments revealed the magnitude of frustration of ordinary citizens enduring a policy that forces them into lengthy lockdowns and daily testing in the effort to contain COVID.
“27 people, who did not die in the coronavirus, but died in the bus accident [on the way to] quarantine? Even if they are positive, the death rate of the virus is extremely low, who made such a tragedy?”
“No ordinary people are against epidemic prevention. What the ordinary people oppose is ... harassment of people.”
“So many people concentrated in a bus transport for quarantine. If there was a positive case, how likely would all the people in the bus get infected? I don't understand the current policy. ”
“We are all on the bus leading to death."
Censors quickly scrubbed the comments saved by FreeWeibo, a website that tracks comments blocked on China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo.
According to Lin Gang, Guiyang’s deputy mayor, the bus was carrying 47 people who were under “medical observation” from Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province, to a remote county, Libo, when it overturned on a highway around 170 kilometers from its destination about 2:40 a.m. Sunday.
In addition to the deaths, 20 people were taken to the hospital. As of Wednesday, there was no word on their condition.
It remains unclear why people were being bused to quarantine centers in the middle of night, which violates China’s prohibition on the operation of long-distance commercial buses between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
Although the city of Guiyang and Guizhou province have experienced a recent increase in COVID cases, Guiyang officials announced Sept. 16 that the city would achieve “societal zero-COVID” by Sept. 19, according to a report by Caixin, a Chinese business news outlet.
On Sept. 17, Guizhou authorities said on their official WeChat account that they were sending people who had tested positive elsewhere for quarantine because of limited resources in Guiyang, according to the official news site China Daily. At the time, 7,396 people had been transferred from the city, and 2,900 people were scheduled for transfer.
After the bus crash on Sept. 18, one of the passengers said officials identified all residents of her building for quarantine even though there were no reported cases, reported Caixin.
Unverified photos of the bus began circulating on Chinese social media showing the driver wearing a full hazmat suit with only his eyes uncovered. The photos generated a new round of anger and criticism of the zero-COVID policy.
“When will it stop?” was a slogan repeated on Weibo.
Trending topic
China continues to assume some of the strictest COVID-19 measures in the world, attempting to record zero cases by isolating those with confirmed infections and quarantining anyone who may have been exposed. China says the policy is necessary to keep its health system from being overwhelmed.
However, restrictions across the country have weighed heavily on the country’s economy and even led to food and medical shortages in Shanghai and other areas.
Response to the bus crash soared to be Weibo’s top trending topic Sunday afternoon, until it disappeared from the top 50 slots. Elsewhere online, authorities removed widely shared angry blog posts on the crash.
Municipal instructions on how to ride a bus safely, posted to Weibo by Guizhou police and fire departments, only drew more sharp criticism.
“[This is a] classic blurring of focus and shifting of responsibility,” said one comment retrieved from FreeWeibo by VOA Mandarin.
“Just don’t drive me around for quarantine,” said another.
A day after the crash, Guizhou Province officials announced on WeChat that an investigation is ongoing and three local officials had been suspended.
Guizhou recorded 188 new confirmed cases Tuesday, accounting for about 25% of all new cases in China, according to the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. The province has been on high alert since the end of August when one new case was reported.
But since the beginning of the pandemic, official data show only two people have died of COVID in Guizhou, a province of 38 million people.
Worldwide, as of Sept. 21, there have been more than 6.5 million deaths attributed to COVID-19, with 15,149 of them in China and just over 1 million in the U.S., according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker.
Across China, local officials are under intense pressure to contain any outbreaks ahead of the Communist Party’s congress next month, when President Xi is poised to secure his third term as China’s top leader.
Nine local officials in Guiyang were suspended earlier this month for failing to implement COVID policies properly.
“At this time, to strengthen the lockdown with the zero-COVID policy is to ensure stability and to ensure that there is no social unrest,” Kuan-Ting Chen, chief executive officer of Taiwan Nextgen Foundation, told VOA Mandarin. “So, in the future, at least until Party Congress begins, I think it will become more and more strict.”
Some information in this report came from Reuters.
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