Day: July 10, 2023

Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole yet using NASA’s Webb Space Telescope, but that record isn’t expected to last.

The black hole is at the center of a galaxy created a mere 570 million years after the Big Bang. That’s 100 million years closer to the beginning of the cosmos than a black hole identified in 2021 by a Chinese team using a telescope in Chile.

Webb already has spotted other black holes that appear to be even closer to the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, but those findings are still under review, said University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein, one of the lead researchers. The finding has been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Because the signals from this particular black hole are weak, more observations are needed, according to the Texas-led team.

There are untold numbers of dormant black holes, some even more distant than this one. But without any glowing gas, they are invisible, Finkelstein said.

Detected in February, this particular one is active and actually puny as black holes go — equivalent to about 9 million times the mass of our sun. That’s close in size to the one in our own Milky Way galaxy, according to the team.

Using Webb, the team also spotted two other small black holes from the early universe, dating to around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The observations suggest that these downsized versions may have been more common than previously thought as the cosmos took shape.

“There are probably many more hidden little monsters out there waiting to be found,” Colby College’s Dale Kocevski, who was part of the team, said in an email.

Launched in late 2021, Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever sent into space. Its first images and science results were released by NASA with much fanfare a year ago this week.
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Scientists say crushing temperatures that blanketed Europe last summer may have led to more than 61,000 heat-related deaths, highlighting the need for governments to address the health impacts of global warming.

In their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers examined official mortality figures from 35 European countries and found a marked increase in deaths between late May and early September last year compared with the average recorded over a 30-year period.

The increase in heat-related deaths was higher among older people, women and in Mediterranean countries, they found. But the data also indicated that measures taken in France since a deadly heat wave two decades ago may have helped prevent deaths there last year. 

“In the pattern of summer mean temperatures in Europe during the summer of 2022, we don’t see borders,” said co-author Joan Ballester of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. The highest temperatures were recorded across a swath of southwestern Europe, from Spain to France and Italy.

“But when we look at the heat-related mortality, we start to see borders,” Ballester told The Associated Press. While France had 73 heat-related deaths per million inhabitants last summer, Spain’s rate was 237 and Italy’s was 295, the study found.

“Possibly France drew lessons from the experience of 2003,” he said.

France’s warning system includes public announcements with advice on how to stay cool and encouraging people to drink water and avoid alcohol.

Not all of the heat-related deaths calculated across Europe last summer were linked to climate change. Some would have occurred even if summer temperatures had stayed in line with the long-term average. But there is no doubt that the intense heat in 2022 — which saw numerous European records tumble — led to higher mortality rates, as other studies on heat deaths have also shown.

The authors calculated that there were over 25,000 more heat-related deaths last summer than the average from 2015 to 2021.

Without appropriate prevention measures, “we would expect a heat-related mortality burden of 68,116 deaths on average every summer by the year 2030,” the authors said. They forecast that figure would rise to over 94,000 by 2040 and more than 120,000 by mid-century.

Governments in Spain and Germany recently announced new measures to address the effects of hot weather on their populations. In Switzerland, a group of seniors is citing the danger posed to older women by intense heat in a court case seeking to force the government to take tougher climate action.

One difficulty for researchers is that heat-related deaths are often happening in people with pre-existing conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, said Matthias an der Heiden of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, who was not involved in the study. 

In such cases, the heat is not the underlying cause of death and therefore not recorded in the cause of deaths statistics. This can cloak the significant impact that heat has on vulnerable people, with up to 30% more deaths in certain age groups during periods of hot weather.

“The problem is going to get more acute due to climate change and medical systems need to adjust to that,” he said.

An der Heiden also noted that the Nature study estimated almost double the number of heat deaths in Germany last year than his institute. While the discrepancy can be explained by the different threshold values for heat used, it indicates the need for a more detailed description of heat-related mortality that distinguishes between moderate and intensive heat, he said.

According to co-author Ballester, the impact of heat depends greatly on the overall health of the population, particularly with regard to heart and lung disease.

Other measures, already being implemented in countries such as France, include raising awareness about the dangers of high temperatures and identifying individuals who need special attention during heat waves, he said.

“These are cheap, cost-effective measures,” said Ballester.

He dismissed the suggestion that rising temperatures around the globe could, on balance, be beneficial due to fewer deaths during the winter months, noting the manifold risks posed to human civilization by rapid climatic change.

“In my opinion and the opinion of all the climate scientists, the less the climate is modified, the better,” said Ballester. “That’s why it’s so important that we start, as soon as possible, mitigating climate change and reducing vulnerability.” 
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The European Union signed off Monday on a new agreement over the privacy of people’s personal information that gets pinged across the Atlantic, aiming to ease European concerns about electronic spying by American intelligence agencies.

The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework has an adequate level of protection for personal data, the EU’s executive commission said. That means it’s comparable to the 27-nation’s own stringent data protection standards, so companies can use it to move information from Europe to the United States without adding extra security.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October to implement the deal after reaching a preliminary agreement with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Washington and Brussels made an effort to resolve their yearslong battle over the safety of EU citizens’ data that tech companies store in the U.S. after two earlier data transfer agreements were thrown out.

“Personal data can now flow freely and safely from the European Economic Area to the United States without any further conditions or authorizations,” EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said at a press briefing in Brussels.

Washington and Brussels long have clashed over differences between the EU’s stringent data privacy rules and the comparatively lax regime in the U.S., which lacks a federal privacy law. That created uncertainty for tech giants including Google and Facebook parent Meta, raising the prospect that U.S. tech firms might need to keep European data that is used for targeted ads out of the United States.

The European privacy campaigner who triggered legal challenges over the practice, however, dismissed the latest deal. Max Schrems said the new agreement failed to resolve core issues and vowed to challenge it to the EU’s top court.

Schrems kicked off the legal saga by filing a complaint about the handling of his Facebook data after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations a decade ago about how the U.S. government eavesdropped on people’s online data and communications.

Calling the new agreement a copy of the previous one, Schrems said his Vienna-based group, NOYB, was readying a legal challenge and expected the case to be back in the European Court of Justice by the end of the year.

“Just announcing that something is ‘new’, ‘robust’ or ‘effective’ does not cut it before the Court of Justice,” Schrems said. “We would need changes in U.S. surveillance law to make this work — and we simply don’t have it.”

The framework, which takes effect Tuesday, promises strengthened safeguards against data collection abuses and provides multiple avenues for redress.

Under the deal, U.S. intelligence agencies’ access to data is limited to what’s “necessary and proportionate” to protect national security.

Europeans who suspect U.S. authorities have accessed their data will be able to complain to a new Data Protection Review Court, made up of judges appointed from outside the U.S. government. The threshold to file a complaint will be “very low” and won’t require people to prove their data has been accessed, Reynders said.

Business groups welcomed the decision, which clears a legal path for companies to continue cross-border data flows.

“This is a major breakthrough,” said Alexandre Roure, public policy director at the Brussels office of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, whose members include Apple, Google and Meta.

“After waiting for years, companies and organisations of all sizes on both sides of the Atlantic finally have the certainty of a durable legal framework that allows for transfers of personal data from the EU to the United States,” Roure said.

In an echo of Schrems’ original complaint, Meta Platforms was hit in May with a record $1.3 billion EU privacy fine for relying on legal tools deemed invalid to transfer data across the Atlantic.

Meta had warned in its latest earnings report that without a legal basis for data transfers, it would be forced to stop offering its products and services in Europe, “which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”
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Meta Platforms’ Twitter rival Threads crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of launch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, dethroning ChatGPT as the fastest-growing online platform to hit the milestone. 

Threads has been setting records for user growth since its launch on Wednesday, with celebrities, politicians and other newsmakers joining the platform seen by analysts as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned microblogging app. 

“That’s mostly organic demand, and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” Zuckerberg said in a Threads post announcing the milestone. 

The app’s sprint to 100 million users was much speedier than that of OpenAI-owned ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in January about two months after its launch, according to a UBS study. 

Still, Threads has some catching up to do. Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users as of July last year, according to the company’s last public disclosure before Musk’s takeover. 

Twitter has responded to Threads’ arrival by threatening to sue Meta, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information to build the app. 

That claim, legal experts say, could be hard to prove. 

Threads bears a strong resemblance to Twitter, as do numerous other social media sites that have cropped up in recent months as users have chafed at Musk’s management of the service. It allows posts that are up to 500 characters long and supports links, photos and videos of up to 5 minutes. 

The app also does not yet have a direct messaging function and lacks a desktop version that certain users, such as business organizations, rely on. 

It also currently lacks hashtags and keyword search functions, which limits both its appeal to advertisers and its utility as a place for following real-time events like users frequently do on Twitter. 

Still, analysts said the turmoil at Twitter, including recently imposed limits on the number on tweets users can see, could help Threads to attract users and advertisers.  

Currently, there are no ads on the Threads app and Zuckerberg said the company would only think about monetization once there was a clear path to 1 billion users. 

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said last week Meta was not trying to replace Twitter and that Threads aimed to focus on light subjects like sports, music, fashion and design.  

He acknowledged that politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads, in what would be a challenge for the app pitching itself as the “friendly” option for public discourse online. 
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Health officials are reporting a deadly outbreak of cholera in the South African province of Gauteng

Authorities say nearly 50 people have died, with most of the deaths concentrated in the Hammanskraal area. Cases have been reported in other areas as well.  

Medical officials have urged residents to be vigilant about what they consume and to practice good hygiene, like hand washing.    

Cholera mainly spreads through contaminated water or food.  

Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration.
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Two years after Brazil began emerging from its pandemic horror show thanks to a massive immunization campaign, officials face a paradoxical predicament: vaccination rates have plunged, and not just for COVID-19. 

The troubling trend has left millions exposed to once-eradicated diseases.    

Doctors, public officials and UNICEF have sounded the alarm over collapsing immunization rates in Brazil, where overall vaccination coverage has fallen from an impressive 95% in 2015 to just 68% last year, according to official figures.  

For polio, the figure fell from 85% to 68%, triggering warnings that the disease could make a comeback in Brazil, where it was eradicated in 1989.  

The figures are similar for other vaccines, allowing diseases to spread. Measles, officially eliminated in Brazil in 2016, returned two years later. There are fears diphtheria is making a resurgence, too.  

Health experts say vaccine hesitancy is a growing problem worldwide. But it is particularly worrying in Brazil, a sprawling country of 203 million people that until recently was hailed as a champion of mass vaccination drives.    

Then an anti-vax movement started spreading around 2016, soon gaining outsize influence via a powerful ally: far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, president from 2019 to 2022, who refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19, joking the jab could “turn you into an alligator.”    

“It’s very sad to see how a country whose vaccination programs set an example for the world can suddenly suffer from an anti-vaccine movement,” Natalia Pasternak, head of the Question of Science Institute (IQC), a public policy think tank, told AFP.   

“It’s very sad to see how 50 years of work can be so easily destroyed in three.” 

Hope after haunting images

COVID-19 highlighted the shots-in-arms capacities of Brazil’s struggling but lauded universal public health system.  

Back in 2020, some of the most haunting images of the pandemic were of mass graves and corpses piled in refrigerator trucks in places such as Manaus, in northern Brazil, whose overwhelmed hospitals ran out of oxygen.  

Then new images started emerging in 2021, of public health workers turning Rio de Janeiro’s carnival parade venue into a drive-through immunization center or boating deep into the Amazon rainforest to administer vaccines in Indigenous villages.  

Experts credit the campaign’s success with stopping a far bigger tragedy in Brazil, where more than 700,000 people have died of COVID-19, second only to the United States.  

Despite a slow start — widely blamed on Bolsonaro — Brazil had by early last year vaccinated 93% of adults against COVID-19.  

Then rates fell, not only for COVID-19 vaccines but across the board. 

‘The infodemic’ 

Many factors are driving the decline, experts say.   

They include failure to catch up on vaccines delayed during the pandemic, inaccessible health care and declining awareness of the dangers of once-ubiquitous diseases.  

But experts say a new element is making things much worse: the toxic mix of politics, polarization and disinformation that exploded during the pandemic and is increasingly familiar worldwide.  

In Brazil, despite Bolsonaro losing a divisive 2022 election to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the anti-vax movement still thrives.  

“We’re facing a post-trust scenario, in which families are being attacked by disinformation and lies. It’s not just the occasional fake news story, it’s very structured,” said Isabella Ballalai of the Brazilian Immunization Society. “The consequences of that ‘infodemic’ will be worse than the pandemic itself.”  

Brazilian Health Minister Nisia Trindade says the government is evaluating how to punish doctors spreading anti-vax disinformation.  

“Criminal fake news is sowing doubt and fueling vaccine hesitancy,” she told AFP.    

Going local  

A recent survey by the Brazilian Pediatrics Society (SBP) and IQC found that doctors said parents’ most common reasons for not vaccinating their children were fears of side effects and mistrust of vaccines.  

Experts say health workers are desperate for reliable information to counter the flood of anti-vax disinformation.    

Pasternak, whose organization is working on creating just that, says health officials also need to think locally.  

“Studies show the best way to convince people to get vaccinated is working with local leaders … People listen to those they trust: pastors, community leaders,” she said.  

But reversing the trend will not be easy, Pasternak admitted. “We have lots of work to do.” 
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One person is dead and three missing in landslides in southwestern Japan, authorities said Monday, as the country’s weather agency warned of the “heaviest rain ever” in the region. 

A 77-year-old woman was confirmed dead in a landslide that entered her home overnight in rural Fukuoka, the local fire department told AFP. 

Her husband was recovered conscious and taken to hospital. 

Three people were also missing after a landslide in Karatsu City, in Saga prefecture, which neighbors Fukuoka, local authorities there said. 

The Japan Meteorological Agency urged people to take shelter as the heavy downpours risked flooding and landslides across the Fukuoka and Oita regions. 

“A special heavy rain warning has been issued for municipalities in Fukuoka Prefecture. This is the heaviest rain ever experienced” by the region, Satoshi Sugimoto of the JMA’s forecast division told reporters. 

“There is a very high possibility that some kind of disaster has already occurred. … The situation is such that lives are in danger and safety must be secured,” he added. 

Noncompulsory evacuation orders were issued to parts of Fukuoka, Oita and neigboring prefectures, which were opening shelters to accommodate those leaving their homes.

The prime minister’s office said a taskforce had been established to coordinate a response to the rains. 

The downpour forced the stoppage of bullet train service between western Hiroshima and Fukuoka, operator JR West said.

Japan is currently in its annual rainy season, which often brings heavy downpours, and sometimes results in flooding and landslides, as well as casualties.   

Scientists say climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain in Japan and elsewhere, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water. 

In 2021, rain triggered a devastating landslide in the central resort town of Atami that killed 27 people. 

And in 2018, floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in western Japan during the rainy season.
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