Month: September 2023

The death toll from flash floods that have inundated central Greece due to Storm Daniel has risen to 12 with the number expected to rise. The clean-up task in the Thessaly area comes as health officials warn of infectious diseases that are breaking out as a result of dead livestock scattered across devastated sections.

Hara Petropoulou pleas for assistance after Storm Daniel caused widespread flooding in central Greece.

“Help,” she shouts to the anchor of a Sunday morning show. “Please help.”

“We may have survived the floods that drowned our towns and homes… but the stench of decomposing animal carcasses …. Our chickens, our goats, rabbits and sheep… It is horrific and it is going to kill us,” she adds.

The wife of a farmer in the farming heartland of Greece, Petropoulou says she is left with no other option than to clean up the debris herself.

“I have a bottle of chlorine in my hand… and I’m ready to head out into a meter of mud and floodwaters to clear out our chicken coop and to drag away the dead sheep the storm left behind.”

“I have no other choice,” she says.

Petropoulou is not alone. Thousands of other farmers are following suit.

But that is exactly what health authorities are warning against.

Dysentery, diphtheria, and malaria are just some of the infectious diseases resulting from the floods that ravaged Thessaly, the farming heartland of Greece, and livestock for much of the past week.

On Sunday, state health and veterinary officials said they had deployed dozens of special crews to collect dead livestock, taking decomposing carcasses to special incinerators to be burned.

But with dozens of villages and hamlets still stranded … all devoid of clean water and sewage, fears of further outbreaks grow.

“Authorities alone have been tasked with the cleanup of dead livestock,” said Deputy Health Minister Irini Agapidakishe on public television.

“People have to stay away from dead livestock, and those that have survived… Goats, chicken, sheep, cows even their pets have to be steered clear and away from contaminated fields.”

“The repercussions,” she said, “will be terrible.”

The looming health crisis adds to Daniel’s destruction after walls of water pounded the Thessaly plain. Officials say over a four-day period, the storm drenched the affected areas with more rainfall than London sees in a full year.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis toured the region to inspect recovery operations. He was expected to announce unprecedented aid measures in a late-night address.

Locals though want more. They say the biggest but most pressing challenge is to rebuild the region to fortify it against future natural disasters and climate change.
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Mosquito-borne dengue fever is taking a heavy toll on South Asian nations this year as Bangladesh grapples with record deaths and Nepal faces cases in new areas, with disease experts linking worsening outbreaks to the impacts of climate change.

Authorities in the two countries are scrambling to contain and treat the disease – which is also known as “breakbone fever” for the severe muscle and joint pains it induces. Entomologists and epidemiologists say rising temperatures and longer monsoon seasons are providing ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes.

The threat is not restricted to South Asia as dengue rates are rising globally with 4.2 million cases reported in 2022 — up eightfold from 2000 — the World Health Organization (WHO) says. Earlier this year, WHO said dengue is the fastest-spreading tropical disease worldwide and represents a “pandemic threat.”

In Bangladesh, at least 691 people have died so far in 2023, and more than 138,000 have been infected, official figures show, making this the deadliest year since the first recorded epidemic in 2000. The previous record toll was 281 deaths last year.

A lack of proper prevention measures has allowed the dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito to spread across almost all of Bangladesh, said Kabirul Bashar, an entomologist and zoology professor at Jahangirnagar University in the capital of Dhaka.

He said this raised the risk of more infections occurring during September. Dengue is common during the June-to-September monsoon season, when mosquitoes thrive in stagnant water.

“This climate is favorable for the breeding of Aedes mosquitoes,” Bashar said in an interview. “Dengue is not only a problem for Dhaka, it is now a problem for the entire country.”

Nepal struggling

Meanwhile, Nepal — which first recorded dengue in 2004 — has had at least 13 dengue deaths and more than 21,200 cases so far this year across 75 of its 77 districts, according to officials.

This year could match the 2022 toll of 88 deaths and 54,000 cases, said Uttam Koirala, a senior public health officer at the national epidemiology and disease control division.

Meghnath Dhimal, a senior research officer at the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC), said the incidence and spread of dengue had been rising quickly nationwide in recent years.

Rising temperatures mean cases have started occurring in colder autumn months, while Nepal’s higher mountain districts that never before had the disease are now struggling to curb its spread, he said, describing the shifting patterns as “strange.”

For example, the city of Dharan in the mountainous east has been hit particularly hard this year — with dengue cases rising so fast that hospitals and ambulances are overwhelmed by demand, according to Umesh Mehta, the local health division chief.

The city of more than 160,000 people saw the number of dengue cases peak at 1,700 a day as of late August, he said.

Amrit Kumar Thakur, a Dharan resident, was one of four members of his family to contract dengue last month. The 27-year-old said the disease started with a mild body ache and got steadily worse before he was treated at a temporary health center set up to deal with the fast-growing number of cases.

“Dengue was the worst health experience of my life,” said Thakur, adding that he and his relatives had fully recovered.

Ideal conditions

WHO says dengue is rising partly because global warming benefits mosquitoes, along with other factors including movement of people and goods, urbanization and problems with sanitation.

In July, WHO said an unusual episodic amount of rainfall in Bangladesh, together with high temperatures and high humidity, had helped the mosquito population to grow across the nation.

Furthermore, Bangladesh has experienced longer-than-usual monsoon seasons in recent years, with erratic rainfall over the March-to-October period and more breeding grounds popping up for mosquitoes, according to various disease and health experts.

The number of potential breeding sites identified in 2023 is the highest in the last five years, said Nazmul Islam, director of the disease control branch of Bangladesh’s health department.

Fiercer floods fueled by heavy rains and melting glaciers — driven by climate change — are another major factor behind the spread of dengue, said Mohammad Mushtuq Husain, an adviser at the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research.

The Bangladeshi government has also cited climate change as a driver behind the country’s worsening dengue outbreak.

Saber Hossain Chowdhury, the prime minister’s special envoy on climate change, said last month on the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that the nation’s record dengue cases are “a clear instance of (the) climate change health nexus.”

Bangladesh needs to think about a national plan for adapting its health system to prevent diseases like dengue from turning into major disasters, Chowdhury said in an interview.

Informing the public

As dengue lacks a specific cure, health experts say the disease must be kept at bay through control of mosquito breeding, engaging with the public, and managing symptoms.

In Dhaka, officials are going around the city spraying insecticide to kill mosquitoes and imposing fines on people if breeding sites for the larvae are found.

Atiqul Islam, mayor of the Dhaka North City Corporation, said the authorities would have to keep informing residents of the risks, and monitoring the situation, throughout the year.

“It’s not the time for pinning blame, rather everyone should come forward to deal with the dengue situation — for their love of this city where we are born, live and die,” said Islam.

In Nepal, Dhimal from the NHRC said no authority alone could stop dengue as mosquitoes are found everywhere from garages to the corners of houses which are out of reach of the government.

“Everyone should be aware and proactive and contribute from their side to control the spread of the vector,” he added.

Civil society and development organizations are also helping to tackle the disease.

Sanjeev Kafley, head of the Bangladesh delegation for the International Red Cross, said it was helping to raise public awareness, procuring testing kits, and boosting the availability of platelets used in blood transfusions to treat some patients.

Yet when it comes to treatment broadly, ordinary families face high costs. Researchers from Dhaka University’s Institute of Health Economics have warned that total medical expenses for dengue patients may exceed $91 million this year, up from $41 million in 2019.

Dhaka resident Akhtar Hossain spent $545 on private hospital care for his daughter, Ayesha Tabassum Taqwa, who ultimately died of dengue last month at the age of 10.

Hossain cried as he spoke of Taqwa’s love of learning.

“Her books, notebooks … are all still on the reading table. (She) will never arrange new books,” he said. “(But) who can we blame and what is the point of talking about it?” 
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The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure.

But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.

As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers, including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google, have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption.

But they’re often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it “was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines.”

Building a large language model requires analyzing patterns across a huge trove of human-written text. All that computing takes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat. To keep it cool on hot days, data centers need to pump in water — often to a cooling tower outside its warehouse-sized buildings.

In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research.

“It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI,” including “its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI,” said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside, who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT.

In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions. The range varies depending on where its servers are located and the season. The estimate includes indirect water usage that the companies don’t measure — such as to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity.

“Most people are not aware of the resource usage underlying ChatGPT,” Ren said. “If you’re not aware of the resource usage, then there’s no way that we can help conserve the resources.”

Google reported a 20% growth in water use in the same period, which Ren also largely attributes to its AI work. Google’s spike wasn’t uniform — it was steady in Oregon, where its water use has attracted public attention, while doubling outside Las Vegas. It was also thirsty in Iowa, drawing more potable water to its Council Bluffs data centers than anywhere else.

In response to questions from The Associated Press, Microsoft said in a statement this week that it is investing in research to measure AI’s energy and carbon footprint “while working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application.”

“We will continue to monitor our emissions, accelerate progress while increasing our use of clean energy to power data centers, purchasing renewable energy, and other efforts to meet our sustainability goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030,” the company’s statement said.

OpenAI echoed those comments in its own statement Friday, saying it’s giving “considerable thought” to the best use of computing power.

“We recognize training large models can be energy and water-intensive” and work to improve efficiencies, it said.

Microsoft made its first $1 billion investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI in 2019, more than two years before the startup introduced ChatGPT and sparked worldwide fascination with AI advancements. As part of the deal, the software giant would supply computing power needed to train the AI models.

To do at least some of that work, the two companies looked to West Des Moines, Iowa, a city of 68,000 people where Microsoft has been amassing data centers to power its cloud computing services for more than a decade. Its fourth and fifth data centers are due to open there later this year.

“They’re building them as fast as they can,” said Steve Gaer, who was the city’s mayor when Microsoft came to town. Gaer said the company was attracted to the city’s commitment to building public infrastructure and contributed a “staggering” sum of money through tax payments that support that investment.

“But, you know, they were pretty secretive on what they’re doing out there,” he said.

Microsoft first said it was developing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers for OpenAI in 2020, declining to reveal its location to the AP at the time but describing it as a “single system” with more than 285,000 cores of conventional semiconductors and 10,000 graphics processors — a kind of chip that’s become crucial to AI workloads.

Experts have said it can make sense to “pretrain” an AI model at a single location because of the large amounts of data that need to be transferred between computing cores.

It wasn’t until late May that Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, disclosed that it had built its “advanced AI supercomputing data center” in Iowa, exclusively to enable OpenAI to train what has become its fourth-generation model, GPT-4. The model now powers premium versions of ChatGPT and some of Microsoft’s own products and has accelerated a debate about containing AI’s societal risks.

“It was made by these extraordinary engineers in California, but it was really made in Iowa,” Smith said.

In some ways, West Des Moines is a relatively efficient place to train a powerful AI system, especially compared to Microsoft’s data centers in Arizona, which consume far more water for the same computing demand.

“So if you are developing AI models within Microsoft, then you should schedule your training in Iowa instead of in Arizona,” Ren said. “In terms of training, there’s no difference. In terms of water consumption or energy consumption, there’s a big difference.”

For much of the year, Iowa’s weather is cool enough for Microsoft to use outside air to keep the supercomputer running properly and vent heat out of the building. Only when the temperature exceeds 29.3 degrees Celsius (about 85 degrees Fahrenheit) does it withdraw water, the company has said in a public disclosure.
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Hurricane Lee is rewriting old rules of meteorology, leaving experts astonished at how rapidly it grew into a goliath Category 5 hurricane.

Lee could also be a dreadful harbinger of what is to come as ocean temperatures climb, spawning fast-growing major hurricanes that could threaten communities farther north and farther inland, experts say.

“Hurricanes are getting stronger at higher latitudes,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program and a past president of the American Meteorological Society. “If that trend continues, that brings into play places like Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.”

Hyper-intensification

As the oceans warm, they act as jet fuel for hurricanes.

“That extra heat comes back to manifest itself at some point, and one of the ways it does is through stronger hurricanes,” Shepherd said.

During the overnight hours on Thursday, Lee shattered the standard for what meteorologists call rapid intensification — when a hurricane’s sustained winds increase by 56 kph in 24 hours.

“This one increased by 80 mph (129 kph),” Shepherd said. “I can’t emphasize this enough — we used to have this metric of 35 mph (56 kph), and here’s a storm that did twice that amount and we’re seeing that happen more frequently,” said Shepherd, who describes what happened with Lee as “hyper-intensification.”

With super-warm ocean temperatures and low wind shear, “all the stars were aligned for it to intensify rapidly,” said Kerry Emanuel, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Inland threats

Category 5 status — when sustained winds are at least 253 kph — is quite rare. Only about 4.5% of named storms in the Atlantic Ocean have grown to a Category 5 in the past decade, said Brian McNoldy, a scientist and hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.

More intense major hurricanes are also threatening communities farther inland, since the monster storms can grow so powerful that they remain dangerous hurricanes for longer distances over land.

“I think that’s a story that’s kind of under-told,” Shepherd said. “As these storms are strong coming to landfall, in some cases they’re moving fast enough that they’re still hurricanes well inland.”

Hurricane Idalia was the latest example, when it came ashore in the Florida Panhandle last month and remained a hurricane as it entered south Georgia.

It then slammed into the Georgia city of Valdosta more than 116 kilometers away from where it made landfall. At least 80 homes in the Valdosta area were destroyed and hundreds of others damaged.

In 2018, Hurricane Michael carved a similar path of inland destruction, tearing up cotton crops and pecan trees and leaving widespread damage across south Georgia.

Risk for New England

While it’s too early to know how close Lee might come to the U.S. East Coast, New Englanders are keeping a wary eye on the storm as some models have projected it tracking perilously close to New England – particularly Maine. It has been 69 years since a major hurricane made landfall in New England, McNoldy said.

On Sept. 8, 1869, a Category 3 hurricane known as “the September Gale of 1869” struck Rhode Island, the National Weather Service in Boston noted Friday. The storm cut all telegraph lines between Boston and New York and capsized a schooner, killing 11 crew members.

“If Lee actually does make landfall in New England, there’s no doubt the storm surge would be a huge threat,” he said.

Monster waves

As Lee roils the ocean as it creeps closer to the eastern coast of the U.S., it could bring high seas and rip currents all up and down the eastern seaboard.

“What we are going to see from Lee — and we’re very confident — is it’s going to be a major wave producer,” Mike Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center, said in a Friday briefing.

“This morning the highest significant wave height we were analyzing in Lee was between 45 and 50 feet (13.7 and 15 meters), and the highest waves could even be double that,” Brennan said. “So we could be looking at 80-, 90-foot (24-, 27-meter) waves associated with Lee.”

Emanuel was tracking the storm this weekend in New Harbor, Maine. Since it has been so long for any type of hurricane warning in New England, some residents might be complacent and think that hurricanes are a Florida or Louisiana problem, he said.

“One worries whether they’re going to take it seriously when it comes to that,” he said.

Something to watch

Forecasters will be watching any possible interaction in coming days between Lee and newly formed Tropical Storm Margot, which is expected to become a hurricane next week.

It’s possible that Margot could alter Lee’s path, though it’s too soon to know whether that will happen, experts say.

Margot is far to the east of Lee, but as Margot strengthens it could affect the weather systems in the region that steer hurricanes.

A phenomenon known as the Fujiwhara Effect can occur when two tropical storms rotate around each other, but that doesn’t mean they will in this case, Emanuel said. If it does happen, though, the two storms could push each other around in the Atlantic, which could alter their paths.
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Novak Djokovic considers his mental state just as important as his physical condition when it comes to being prepared to play his best at age 36.

“Mentally there is probably a lot more that I’m dealing with in my private life than was the case 10 years ago. But that’s the beauty of life. Things are evolving, moving on,” said Djokovic, who will try to take another step toward what would be a 24th Grand Slam title when he faces Ben Shelton in the U.S. Open semifinals Friday.

“I just feel that there is always, I guess, an extra gear that you have inside of you and you can find when you dig deep to handle and manage energy levels, on and off the court,” Djokovic said, “if you’re really devoted to that and if you care about it, if you pay attention to that mental aspect as much as physical, of course.”

By the time players arrive at Flushing Meadows for the last major tournament of a long season — one that began in late December and will carry on into November — the ailments and injuries that are part of any professional athlete’s existence can make things tough. Some competing at the U.S. Open, which concludes this weekend, say the wear and tear on the mind can be just as hard to deal with as whatever might be wrong with one’s body.

“We’re already smashed. Completely,” said Daria Kasatkina, a 26-year-old from Russia who reached the fourth round in New York.

Stress comes from a variety of sources. The desire to win each match, of course. The importance of earning, and defending, rankings points. The fact that there is no annual salary in a sport where every competitor is an independent contractor who needs to pay for travel expenses and, in most cases, a personal coach, physiotherapist and other members of their “team.”

“At a Slam, tension is always there. A few days before it’s starting, you’re already feeling it. … You have to accept it and, maybe even round by round, it’s getting worse and worse,” said Kasatkina, a 2022 French Open semifinalist. “It’s part of the game. It’s part of this show. And we’re all in the same situation, all the players.”

U.S. Davis Cup captain Bob Bryan, who won 16 Grand Slam doubles titles with his twin, Mike, recalls how that would set in for some in Flushing Meadows.

And he recalls how it could alter on-court performance.

“There’s times where you just get out there and mentally you just can’t push because you’re so exhausted. And you don’t deal with the adversity well. Your thoughts turn negative, and you’re not opportunistic and optimistic on the court. And that will definitely affect your game,” Bryan said. “There’s a lot of players that never figured that out during their career. A lot of great champions and a lot of Hall of Famers ran out of gas here in New York.”

Not everyone deals with mental fatigue — or, if they do, acknowledges it.

“Physically, mentally, I feel ready,” Aryna Sabalenka, who will play Coco Gauff in the women’s final Saturday, said before the start of the U.S. Open. “I feel motivated. I feel strong.”

Professional athletes offering frank thoughts on mental health is still a relatively recent development. A tennis player, Naomi Osaka, was one of the first stars to come forward and discuss feelings of anxiety and depression, doing so after withdrawing from the 2021 French Open.

She didn’t set out to change perceptions on the topic or encourage others to seek help.

“It was a little selfish,” Osaka said Wednesday at the U.S. Open, where she participated with retired Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps in a panel discussion about mental health in sports. “I wasn’t thinking about everyone else, to be 100% honest.”

But she did help spur the discourse.

“For quite a few years, actually, mental training was not really talked about much, generally, in the tennis world. And mental health is a subject that is quite talked about in the last, I would say, three, four years, which I’m glad. It needs to be out there,” Djokovic said.

“It needs to be addressed in a proper way, so that the players have proper understanding of what they are going through and then have help and guidance, necessary guidance, for them to overcome certain obstacles,” he said. “Because in the end of the day, we are also people that have to deal with the private issues that everyone has.”

The ways players try to cope differs.

Some travel with a sports psychologist, for example.

Some make sure to manage their schedule to figure out when it’s possible to get a bit of a breather.

Some just accept that there aren’t many opportunities to recharge.

“The season is so long that there are so many ups and downs,” said 2021 U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev, who faces defending champion Carlos Alcaraz on Friday. “You just keep going, keep playing. I don’t think I have been on vacation in the offseason for three years. … You just try to manage this physical and mental fatigue the best you can with experience, and usually I feel like I’m doing this not too bad.”
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SpaceX must take a series of steps before it can launch its mega rocket again after its debut ended in an explosion, federal regulators said Friday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it closed its investigation into SpaceX’s failed debut of Starship, the world’s biggest rocket. The agency is requiring SpaceX to take 63 corrective actions and to apply for a modified FAA license before launching again.

FAA official said multiple problems led to the April launch explosion, which sent pieces of concrete and metal hurtling for thousands of feet (meters) and created a plume of pulverized concrete that spread for miles (kilometers) around.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in the accident’s aftermath that he improved the 394-foot (120-meter) rocket and strengthened the launch pad. A new Starship is on the redesigned pad, awaiting liftoff. It will fly empty, as before.

During the initial test flight, the rocketship had to be destroyed after it tumbled out of control shortly after liftoff from Boca Chica Beach. The wreckage crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX said fuel leaks during ascent caused fires to erupt at the tail of the rocket, severing connection with the main flight computer and leading to a loss of control.

That flight “provided numerous lessons learned,” the company said in a statement.

NASA wants to use Starship to land astronauts back on the moon in another few years. Musk’s ultimate goal is to build a fleet of Starships to carry people and supplies to Mars.
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Members of the International Radio and Television Union from about 50 countries, meeting this week in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, say a lack of infrastructure and human and financial resources remains a major obstacle to the switch from analog to digital broadcasting in public media, especially in Africa.

They are asking governments and funding agencies to assist with digitalization, which they say is necessary in the changing media landscape. More than half of Africa’s media is yet to fully digitalize.

Increasing reports of cross-interference between broadcasting and telecom services is a direct consequence of switchover delays, they said.

Professor Amin Alhassan, director general of Ghana Broadcasting Corp., says most African broadcasters are not serving their audiences and staying as relevant as they should because of the slow pace of digital transformation.

“Public media stations across the world are very old,” Alhassan said. “They have heavy investments in analog media and also analog media expertise. Our staff are used to analog systems, and to translate it into digital ecosystems is a challenge.

“Our challenge is how do you transform our existing staff to have a mindset change to understand the operations of digital media,” he said.

The International Telecommunication Union, or ITU, says digital broadcasting allows stations to offer higher definition video and better sound quality than analog. Digital broadcasting also offers multiple channels of programming on the same frequency.

In 2006, the ITU set June 2015 as the deadline for all broadcast stations in the world transmitting on the UHF band used for television broadcasting to switch from analog to digital. A five-year extension, to June 2020, was given for VHF band stations, mostly used in FM broadcasting, to switch over.

But the International Radio and Television Union says most of Africa missed the deadline, did not turn off analog television signals and is missing the advantages of digital broadcasting.

Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are among the first African countries to complete the switch.

South Africa said in 2022 it would switch to digital TV on March 31, 2023. Jacqueline Hlongwane, programming manager of SABC, South Africa’s public broadcaster who attended the Yaounde meeting, said the switchover process is still ongoing after the deadline.

“Towards the end of last year, just before the soccer World Cup, we were able to launch our own OTT platform,” she said, referring to “over the top” technology that delivers streamed content over the internet.

“We are really, really excited about this because it’s been something that we’ve been working on for a very, very long time,” she said. “South African audiences for now can get access to content, which means that as a public broadcaster, we are also moving towards digitization of content.”

Public broadcasters say governments and funding agencies should help them with infrastructure and human and financial resources to increase digital penetration on the continent, which is estimated at between 30% and 43%, below the global average of about 70%.
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More than a decade after a tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Japan’s Pacific coast, the country has begun releasing the treated wastewater that has been accumulating on the site of the disaster, sparking anger in the region despite assurances by scientists that the process will not be harmful to the environment.

The water being released into the Pacific has been largely decontaminated of most dangerous elements, but contains small amounts of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that cannot be extracted through any existing treatment method.

Water releases began in late August and will continue sporadically for decades as Japan works to reduce the amount of treated water on the site of the power plant. That water is currently stored in more than 800 tanks. Japanese officials say that it is necessary to drain and remove some of the tanks so that facilities necessary for the decommissioning of the plant can be built.

Japanese officials have gone to great lengths to demonstrate their confidence in the safety of the water surrounding Fukushima. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida appeared on television eating sashimi prepared from fish caught in the area after the water releases began.

Despite such displays, as well as assessments from experts, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the release of water will not cause harm to the environment, protests have arisen.

Japan and South Korea have been the sites of large demonstrations against the release. The Chinese government has been among the most vocal critics, accusing Japan of behaving irresponsibly and imposing a ban on the importation of Japanese seafood.

2011 disaster

The Fukushima power plant was devastated in 2011, after an earthquake off the coast of Japan generated a massive tidal wave that swept ashore on the east coast of Honshu Island, killing some 20,000 people and inundating entire cities. The wave disabled the systems that the plant used to keep nuclear fuel rods cool, resulting in a catastrophic meltdown of one of its reactors and the release of dangerous amounts of radiation.

The Japanese government was forced to evacuate tens of thousands of residents from the region and has been working ever since to mitigate the damage and prevent further contamination.

That process has involved an ongoing effort to keep the plant’s fuel rods cool, using seawater. The process causes the water to be contaminated by a number of radioactive elements. The water is retained on site and treated by what is known as the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which removes almost all contaminants, with the exception of tritium.

Nuclear experts measure the amount of tritium present in a substance using units called becquerels. According to the World Health Organization, water containing up to 10,000 becquerels of tritium per liter is considered safe to drink. The treated water discharged from the Fukushima plant is being diluted to the point that it contains approximately 190 becquerels of tritium per liter.

Other countries release tritium

Japan is not the only country to release water containing tritium into oceans and rivers. Many nations that rely on nuclear power for some of their energy supply similarly release treated wastewater.

Despite its criticism of Japan’s actions at Fukushima, at least four Chinese nuclear power plants also release water containing tritium into the ocean, all of them at significantly greater concentrations than in Fukushima.

Over the length of the plan, Japan expects 22 trillion becquerels of tritium per year to be released. According to data released by the Japanese government, China’s Qinshan Phase III Nuclear Power Plant in Zhejiang province released 143 trillion becquerels of tritium in 2020. Last year, the report said, China’s Yangjiang Nuclear Power Station in Guangdong province released 121 trillion, while two other plants released 102 trillion and 90 trillion, respectively.

Other countries with nuclear power plants that release tritium include South Korea, France, Russia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

There is no clear evidence that tritium-containing water has caused environmental damage or posed a danger to humans or wildlife in the areas where it has been released, in some cases for decades.

China’s opposition

The Chinese government has taken a very public stand against the Fukushima water releases, despite engaging in the same practice itself.

A statement released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, in part, “The ocean is the common property of all humanity, and forcibly starting the discharge of Fukushima’s nuclear wastewater into the ocean is an extremely selfish and irresponsible act that ignores international public interests.”

Criticism from Beijing has resulted in a concerted effort on the part of many Chinese citizens to bombard Japanese government agencies and businesses with abusive phone calls. In some cases, the near-constant barrage of calls has made it difficult for some businesses to conduct their normal operations.

Shihoko Goto, acting director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank, told VOA that China’s decision to focus so intently on the Fukushima water release is meant to demonstrate the significant “economic leverage” it has over Japan.

“It makes clear that Japan and the Japanese economy … [are] incredibly dependent on China,” she said.

The controversy has also served as a distraction at a time when the Chinese economy is stumbling badly.

“That’s been standard practice in China in the past. When things are going well, they don’t necessarily see the need to lash out,” she said. “But given the current circumstances, it’s certainly a way for China to distract from the real issues.”

Goto said it also demonstrates that “Chinese economic coercion is not going to be limited to small countries. It’s also prepared to go against the world’s third-largest economy.”  
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It started with an image of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on her China trip last month, reportedly taken on what the Chinese tech giant Huawei is touting as a breakthrough 5G mobile phone. Within days, fake ad campaigns on Chinese social media were depicting Raimondo as a Huawei brand ambassador promoting the phone.

The tongue-in-cheek doctored photos made such a splash that they appeared on the social media accounts of state media CCTV, giving them a degree of official approval.

VOA contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce for a reaction but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication.

Chinese nationalists spare no effort to tout the Huawei Mate 60 Pro — equipped with domestically made chips — as a breakthrough showing China’s 5G technological independence despite U.S. sanctions on exports of key components and technology. However, experts say the phone’s capability may be exaggerated.

A social media video posted by Chinese phone users shows that after the Huawei Mate 60 Pro is turned on and connected to the wireless network, it does not display the 4G or 5G signal indicator icon. But these reviewers say the download speed is on par with that of mainstream 5G phones.

A test done by Bloomberg also shows the phone’s bandwidth is similar to other 5G phones.

Richard Windsor, the founder and owner of the British research company Radio Free Mobile, told VOA a simple speed test is not good evidence that the phone is 5G capable.

“It is quite possible through a technique called carrier aggregation to get the kind of speed that was demonstrated,” Windsor said. “You can do that with 4G. … You will see the story on 5G is not [about] speed or throughput but latency efficiency and producing good reception at high frequencies. That’s what the 5G story is all about.”

Throughput and latency are ways to measure network performance. Latency refers to how quickly information moves across a network; throughput refers to the amount of information that moves in a certain time.

Huawei’s official website makes no mention of 5G technology, which also raised skepticism.

“If the new Huawei mobile phone was a 5G phone with an advanced Chinese chipset, Huawei and China would have told the whole world. Huawei and China are not humble people. They love to tell stories,” John Strand, CEO of Strand Consult, told VOA.

The research firm TechInsights took the Huawei phone apart and discovered a Kirin 9000 chip produced by Chinese chipmaker SMIC. The Kirin 9000-series chipsets support 5G connectivity.

While sanctions prevent SMIC from having access to the most cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet lithography tools used by other leading chipmakers — such as TSMC, Samsung and Intel — it could use some older equipment to make advanced chips.

However, experts suspect SMIC won’t be able to mass produce the Kirin 9000 chips on a profitable scale without more advanced tools.

“Being able to make a chip that works,” Windsor said, “and being able to make millions of chips at good yields that don’t bankrupt you in terms of costs are two very, very different things.”

VOA asked Huawei and SMIC for comment but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication.

Dan Hutcheson, vice chair of TechInsights, said in a press release that China’s production of the Kirin 9000 “shows the resilience of the country’s chip technological ability” while demonstrating the challenge faced by countries that seek to restrict China’s access to critical manufacturing technologies. “The result may likely be even greater restrictions than what exist today.”

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a White House press briefing Tuesday that the U.S. needs “more information about precisely its character and composition” to determine if parties bypassed American restrictions on semiconductor exports to create the new chip.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from the U.S. state of Texas, was quoted Wednesday saying he was concerned about the possibility of China trying to “get a monopoly” on the manufacture of less-advanced computer chips.

“We talk a lot about advanced semiconductor chips, but we also need to look at legacy,” he told Reuters, referring to older computer chip technology that does not fall under current export controls.
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Chinese scientists have succeeded in growing kidneys containing human cells in pig embryos, a world first that could one day help address organ donation shortages.  

But the finding, published Thursday in a study in the journal Cell Stem Cell, raises ethical issues — especially since some human cells also were found in the pigs’ brains, experts said. 

The researchers from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health focused on kidneys since they are the most commonly transplanted in human medicine. 

“Rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats, but previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded,” senior author Liangxue Lai said in a statement. 

“Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs.” 

This is a different approach to the recent high-profile breakthroughs in the United States, where genetically modified pig kidneys and even a heart have been placed inside humans. 

The new research paper “describes pioneering steps in a new approach to organ bioengineering using pigs as incubators for growing and cultivating human organs,” said Dusko Ilic, a professor of stem cell sciences at King’s College London who was not involved in the research. 

Ilic cautioned there would be many challenges to turning the experiment into a viable solution, but “nevertheless, this captivating strategy warrants further exploration.” 

Gene editing 

A major challenge in creating such hybrids has been that pig cells outcompete human cells.

To overcome the obstacles, the team used CRISPR gene editing to delete two genes essential for kidneys to form inside a pig embryo, creating what’s called a “niche.”

They then added specially prepared human pluripotent stem cells — cells that have the potential to develop into any cell type — that filled the niche. 

Before implanting the embryos in sows, they grew them in test tubes containing substances that nourished both the human and pig cells. 

In total, they transferred 1,820 embryos into 13 surrogate mothers. The pregnancies were terminated at 25 and 28 days to assess how the experiment had worked. 

Five embryos selected for analysis were found to have functionally normal kidneys for their stage of development. They contained between 50 and 60 percent human cells. 

“We found that if you create a niche in the pig embryo, then the human cells naturally go into these spaces,” said co-author Zhen Dai. 

“We saw only very few human neural cells in the brain and spinal cord and no human cells in the genital ridge.” 

But the presence of any human cells in the pig brains raises concerns, said Darius Widera, a professor of stem cell biology at England’s University of Reading. 

“Although this approach is a clear milestone and the first successful attempt to grow whole organs containing human cells in pigs, the proportion of human cells in the generated kidneys is still not high enough,” he said. 

In the long run, the team wants to optimize its technology for use in human transplantation but admits it’s not ready yet. 

An important limitation was the kidneys had pig-derived vascular cells, which could cause rejection if transplanted into a human. 

Nevertheless, the team is already working on growing other human organs in pigs, such as the heart and pancreas.
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Russia’s cyber operations may not have managed to land the big blow that many Western officials feared following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but Ukrainian cyber officials caution Moscow has not stopped trying.

Instead, Ukraine’s top counterintelligence agency warns that Russia continues to refine its tactics as it works to further ingrain cyber operations as part of their warfighting doctrine.

“Our resilience has risen a lot,” Illia Vitiuk, head of cybersecurity for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said Thursday at a cyber summit in Washington. “But the problem is that our counterpart, Russia, our enemy, is constantly also evolving and searching for new ways [to attack].”

Vitiuk warned that Moscow continues to launch between 10 and 15 serious cyberattacks per day, many of which show signs of being launched in coordination with missile strikes and other traditional military maneuvers.

“These are not some genius youngsters in search for easy money,” Vitiuk said. “These are people who are working on day-to-day basis and have orders from their military command to destroy Ukraine.”

Vitiuk said Russia has launched 3,000 cyberattacks against Ukraine so far this year, after carrying out 4,500 such attacks following its invasion in 2022.

In addition, he said Russian officials are targeting Ukraine with about 1,000 disinformation campaigns per month.

Last month, for example, the SBU uncovered and blocked a Russian malware plot that sought to infiltrate critical Ukrainian systems by using Android mobile devices captured from Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.

Russian officials routinely deny any involvement in cyberattacks, especially those aimed at civilian infrastructure.

But Russian denials have been met with skepticism in the West, and in the United States, in particular.

“The Russians are increasing their capability and their efforts in the cyber domain,” said CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, who spoke at the same conference in Washington.

“This is a pitched battle every day,” Cohen added, noting that the fight in cyberspace is far from one-sided.

“The Russians have been on the receiving end of a fair amount of cyberattacks being directed at them from a sort of a range of private sector actors,” he said. “There have been attacks on Russian government, some hack and leak attacks. There have been information space attacks on the TV and radio broadcasts.”

Both Washington and Kyiv agree Ukraine’s cyber defenses are holding, at least for now.

Vitiuk, though, expressed caution.

“This war is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” he said. “Our enemy is evolving, and [there are] a lot of things we still need to do, and a lot of things we still need to adopt in order to make this victory come faster.”

Vitiuk also warned that Russia’s determination should not be taken lightly, pointing to Ukrainian intelligence showing that Moscow is looking for ways to expand the reach of its cyber operations against Kyiv.

“We clearly see that there is a national cyber offensive program,” Vitiuk said. “Now they implement offensive [cyber] disciplines in their higher education establishments under control of special services.”

“They start to teach students how to attack state systems, and it is extremely, extremely dangerous,” he said.
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Hurricane Lee whirled through open waters on Thursday as forecasters warned it could become the first Category 5 storm of the Atlantic season. 

Lee was not expected to make landfall while on a projected path that will take it near the northeast Caribbean, although forecasters said tropical storm conditions were possible on some islands. Meteorologists said it was too early to provide details on potential rainfall and wind gusts. 

The Category 4 hurricane was about 1,260 kilometers east of the northern Leeward Islands. It had winds of up to 215 kilometers per hour and was moving west-northwest at 24 kph. 

The storm was expected to grow even more powerful late Thursday and remain a major hurricane into next week. 

“Lee continues to strengthen at an exceptional rate,” the National Hurricane Center said. 

U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday was given the hurricane’s latest trajectory and details of preparations underway by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, which deployed unidentified assets to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the White House. 

Life-threatening surf was expected to hit the Lesser Antilles on Friday and reach the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Bahamas and Bermuda this weekend, the center said. 

“We will see waves between 10 and 15 feet [3 and 5 meters], so we don’t want anyone on the beaches,” said Ernesto Morales with the National Weather Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

The National Hurricane Center said dangerous surf and rip currents were forecast for most of the U.S. East Coast starting Sunday. 

Lee is the 12th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30 and peaks in September. 

Tropical Storm Margot became the 13th named storm after forming on Thursday evening. It was about 465 kilometers west-northwest of the Cabo Verde Islands. It had winds of up to 65 kph and was forecast to strengthen into a hurricane over the weekend. It was moving west-northwest at 28 kph and was expected to remain over open water. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August forecast 14 to 21 named storms this season, with six to 11 of them expected to become hurricanes, and of those, two to five possibly developing into major hurricanes. 

In the Pacific, Hurricane Jova churned through open waters far from Mexico’s southwest coast as a Category 4 storm. It posed no threat to land. 

It was about 965 kilometers southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, and was moving west-northwest at 28 kph with winds up to 230 kph. The storm was expected to weaken starting late Thursday. 
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As delegates gather in Kenya for the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, seeking ways to combat the effects of climate change, activists are screening films illustrating the impacts of global warming in Africa and calling for climate justice for the continent. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi. Camera — Amos Wangwa
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