Day: October 19, 2023

Burkina Faso’s health ministry has declared a dengue fever epidemic amid the deadliest outbreak in years. More than 200 people have died, and new cases are rising sharply.

There have been 50,478 suspected cases and 214 deaths of the mosquito-borne illness this year, the ministry said in a statement released on Wednesday, mostly in the urban centers of the capital, Ouagadougou, and Bobo Dioulasso. It said about 20% of the cases and deaths were recorded last week alone.

Dengue kills an estimated 20,000 people worldwide each year. Rates of the disease have risen eightfold since 2000, driven largely by climate change, the increased movement of people and urbanization.

The World Health Organization this month warned that the disease would become a major threat in new parts of Africa as warmer temperatures create conditions for the mosquitoes carrying the infection to spread.

Dengue is spread by infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Symptoms include fever, muscle pain, nausea and rashes. Lack of treatment or misdiagnosis, common in poverty-stricken countries such as Burkina Faso where health care is spotty, increase the chance of death.

Burkina Faso’s outbreak dwarfs other African outbreaks in recent years. According to figures from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, dengue killed 18 people in Burkina Faso in 2017 and 15 in 2016.

The health ministry said that it was providing free rapid diagnostic tests and had organized spraying of insecticide in public places to counter the spread.
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The EU announced probes Thursday into Facebook owner Meta and TikTok, seeking more details on the measures they have taken to stop the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” after the Hamas attack on Israel.

The European Commission said it had sent formal requests for information to Meta and TikTok respectively in what is a first procedure launched under the EU’s new law on digital content.

The EU launched a similar probe into billionaire mogul Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, last week.

The commission said the request to Meta related “to the dissemination and amplification of illegal content and disinformation” around the Hamas-Israel conflict.

In a separate statement, it said it wanted to know more about TikTok’s efforts against “the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech”.

The EU’s executive arm added that it wanted more information from Meta on its “mitigation measures to protect the integrity of elections”.

Meta and TikTok have until October 25 to respond, with a deadline of November 8 for less urgent aspects of the demand for information.

The commission said it also sought more details about how TikTok was complying with rules on protecting minors online.

The European Union has built a powerful armory to challenge the power of big tech with its landmark Digital Services Act (DSA) and a sister law, the Digital Markets Act, that hits internet giants with tough new curbs on how they do business.

The EU’s fight against disinformation has intensified since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year and Russian attempts to sway European public opinion.

The issue has gained further urgency after Hamas’ assault on October 7 on Israel and the aftermath which sparked a wave of violent images that flooded the platforms.

The DSA came into effect for “very large” platforms, including Meta and TikTok, that have more than 45 million monthly European users in August.

The DSA bans illegal online content under threat of fines running as high as six percent of a company’s global turnover.

The EU’s top tech enforcer, Thierry Breton, sent warning letters to tech CEOs including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and Sundar Pichai of YouTube owner Alphabet.

Growing EU fears

Breton, EU internal market commissioner, told the executives to crack down on illegal content following Hamas’ attack.

Meta said last week that it was putting special resources towards cracking down on illegal and problematic content related to the Hamas-Israel conflict.

On Wednesday, Breton expressed his fears over the impact of disinformation on the EU.

“The widespread dissemination of illegal content and disinformation… carries a clear risk of stigmatization of certain communities, destabilization of our democratic structures, not to mention the exposure of our children to violent content,” he said.

AFP fact-checkers have found several posts on Facebook, TikTok and X promoting a fake White House document purporting to allocate $8 billion in military assistance to Israel.

And several platforms have had users passing off material from other conflicts, or even from video games, as footage from Israel or Gaza.

Since the EU’s tougher action on digital behemoths, some companies, including Meta, are exploring whether to offer a paid-for version of their services in the European Union.
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Australian researchers say they have produced the most comprehensive view of the history of the universe to date. An Australian National University team says their study offers new ideas about how the universe might have started.

The research team says the study’s aim was to understand the origins of all the objects in the universe.

The U.S. space agency, NASA, says the universe “includes all of space, and all the matter and energy that space contains. It even includes time itself and, of course, it includes you.”

NASA adds that “the Milky Way is but one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe — all of them, including our own, are thought to have supermassive black holes at their centers.”

The Australian team says it has created the most comprehensive chart ever created of the history of the universe.

The lead author is honorary associate professor Charley Lineweaver. He said that when the universe began 13.8 billion years ago in a hot big bang, there were no objects, such as protons, atoms, people, planets, stars or galaxies.

The authors say the charts provide new ideas about how the universe came into being.

The first shows temperature and density of the universe as it expanded and cooled. The second plots the mass and size of all objects in the universe. The ANU researchers say the study suggests the universe may have started as what is known as an instanton, which has a specific size and mass, rather than a singularity, which they say is a hypothetical point of infinite density and temperature. Put simply, this would mean that at its beginning the universe may have been finite, and not infinite, in size. This is important because researchers say that what lies beyond the boundary of the universe is “also a major mystery.”

Lineweaver told VOA that mapping the universe will boost our understanding of it.

“When you extrapolate in so many different ways it gives you just a lay of the land that I just think is a beautiful way of understanding the universe,” he said. “If there is one way to understand the Big Bang it started out hot and dense and it got cooler and less dense, and as it did that particles and objects of all kinds condensed out of this hot, dense background. And understanding that is something that we should all make an attempt to do that because that is probably the most profound underlying theme of the history of the universe.”

Lineweaver also said he believes that research into the origins of the universe could help to answer some fundamental scientific questions about life beyond Earth.

“How did we get here? So, I am kind of semi-obsessed with the big picture of life on Earth and what it means and whether we are alone or not and so I have been writing quite a few things about that,” he said. “The basic idea is, well, if we can figure out how we got here, maybe we can make better guesses about whether other life forms have evolved elsewhere.”

The Australian National University study is published in the latest issue of The American Journal of Physics. 
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U.N. inspectors took samples from a fish market near the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Thursday following the release of wastewater from the wrecked facility in August.

China and Russia have banned Japanese seafood imports since the discharge began but Japan says it is safe, a view backed so far by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Some 540 Olympic swimming pools worth of water have been collected since a tsunami sent three reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi into meltdown in 2011 in one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.

Japan says that the water has been filtered by its special ALPS technology of radioactive substances — except tritium — and diluted with seawater.

Japan says tests have shown that tritium levels are within safe limits.

The IAEA team comprising scientists from China, South Korea and Canada were collecting fish, water and sediment samples this week to verify Japan’s findings.

Paul McGinnity, a member of the mission, told reporters that the aim was “to ascertain whether the Japanese labs are measuring and analyzing properly” tritium levels.

“Tritium is the concern because tritium levels as you know are relatively high because it is not removed by the ALPS process,” McGinnity said.

“I can say that we don’t expect to see any change (in tritium levels), certainly in the fish. We do expect to see a small rise in levels of tritium in seawater samples very close to the discharge point. But otherwise, we don’t. We expect to find levels that are very similar to what we measured last year.”

Samples will be sent back to labs in the team members’ home countries for independent review, and the IAEA will evaluate and publish those results.

Russia this week followed its ally China in banning Japanese seafood imports, although it buys relatively small volumes.

Japan, which has called China’s ban politically motivated, said Moscow’s move was an “unjust” step “without any scientific basis.”

The water release is aimed at making space to begin removing the highly dangerous radioactive fuel and rubble from the wrecked reactors.
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