Day: October 26, 2023

UN Announces Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence 

The United Nations has begun an effort to help the world manage the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday launched a 39-member advisory body of tech company executives, government officials and academics from countries spanning six continents.

The panel aims to issue preliminary recommendations on AI governance by the end of the year and finalize them before the U.N. Summit of the Future next September.

“The transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp,” Guterres said. He pointed to possible uses including predicting crises, improving public health and education, and tackling the climate crisis.

However, he cautioned, “it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion and threaten democracy itself.”

Widespread concern about the risks associated with AI has grown since tech company OpenAI launched ChatGPT last year. Its ease of use has raised concern that the tool could replace writing tasks that previously only humans could perform.

With many calling for regulation of AI, researchers and lawmakers have stressed the need for global cooperation on the matter.

The U.N.’s new body on AI will hold its first meeting Friday.

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 

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Survey: 2% of Kids, 7% of Adults Have Received New COVID Shots

A month after federal officials recommended new versions of COVID-19 vaccines, 7% of U.S. adults and 2% of children have gotten shots.

The numbers, presented Thursday at a meeting held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come from a national survey of thousands of Americans conducted two weeks ago. 

The data also indicated that nearly 40% of adults said they probably or definitely would not get the shot. A similar percentage of parents said they did not plan to vaccinate their children. 

In late summer, government health officials made the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign more like the annual flu campaign. 

Officials approved updated shots that have a single target, an omicron descendant named XBB.1.5. They replaced vaccines that targeted the original coronavirus strain and a much earlier omicron version. Last month, the CDC recommended the new shots for everyone 6 months and older. 

The government also transitioned to a commercialized system that relied on the health care industry — not the government — to handle the distribution of the shots. Many people who immediately went for shots said pharmacies or doctors didn’t have them. 

Americans have been urged to get different iterations of the vaccines for more than 2½ years. This year, COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations fell to lower levels than seen in the previous three years. 

Cases remain low compared with the pandemic’s early months. Even so, health officials say about 18,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths are still being reported each week. 

One expert at the meeting, Dr. Camille Kotton of Harvard Medical School, called the numbers “abysmal” and said part of the problem might be patient confusion. She urged stepped-up public education efforts. 

Dr. David Kimberlin of the University of Alabama at Birmingham also expressed dismay. 

“The recommendations are not being heard,” he said. 

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Divergent States Working to Safeguard America’s Most Important River

Political leaders in the Mississippi River area are looking to form a multistate compact to manage threats from climate change, water pollution and drought-affected regions elsewhere.

“Twenty million people drink from the Mississippi River and its tributaries every day, including me and my family,” said Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative.

With the world’s fourth-largest basin, the Mississippi River supports more than 400 species of wildlife, has led to more than 350,000 jobs and generates more than $21 billion in annual tourism, fishing and recreation spending, according to the nonprofit group American Rivers.

“Whether you’re looking at it from a clean water standpoint, an ecological standpoint, a shipping of goods standpoint, or even from national security, there’s not a more important waterway in our country,” Wellenkamp told VOA. “We need to come together to protect and manage this critical resource.”

That’s what community and political leaders hope to do with a Mississippi River Compact to help unify lawmakers and residents along more than 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) of America’s most important river.

The compact’s framework would join 10 states in the collective management of river resources in consultation with stakeholders, including environmental groups, businesses and riverfront communities, to promote transparency and a shared sense of responsibility for the river’s well-being.

“When a farmer in a state upriver uses harmful fertilizer, for example, it affects the ability for fishermen to catch healthy fish at the bottom of the river in the Gulf of Mexico,” Wellenkamp said.

Nitrogen and phosphorus in runoff from lawns, sewage treatment plants, farmland and other sources along the river trigger algae blooms that choke off oxygen in water, killing marine life. Where the river meets the Gulf, that has caused a “dead zone” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates is costing U.S seafood and tourism industries more than $82 million per year.

“The problems facing the Mississippi River are many,” said Matt Rota, senior policy director at Healthy Gulf in New Orleans, Louisiana. “Only looking at the environmental side of things, we need to address water diversion protections, the Gulf dead zone, pollution, catastrophic flooding and — as we’re seeing right now in Louisiana — persistent droughts that are allowing saltwater from the Gulf to make our water undrinkable.

“These issues can’t be addressed state by state,” Rota continued. “They require a ‘whole river’ perspective. It’s vague right now exactly what a compact would cover, but there’s certain potential. From shipping to flooding to agriculture to wastewater disposal to drinking water and more, if a compact could prioritize the sustainability of the river, maybe it could help attract funds to help solve these problems.”

A “thousand-mile journey”

Tackling these challenges as a group could prove difficult.

“Solving the collective problems that span the river will require political cooperation among a very diverse group of states that don’t always agree on river management priorities, particularly around water quality issues such as nutrient pollution,” said David Strifling, director of the Water Law and Policy Initiative at Marquette University.

“Still,” he said, the “resolution to pursue the development of a Mississippi River Compact is the first step in a journey of a thousand miles.”

Wellenkamp acknowledged that states along the river do not always agree on what is best, “but when the river experiences record-breaking floods, we are all under threat. And when we have record-breaking droughts, we all suffer. When harmful chemicals find their way into the river up north, it hurts those of us in the South. And when manufacturing operations along the river in the south are hurting, it harms their headquarters in cities along the river in the North.”

In pursuing a compact, Strifling believes it is promising that political leaders in the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative are rallying around issues that unify them, such as protections against diverting water to places outside the river basin.

Threat of “thirsty eyes”

The western region of the United States is experiencing a historic drought that U.S. Geological Survey data shows has resulted in a 20% drop in water flow along the important Colorado River over the last two decades.

“And conditions are only getting worse with climate change,” said Healthy Rivers senior policy advisor Kim Mitchell. “Forecasts show the Colorado River could lose another 25 to 30% of its flow by 2050. The region is desperate for solutions.”

Some western U.S. leaders are looking at water from the Mississippi and from its large tributary, the Missouri River, as part of the solution. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey last year agreed to spend $1 billion to investigate solutions that include pumping flood waters from the Mississippi River into the depleted Colorado.

“The idea of piping ‘excess’ Mississippi River water across the continental divide to supply water to the desert Southwest has persisted for decades no matter how unworkable it has been proven to be,” Trevor Russell, director of Friends of the Mississippi River’s Water Program, told VOA. “But not only would it just be a band aid for the problems being experienced out West, it would put the Mississippi River — America’s greatest river — at risk, too.”

That is where a Mississippi River compact could be especially beneficial.

“States with thirsty eyes have been wanting to put a straw in the Mississippi for years,” Wellenkamp said. “A Mississippi River Compact would finally put an end to that threat because no state along the river could give another state access to the river without the other states’ permission.”

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China Sends Youngest-Ever Crew to Space as It Seeks to Put Astronauts on Moon

China launched its youngest-ever crew for its orbiting space station on Thursday as it seeks to put astronauts on the moon before 2030.

The Shenzhou 17 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China atop a Long March 2-F rocket at 11:14 a.m. (0314 GMT)

According to the China Manned Space Agency, the average age of the three-member crew is the youngest since the launch of the space station construction mission, state broadcaster CCTV earlier reported. Their average age is 38, state media China Daily said.

Beijing is pursuing plans to place astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade amid a rivalry with the U.S. for reaching new milestones in outer space. This reflects the competition for influence between the world’s two largest economies in the technology, military and diplomatic fields.

The trio — Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin — will replace a crew that has been on the station for six months. Tang is a veteran who led a 2021 space mission for three months.

The new crew will conduct experiments in space medicine, space technology and other areas during their mission and will help install and maintain the equipment inside and outside the station, the agency said.

On Wednesday, the agency also announced plans to send a new telescope to probe deep into the universe. CCTV said the telescope would enable surveys and mapping of the sky, but no timeframe was given for the installation.

China has researched the movement of stars and planets for thousands of years while in modern times, it has pushed to become a leader in space exploration and science.

It built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. concerns over the control of the program by the People’s Liberation Army, the military branch of the ruling Communist Party.

China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to put a person into space using its own resources.

American spending, supply chains and capabilities are believed to give it a significant edge over China, at least for now. China has broken out in some areas, however, bringing samples back from the lunar surface for the first time in decades and landing a rover on the less explored far side of the moon.

The U.S., meanwhile, aims to put astronauts back on the lunar surface by the end of 2025 as part of a renewed commitment to crewed missions, aided by private sector players such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.

In addition to their lunar programs, the two countries have also separately landed rovers on Mars, and China plans to follow the U.S. in landing a spacecraft on an asteroid.

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Cholera Cases Rising in Malawi After Health Emergency Lifted

Malawi is seeing a spike in cholera cases. This, just two months after the government lifted a public health emergency declaration that had been in place since early 2022. Chimwemwe Padatha has this story from Lilongwe, Malawi

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Former Child Soldier Program Deployed to Tackle Drug Abuse in Liberia

According to a 2023 report by the Global Action for Sustainable Development, Liberia is losing an entire generation to drug abuse, with its capital, Monrovia, alone having more than 800 drug hubs and an estimated 100,000 drug users. An older generation of rehabilitated child soldiers have moved to join the fight against drugs, using a behavioral therapy approach. Senanu Tord reports from Monrovia. Video editor: Henry Hernandez.

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