Category: Silicon Valley

For Makenzie Gilkison, spelling is such a struggle that a word like rhinoceros might come out as “rineanswsaurs” or sarcastic as “srkastik.” 

The 14-year-old from suburban Indianapolis can sound out words, but her dyslexia makes the process so draining that she often struggles with comprehension.

“I just assumed I was stupid,” she recalled of her early grade school years. 

But assistive technology powered by artificial intelligence has helped her keep up with classmates. Last year, Makenzie was named to the National Junior Honor Society. She credits a customized AI-powered chatbot, a word prediction program and other tools that can read for her. 

“I would have just probably given up if I didn’t have them,” she said. 

New tech; countless possibilities

Artificial intelligence holds the promise of helping countless  students with a range of visual, speech, language and hearing impairments to execute tasks that come easily to others. Schools everywhere have been wrestling with how and where to incorporate AI, but many are fast-tracking applications for students with disabilities. 

Getting the latest technology into the hands of students with disabilities is a priority for the U.S. Education Department, which has told schools they must consider whether students need tools like text-to-speech and alternative communication devices. New rules from the Department of Justice also will require schools and other government entities to make apps and online content accessible to those with disabilities. 

There is concern about how to ensure students using it — including those with disabilities — are still learning. 

Students can use artificial intelligence to summarize jumbled thoughts into an outline, summarize complicated passages, or even translate Shakespeare into common English. And computer-generated voices that can read passages for visually impaired and dyslexic students are becoming less robotic and more natural. 

“I’m seeing that a lot of students are kind of exploring on their own, almost feeling like they’ve found a cheat code in a video game,” said Alexis Reid, an educational therapist in the Boston area who works with students with learning disabilities. But in her view, it is far from cheating: “We’re meeting students where they are.” 

Programs fortify classroom lessons 

Ben Snyder, a 14-year-old freshman from Larchmont, New York, who was recently diagnosed with a learning disability, has been increasingly using AI to help with homework. 

“Sometimes in math, my teachers will explain a problem to me, but it just makes absolutely no sense,” he said. “So if I plug that problem into AI, it’ll give me multiple different ways of explaining how to do that.” 

He likes a program called Question AI. Earlier in the day, he asked the program to help him write an outline for a book report — a task he completed in 15 minutes that otherwise would have taken him an hour and a half because of his struggles with writing and organization. But he does think using AI to write the whole report crosses a line. 

“That’s just cheating,” Ben said. 

Schools weigh pros, cons 

Schools have been trying to balance the technology’s benefits against the risk that it will do too much. If a special education plan sets reading growth as a goal, the student needs to improve that skill. AI can’t do it for them, said Mary Lawson, general counsel at the Council of the Great City Schools. 

But the technology can help level the playing field for students with disabilities, said Paul Sanft, director of a Minnesota-based center where families can try out different assistive technology tools and borrow devices. 

“There are definitely going to be people who use some of these tools in nefarious ways. That’s always going to happen,” Sanft said. “But I don’t think that’s the biggest concern with people with disabilities, who are just trying to do something that they couldn’t do before.” 

Another risk is that AI will track students into less rigorous courses of study. And, because it is so good at identifying patterns, AI might be able to figure out a student has a disability. Having that disclosed by AI and not the student or their family could create ethical dilemmas, said Luis Perez, the disability and digital inclusion lead at CAST, formerly the Center for Applied Specialized Technology. 

Schools are using the technology to help students who struggle academically, even if they do not qualify for special education services. In Iowa, a new law requires students deemed not proficient — about a quarter of them — to get an individualized reading plan. As part of that effort, the state’s education department spent $3 million on an AI-driven personalized tutoring program. When students struggle, a digital avatar intervenes. 

Educators anticipate more tools 

The U.S. National Science Foundation is funding AI research and development. One firm is developing tools to help children with speech and language difficulties. Called the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, it is headquartered at the University of Buffalo, which did pioneering work on handwriting recognition that helped the U.S. Postal Service save hundreds of millions of dollars by automating processing. 

“We are able to solve the postal application with very high accuracy. When it comes to children’s handwriting, we fail very badly,” said Venu Govindaraju, the director of the institute. He sees it as an area that needs more work, along with speech-to-text technology, which isn’t as good at understanding children’s voices, particularly if there is a speech impediment. 

Sorting through the sheer number of programs developed by education technology companies can be a time-consuming challenge for schools. Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, said the nonprofit launched an effort this fall to make it easier for districts to vet what they are buying and ensure it is accessible. 

Mother sees potential

Makenzie wishes some of the tools were easier to use. Sometimes a feature will inexplicably be turned off, and she will be without it for a week while the tech team investigates. The challenges can be so cumbersome that some students resist the technology entirely. 

But Makenzie’s mother, Nadine Gilkison, who works as a technology integration supervisor at Franklin Township Community School Corporation in Indiana, said she sees more promise than downside. 

In September, her district rolled out chatbots to help special education students in high school. She said teachers, who sometimes struggled to provide students the help they needed, became emotional when they heard about the program. Until now, students were reliant on someone to help them, unable to move ahead on their own. 

“Now we don’t need to wait anymore,” she said. 
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Abortion has become more common despite bans or deep restrictions in most Republican-controlled states, and the legal and political fights over its future are not over yet.

It’s now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans.

The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Here’s a look at data on where things stand:

Abortions are more common than before Dobbs

Overturning Roe and enforcing abortion bans has changed how woman obtain abortions in the United States.

One thing it hasn’t done is put a dent in the number of abortions being obtained.

There have been slightly more monthly abortions across the country recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling, even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero.

“Abortion bans don’t actually prevent abortions from happening,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at the University of California San Francisco.

For women in some states, there are major obstacles to getting abortions — and advocates say that low-income, minority and immigrant women are least likely to be able to get them when they want.

For those living in states with bans, the ways to access abortion are through travel or abortion pills.

Pills become bigger part of equation — and legal questions

As the bans happened, abortion pills became a bigger part of the equation.

They were involved in about half the abortions before Dobbs. More recently, it’s been closer to two-thirds of them, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute.

The uptick of that kind of abortion, usually involving a combination of two drugs, was underway before the ruling.

But now, it’s become more common for pill prescriptions to be made by telehealth. By the summer of 2024, about 1 in 10 abortions were via pills prescribed via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned.

As a result, the pills are now at the center of battles over abortion access.

This month, Texas sued a New York doctor for prescribing pills to a Texas woman via telemedicine. There’s also an effort by Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to roll back their federal approvals and treat them as “controlled dangerous substances,” and a push for the federal government to start enforcing a 19th-century federal law to ban mailing them.

Travel for abortion has increased

Clinics have closed or halted abortions in states with bans.

A network of efforts to get women seeking abortions to places where they’re legal has strengthened and travel for abortion is now common.

The Guttmacher Institute found that more than twice as many Texas residents obtained abortions in 2023 in New Mexico as New Mexico residents did. And as many Texans received them in Kansas as Kansans.

Abortion funds, which benefitted from “rage giving” in 2022, helped pay the costs for many abortion-seekers. But some funds have had to cap how much they can give.

The ban that took effect in Florida this year has been a game-changer

Florida, the nation’s third most-populous state, began on May 1 enforcing a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy.

That immediately changed the state from one that was a refuge for other Southerners seeking abortions to an exporter of people looking for them.

There were about 30% fewer abortions there in May compared with the average for the first three months of the year. And in June, there were 35% fewer.

While the ban is not unique, the impact is especially large. The average driving time from Florida to a facility in North Carolina where abortion is available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is more than nine hours, according to data maintained by Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economics professor.

Clinics have opened or expanded in some places

The bans have meant clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in some states.

But some states where abortion remains legal until viability – generally considered to be sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy — have seen clinics open and expand.

Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico are among the states with new clinics.

There were 799 publicly identifiable abortion providers in the U.S. in May 2022, the month before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. And by this November, it was 792, according to a tally by Myers, who is collecting data on abortion providers.

Myers said some hospitals that always provided some abortions have begun advertising it. So, they’re now in the count of clinics – even though they might provide few of them.

Lack of access to abortions during emergencies threatens patients’ lives

How hospitals handle pregnancy complications, especially those that threaten the lives of the women, has emerged as a major issue since Roe was overturned.

President Joe Biden’s administration said hospitals must offer abortions when they’re needed to prevent organ loss, hemorrhage or deadly infections, even in states with bans. Texas is challenging the administration’s policy and the U.S. Supreme Court this year declined to take it up after the Biden administration sued Idaho.

More than 100 pregnant women seeking help in emergency rooms were turned away or left unstable since 2022, The Associated Press found in an analysis of federal hospital investigative records.

Among the complaints were a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of Texas emergency room after staff refused to see her and a woman who gave birth in a car after a North Carolina hospital couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official told the AP earlier this year.
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BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — 2024 was a brutal year for the Amazon rainforest, with rampant wildfires and extreme drought ravaging large parts of a biome that’s a critical counterweight to climate change. 

A warming climate fed drought that in turn fed the worst year for fires since 2005. And those fires contributed to deforestation, with authorities suspecting some fires were set to more easily clear land to run cattle. 

The Amazon is twice the size of India and sprawls across eight countries and one territory, storing vast amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm the planet. It has about 20% of the world’s fresh water and astounding biodiversity, including 16,000 known tree species. But governments have historically viewed it as an area to be exploited, with little regard for sustainability or the rights of its Indigenous peoples, and experts say exploitation by individuals and organized crime is rising at alarming rates. 

“The fires and drought experienced in 2024 across the Amazon rainforest could be ominous indicators that we are reaching the long-feared ecological tipping point,” said Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, an organization that works to protect the rainforest. “Humanity’s window of opportunity to reverse this trend is shrinking, but still open.” 

There were some bright spots. The level of Amazonian forest loss fell in both Brazil and Colombia. And nations gathered for the annual United Nations conference on biodiversity agreed to give Indigenous peoples more say in nature conservation decisions. 

“If the Amazon rainforest is to avoid the tipping point, Indigenous people will have been a determinant factor,” Miller said. 

Wildfires and extreme drought 

Forest loss in Brazil’s Amazon — home to the largest swath of this rainforest — dropped 30.6% compared to the previous year, the lowest level of destruction in nine years. The improvement under leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva contrasted with deforestation that hit a 15-year high under Lula’s predecessor, far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who prioritized agribusiness expansion over forest protection and weakened environmental agencies. 

In July, Colombia reported historic lows in deforestation in 2023, driven by a drop in environmental destruction. The country’s environment minister, Susana Muhamad, warned that 2024’s figures may not be as promising because a significant rise in deforestation had already been recorded by July due to dry weather caused by El Nino, a weather phenomenon that warms the central Pacific. Illegal economies continue to drive deforestation in the Andean nation. 

“It’s impossible to overlook the threat posed by organized crime and the economies they control to Amazon conservation,” said Bram Ebus, a consultant for Crisis Group in Latin America. “Illegal gold mining is expanding rapidly, driven by soaring global prices, and the revenues of illicit economies often surpass state budgets allocated to combat them.” 

In Brazil, large swaths of the rainforest were draped in smoke in August from fires raging across the Amazon, Cerrado savannah, Pantanal wetland and the state of Sao Paulo. Fires are traditionally used for deforestation and for managing pastures, and those man-made blazes were largely responsible for igniting the wildfires. 

For a second year, the Amazon River fell to desperate lows, leading some countries to declare a state of emergency and distribute food and water to struggling residents. The situation was most critical in Brazil, where one of the Amazon River’s main tributaries dropped to its lowest level ever recorded. 

Cesar Ipenza, an environmental lawyer who lives in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, said he believes people are becoming increasingly aware of the Amazon’s fundamental role “for the survival of society as a whole.” But, like Miller, he worries about a “point of no return of Amazon destruction.” 

It was the worst year for Amazon fires since 2005, according to nonprofit Rainforest Foundation U.S.  Between January and October, an area larger than the state of Iowa — about 15.1 million hectares of Brazil’s Amazon — burned. Bolivia had a record number of fires in the first 10 months of the year. 

“Forest fires have become a constant, especially in the summer months and require particular attention from the authorities who don’t how to deal with or respond to them,” Ipenza said. 

Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Guyana also saw a surge in fires this year. 

Indigenous voices, rights made headway 

The United Nations conference on biodiversity — this year known as COP16 — was hosted by Colombia. The meetings put the Amazon in the spotlight and a historic agreement was made to give Indigenous groups more of a voice on nature conservation decisions, a development that builds on a growing movement to recognize Indigenous people’s role in protecting land and combating climate change. 

Both Ebus and Miller saw promise in the appointment of Martin von Hildebrand as the new secretary general for the Amazon Treaty Cooperation Organization, announced during COP16. 

“As an expert on Amazon communities, he will need to align governments for joint conservation efforts. If the political will is there, international backers will step forward to finance new strategies to protect the world’s largest tropical rainforest,” Ebus said. 

Ebus said Amazon countries need to cooperate more, whether in law enforcement, deploying joint emergency teams to combat forest fires, or providing health care in remote Amazon borderlands. But they need help from the wider world, he said. 

“The well-being of the Amazon is a shared global responsibility, as consumer demand worldwide fuels the trade in commodities that finance violence and environmental destruction,” he said. 

Next year marks a critical moment for the Amazon, as Belem do Para in northern Brazil hosts the first United Nations COP in the region that will focus on climate. 

“Leaders from Amazon countries have a chance to showcase strategies and demand tangible support,” Ebus said. 
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WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday sided with key supporter and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk in a public dispute over the use of the H-1B visa, saying he fully backs the program for foreign tech workers opposed by some of his supporters. 

Trump’s remarks followed a series of social media posts from Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who vowed late Friday to “go to war” to defend the visa program for foreign tech workers. 

Trump, who moved to limit the visas’ use during his first presidency, told The New York Post on Saturday he was likewise in favor of the visa program. 

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he was quoted as saying.  

Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, and his electric-car company Tesla obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for permanent residency. 

The altercation was set off earlier this week by far-right activists who criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence, saying he would have influence on the Trump administration’s immigration policies. 

Musk’s tweet was directed at Trump’s supporters and immigration hard-liners who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa program to be scrapped amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought into the country on work visas. 

On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante, critiqued “big tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization. 

In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration. 

Trump has promised to deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, deploy tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens, and severely restrict immigration. 

The visa issue highlights how tech leaders such as Musk — who has taken an important role in the presidential transition by advising on key personnel and policy areas — are now drawing scrutiny from his base. 

The U.S. tech industry relies on the government’s H-1B visa program to hire foreign skilled workers to help run its companies, a labor force that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.  

Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected in November. He has posted regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill all the needed positions in American tech companies. 
…

Washington — The United States announced new export restrictions Monday taking aim at China’s ability to make advanced semiconductors — used in weapon systems and artificial intelligence  as competition intensifies between the world’s two biggest economies.

“The United States has taken significant steps to protect our technology from being used by our adversaries in ways that threaten our national security,” said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a statement.

He added that Washington will keep working with allies and partners to “to proactively and aggressively safeguard our world-leading technologies and know-how.”

The latest rules include a restriction of exports to 140 companies, including Chinese chip firms Piotech and SiCarrier Technology.

They also impact Naura Technology Group, which makes chip production equipment, according to the Commerce Department.

“We are constantly talking to our allies and partners as well as reassessing and updating our controls,” added Under Secretary of Commerce for industry and security Alan Estevez.

The latest announcement also includes controls on two dozen types of chipmaking equipment and three kinds of software tools for developing or producing semiconductors.
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Washington — President Joe Biden on Sunday had the AIDS Memorial Quilt spread on the White House South Lawn for the first time in observance of World AIDS Day.

Gathered with the president and his wife, Jill, were survivors, family members and advocates to memorialize the lives lost to the epidemic. The president emphasized the federal government’s support for the 1.2 million people in the United States living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can lead to AIDS.

“This movement is fully woven into the fabric and history of America,” Biden said. “For all the lives lost, for all those that are still alive, look at what you’ve already done to change the hearts and minds, to save lives across the country and around the world. That’s the power of this movement.”

There were 124 sections of the quilt on the lawn to commemorate people who died due to AIDS-related illnesses. Conceived in 1985, the quilt made its first public appearance in 1987. There was also a red ribbon, a symbol of support and awareness for those with HIV and AIDS, draped across the South Portico of the White House.

There are 40 million people around the world with HIV, according to the White House.

Introducing Biden was Jeanne White-Ginder, whose son, Ryan White, contracted AIDS through a tainted blood transfusion at the age of 13 and died in 1990 at the age of 18. She said her son’s experience taught America that “we needed to fight AIDS and not the people who have it.”

The Ryan White CARE Act became law in 1990, and White-Grinder recalled being at the U.S. Capitol to speak for the measure and met Biden when he was a senator from Delaware.

The president also saluted Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, Fauci was in attendance at the event as he worked to treat AIDS, though he’s known by much of the country for his efforts to address the coronavirus pandemic that made him a target of criticism by many Republican lawmakers.

The Biden administration has sought to make investments to stop the epidemic, and the stigmas attached to people with HIV. Among other steps, it has worked to expand access to PrEP, or the pre-exposure prophylaxis, which at-risk populations use to prevent HIV infections.
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The Hague — The top United Nations court will take up the largest case in its history Monday, when it opens two weeks of hearings into what countries worldwide are legally required to do to combat climate change and help vulnerable nations fight its devastating impact.

After years of lobbying by island nations who fear they could simply disappear under rising sea waters, the U.N. General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice last year for an opinion on “the obligations of States in respect of climate change.”

“We want the court to confirm that the conduct that has wrecked the climate is unlawful,” Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, who is leading the legal team for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, told The Associated Press.

In the decade up to 2023, sea levels have risen by a global average of around 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches), with parts of the Pacific rising higher still. The world has also warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times because of the burning of fossil fuels.

Vanuatu is one of a group of small states pushing for international legal intervention in the climate crisis.

“We live on the front lines of climate change impact. We are witnesses to the destruction of our lands, our livelihoods, our culture and our human rights,” Vanuatu’s climate change envoy Ralph Regenvanu told reporters ahead of the hearing.

Any decision by the court would be non-binding advice and unable to directly force wealthy nations into action to help struggling countries. Yet it would be more than just a powerful symbol since it could serve as the basis for other legal actions, including domestic lawsuits.

On Sunday, ahead of the hearing, advocacy groups will bring together environmental organizations from around the world. Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change — who first developed the idea of requesting an advisory opinion — together with World Youth for Climate Justice plan an afternoon of speeches, music and discussions.

From Monday, the Hague-based court will hear from 99 countries and more than a dozen intergovernmental organizations over two weeks. It’s the largest lineup in the institution’s nearly 80-year history.

Last month at the United Nations’ annual climate meeting, countries cobbled together an agreement on how rich countries can support poor countries in the face of climate disasters. Wealthy countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035 but the total is short of the $1.3 trillion that experts, and threatened nations, said is needed.

“For our generation and for the Pacific Islands, the climate crisis is an existential threat. It is a matter of survival, and the world’s biggest economies are not taking this crisis seriously. We need the ICJ to protect the rights of people at the front lines,” Vishal Prasad, of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, told reporters in a briefing.

Fifteen judges from around the world will seek to answer two questions: What are countries obliged to do under international law to protect the climate and environment from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions? And what are the legal consequences for governments where their acts, or lack of action, have significantly harmed the climate and environment?

The second question refers to “small island developing States” likely to be hardest hit by climate change and to “members of “the present and future generations affected by the adverse effects of climate change.”

The judges were even briefed on the science behind rising global temperatures by the U.N.’s climate change body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ahead of the hearings.

The case at the ICJ follows a number of rulings around the world ordering governments to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In May, a U.N. tribunal on maritime law said that carbon emissions qualify as marine pollution, and countries must take steps to adapt to and mitigate their adverse effects.

That ruling came a month after Europe’s highest human rights court said that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change, in a landmark judgment that could have implications across the continent.

The ICJ’s host country of The Netherlands made history when a court ruled in 2015 that protection from the potentially devastating effects of climate change is a human right and that the government has a duty to protect its citizens. The judgment was upheld in 2019 by the Dutch Supreme Court.
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BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA — Countries negotiating a global treaty to curb plastic pollution failed to reach agreement on Monday with over 100 nations wanting to cap production while a handful of oil producers were prepared only to target plastic waste. 

The fifth U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting to yield a legally binding global treaty in Busan, South Korea, was meant to be the final one. 

However, countries remained far apart on the basic scope of a treaty, and could agree only to postpone key decisions to a future meeting. 

“While I saw points of convergence in many areas, positions remain divergent in some others,” said Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the chair of the meeting. 

The most divisive issues included capping plastic production, managing plastic products and chemicals of concern, and financing to help developing countries implement the treaty. 

An option proposed by Panama, backed by over 100 countries, would have created a path for a global plastic production reduction target, while another proposal did not include production caps. 

The fault lines were apparent in a revised document released on Sunday by Valdivieso, which could have formed the basis of a treaty, but remained riddled with options on the most sensitive issues. 

“A treaty that… only relies on voluntary measures would not be acceptable,” said Juliet Kabera, director general of Rwanda’s Environment Management Authority. 

“It is time we take it seriously and negotiate a treaty that is fit for purpose and not built to fail.” 

A small number of petrochemical-producing nations, such as Saudi Arabia, have strongly opposed efforts to reduce plastic production and have tried to use procedural tactics to delay negotiations. 

“There was never any consensus,” said Saudi Arabian delegate Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz. “There are a couple of articles that somehow seem to make it (into the document) despite our continued insistence that they are not within the scope.” 

China, the United States, India, South Korea and Saudi Arabia were the top five primary polymer producing nations in 2023, according to data provider Eunomia. 

Entrenched divisions 

Had such divisions been overcome, the treaty would have been one of the most significant deals relating to environmental protection since the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

The postponement comes just days after the turbulent conclusion of the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. 

At Baku, countries set a new global target for mobilizing $300 billion annually in climate finance, a deal deemed woefully insufficient by small island states and many developing countries. 

The climate talks were also slowed down by procedural maneuvers by Saudi Arabia – which objected to the inclusion of language that reaffirmed a previous commitment to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Some negotiators said a few countries held the proceedings hostage, avoiding compromises needed by using the U.N.’s consensus process. 

Senegal’s National Delegate Cheikh Ndiaye Sylla called it “a big mistake” to exclude voting during the entire negotiations, an agreement made last year during the second round of talks in Paris. 

Plastic production is on track to triple by 2050, and microplastics have been found in air, fresh produce and even human breast milk. 

Chemicals of concern in plastics include more than 3,200 found according to a 2023 U.N. Environment Program report, which said women and children were particularly susceptible to their toxicity. 

Despite the postponement, several negotiators expressed urgency to get back to talks. 

“Every day of delay is a day against humanity. Postponing negotiations does not postpone the crisis,” said Panama’s delegation head, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, on Sunday. 

“When we reconvene, the stakes will be higher.” 

 
…

DAKAR, SENEGAL — Interpol arrested 1,006 suspects in Africa during a massive two-month operation, clamping down on cybercrime that left tens of thousands of victims, including some who were trafficked, and produced millions in financial damages, the global police organization said Tuesday.

Operation Serengeti, a joint operation with Afripol, the African Union’s police agency, ran from September 2 to October 31 in 19 African countries and targeted criminals behind ransomware, business email compromise, digital extortion and online scams, the agency said in a statement.

“From multi-level marketing scams to credit card fraud on an industrial scale, the increasing volume and sophistication of cybercrime attacks is of serious concern,” said Valdecy Urquiza, the Secretary General of Interpol.

Interpol pinpointed 35,000 victims, with cases linked to nearly $193 million in financial losses worldwide, stating that local police authorities and private sector partners, including internet service providers, played a key role in the operation.

Jalel Chelba, Afripol’s executive director, said in the statement: “Through Serengeti, Afripol has significantly enhanced support for law enforcement in African Union Member States.”

Serengeti’s results were a “drastic increase” compared to operations in Africa in previous years, Enrique Hernandez Gonzalez, Interpol’s Assistant Director of Cybercrime Operations, told The Associated Press.

Interpol’s previous cybercrime operations in Africa had only led to 25 arrests in the last two years.

“Significant progress has been made, with participating countries enhancing their ability to work with intelligence and produce meaningful results,” Gonzalez said.

In Kenya, the police made nearly two dozen arrests in an online credit card fraud case linked to losses of $8.6 million. In the West African country of Senegal, officers arrested eight people, including five Chinese nationals, for a $6 million online Ponzi scheme.

Chelba said Afripol’s focus now includes emerging threats like Artificial Intelligence-driven malware and advanced cyberattack techniques.

Other dismantled networks included a group in Cameroon suspected of using a multi-level marketing scam for human trafficking, an international criminal group in Angola running an illegal virtual casino and a cryptocurrency investment scam in Nigeria, the agency said.

Interpol, which has 196 member countries and celebrated its centennial last year, works to help national police forces communicate with each other and track suspects and criminals in fields like counterterrorism, financial crime, child pornography, cybercrime and organized crime.

The world’s biggest — if not best-funded — police organization has been grappling with new challenges including a growing caseload of cybercrime and child sex abuse, and increasing divisions among its member countries.

Interpol had a total budget of about 176 million euros (about $188 million) last year, compared to more than 200 million euros at the European Union’s police agency, Europol, and some $11 billion at the FBI in the United States.
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The way the dinosaurs relinquished their long dominance is well known. An asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, triggering a horrific mass extinction. But the way the dinosaurs — modest creatures initially — came to supremacy is less well understood.

New research that relied heavily on fossilized feces and vomit — evidence of who is eating what and who is eating whom – provides new clarity on how dinosaurs bested the competition during the Triassic Period. The study focused on a region in Poland with extensive fossils from this pivotal time.

First appearing roughly 230 million years ago, dinosaurs were at first overshadowed by other animals including large crocodile relatives — both terrestrial and semi-aquatic — and various plant-eaters including elephant-sized ones related to mammals and four-legged armored reptiles. By about 200 million years ago, dinosaurs reigned, their main competitors extinct.

“We approached the rise of dinosaurs in a completely novel way. We analyzed feeding evidence to deduce the ecological role of dinosaurs across their first 30 million years of evolution,” said paleontologist Martin Qvarnström of Uppsala University in Sweden, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The earliest dinosaurs and close relatives were opportunists, eating foods including bugs, fish and insects. Subsequently, larger and more specialized dinosaur predators evolved along with herbivorous dinosaurs apparently better adapted than competitors to exploit new plants that arose when the climate became more humid.

Feces fossils are called coprolites. Vomit fossils are called regurgitates. Together they are called bromalites. So why study this stuff? By examining undigested food — plants and prey — in bromalites, researchers can discern feeding patterns of various species and reconstruct an ecosystem’s food webs.

Hundreds of bromalites were examined, primarily coprolites.

“We studied over 100 kilograms of fossilized feces,” said study senior author Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, a paleontologist and geologist at Uppsala University and the Polish Geological Institute.

How can researchers tell who left the feces or vomit? Skeletal fossils and footprints showed what animals were present at a given time. And the researchers deduced who produced a given coprolite based on factors including its size and shape, the type of undigested food and the nature of the digestive systems of living relatives of these extinct animals.

Take, for example, the 6-meter four-legged meat-eater Polonosuchus, a type of reptile called a rauisuchian that was related to crocs and was an apex predator alongside the early dinosaurs.

“We know that today’s crocodiles and alligators digest food for a long time and thoroughly. In their feces, undigested bones are very rarely found. Such coprolites — large, sausage-shaped, with highly digested mass — we found in a site where bones of Polonosuchus were also found,” Niedźwiedzki said.

“In contrast, in sites where there were bones and tracks of predatory dinosaurs, we found coprolites containing a lot of undigested remains. Some of them are full of pieces of bones, fish remains, and there are also teeth. You can see that all this passed through the digestive tract quickly and was not digested in the crocodile way,” Niedźwiedzki added.

Early members of the dinosaur evolutionary lineage were omnivorous, like 2-meter Silesaurus.

“The first dinosaur relative in the area, Silesaurus, was an opportunistic little thing that ate bugs, fish and plants. Some of the insects were amazingly well preserved,” Qvarnström said.

Big herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs began appearing late in the Triassic, which ended 201 million years ago.

Environmental changes linked to Earth’s increased volcanic activity precipitated a wider range of plants that ever-larger herbivorous dinosaurs exploited. This proliferation of big plant-eating dinosaurs encouraged the evolution of larger carnivorous dinosaurs.

The large non-dinosaur meat-eaters disappeared before the start of the subsequent Jurassic Period, completing the transition to dinosaur dominion. By 200 million years ago, meat-eating dinosaurs 8 meters long were present, alongside plant-eating dinosaurs 10 meters long.

Smok, a 6-meter strong-jawed carnivorous dinosaur relative, lived about 210 million years ago. Coprolites showed Smok’s predilection for bone-crushing, obtaining nutritious marrow in a feeding trait associated with much later dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus.

The coprolites of herbivorous dinosaurs offered surprises.

“Another interesting and very mysterious discovery was the finding of geochemical signals in the coprolites from burnt plant remains, as well as pieces of charcoal. Did the dinosaurs eat charcoal from burnt plants? Ferns, whose remains are in coprolites, may be toxic, and the charcoal may have neutralized these toxins,” Niedzwiedzki added.
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BILLINGS, MONTANA — U.S. wildlife officials finalized a recovery plan for imperiled populations of Canada lynx on Wednesday and proposed new habitat protections in the southern Rocky Mountains for the forest-dwelling wildcats that are threatened by climate change.

The fate of the proposal is uncertain under President-elect Donald Trump: Officials during the Republican’s first term sought unsuccessfully to strip lynx of protections that they’ve had since 2000 under the Endangered Species Act.

Almost 20,000 square kilometers of forests and mountains in Colorado and northern New Mexico are covered under the habitat proposal. That’s different from a previous plan that left out the southern Rockies and concentrated instead on recovery efforts elsewhere, including Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota and Maine.

“This is a significant change and a good one,” said Matthew Bishop, an attorney for Western Environmental Law Center who has been involved in efforts to protect lynx through court actions. “They weren’t really committing to conserve lynx in Colorado anymore, and now they are.”

Areas of protected habitat also are being added in Idaho and Montana. Protected areas in Wyoming would be sharply reduced under Wednesday’s proposal.

Wildlife officials said they were removing locations where they consider lynx unlikely to thrive in the future, while adding new areas that the latest science suggests are more suitable to their long-term survival.

Lynx are elusive animals that live in cold boreal forests and prey primarily on snowshoe hares.

They originally received federal protections because the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management didn’t have sufficient regulations in place to shield their populations from potential harm. Those protective rules are now in place, but climate change has emerged as a new, worsening threat.

Warmer temperatures are melting away the lynx’s snowy habitat and could decrease the availability of snowshoe hares. Declines for lynx are expected across the contiguous U.S. under even the most optimistic warming scenario that officials have considered.

Most areas suitable for lynx are in Canada and Alaska, where the animals are widespread and hunting and trapping of them is allowed.

Their numbers never were great in the contiguous U.S., which is at the southern fringe of the species range, but the hope is to maintain some population strongholds so they can persist in a warmer world.

The changes announced Wednesday follow a 2016 court ruling that faulted federal wildlife officials for not designating protections for lynx habitat in Colorado and some parts of Montana and Idaho.

There are more than 1,100 lynx in the contiguous U.S., according to estimates from scientists. Those numbers are expected to plummet in some areas, and officials are aiming for a minimum contiguous U.S. population of a combined 875 lynx over a 20-year period.

More than 200 lynx were reintroduced in Colorado beginning in 1999 and at the time their prospects were considered uncertain.

“There were concerns about whether it would stick,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lynx biologist Jim Zelenak. “But they do seem to be hanging on.”

Now that area could become one of the future population strongholds, with the southern Rockies in Colorado and the region around Yellowstone National Park are most likely to have temperatures favorable to lynx for the longest time, he said.

Maine has the most lynx currently but is expected to be hit harder by climate change.

“We’ve got this overarching threat of climate warming, and so we want to do everything we can to minimize the effects that we can control,” Zelenak said. “So we don’t want to put roads in the wrong places. We don’t want to permanently convert very much of the habitat at all in the hopes that we can keep these populations viable coming into a warming future.”

Habitat protections in Maine and Minnesota would remain unchanged under the proposal.

A final decision is expected late next year.
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BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA — France on Sunday accused a handful of countries of obstructing negotiations in South Korea to reach the world’s first treaty to curb plastic pollution.

“We also are worried by the continuing obstruction by the so-called like-minded countries,” Olga Givernet, France’s minister delegate for energy, told reporters, referring to a group of mostly oil-producing nations.

Nearly 200 countries are in the port city of Busan for negotiations on a deal to curb plastic pollution, with only a few hours left on the clock.

“Finding an agreement for us on (an) ambitious treaty that reduces plastic pollution remains an absolute priority for France,” Givernet said. “We are planning on pushing it, pushing it again.”

More than 90% of plastic is not recycled, while plastic production is expected to triple by 2060.

Efforts to reach the landmark agreement have been locked over several key sticking points, particularly reducing production and phasing out chemicals believed or known to harm human health.

More than 100 countries back those measures and insist a treaty without them will fail to solve the pollution crisis.

But around a dozen nations — mostly producers of plastic precursors derived from fossil fuels — are strongly opposed.

“We still have a few hours left in these negotiations, there is time to find common ground, but Rwanda cannot accept a toothless treaty,” said Juliet Kabera, director general of the Rwanda Environment Management Authority.

The latest draft text remains full of opposing views and contradictory language, and a promised new version after long hours of negotiations into Saturday night has not yet been published. 
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BUFFALO, NEW YORK — The first big snowfall of the season blanketed towns along Lake Erie on Saturday in the middle of the hectic holiday travel and shopping weekend. Numbing cold and heavy snow are forecast to persist into next week and cause hazards in the Great Lakes, Plains and Midwest regions. 

The heavy snow led to a state of emergency declaration in parts of New York and a disaster declaration in Pennsylvania, with officials warning of dangerous conditions for Thanksgiving travelers trying to return home. 

“Travel will be extremely difficult and hazardous this weekend, especially in areas where multiple feet of snow may accumulate very quickly,” the National Weather Service said. 

Part of I-90 in Pennsylvania was closed, as were westbound lanes of the New York Thruway heading toward Pennsylvania. Nearly 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow fell in parts of New York, Ohio and Michigan, and 29 inches (73 centimeters) was recorded in Pennsylvania’s northwestern tip. 

With roads in some parts impassable in northwestern Pennsylvania, scores of people took refuge overnight in the lobby and hallways of a fully booked Holiday Inn near I-90. Hotel staffer Jeremiah Weatherley said dozens of people rolled in as the snow piled up, and workers opened the conference room and gave them blankets to sleep on the floor. 

“It was hard to manage, but we had no choice,” he said. “They just showed up, and we don’t want to turn people away.” 

Weatherley was handing out bagels, juice and cereal Saturday morning as people helped one another dig out their cars from the snow. 

“Everyone helped each other,” he said. “It was pretty cool.” 

This week’s blast of Arctic air also brought temperatures of 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit below average to the Northern Plains, the weather service said, prompting cold advisories for parts of North Dakota. 

Frigid air was expected to move over the eastern third of the United States by Monday, with temperatures about 10 degrees below average. 

Parts of Michigan were battered by lake-effect snow, which happens when warm, moist air rising from a body of water mixes with cold dry air overhead. Bands of snow that have been rolling off Lake Superior for the past three days buried parts of the Upper Peninsula under 2 feet (61 centimeters) or more, said Lily Chapman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Marquette, Michigan. 

Twenty-seven inches (69 centimeters) of snow was on the ground just northeast of Ironwood, in the Upper Peninsula’s western reaches, she said. Another 2 feet (61 centimeters) fell in Munising, in the eastern part of the peninsula. 

Chapman said continued lake-effect snow could add more than a foot (30.5 centimeters) over the eastern Upper Peninsula through Monday morning, with 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25 centimeters) or higher to the west. 

Meanwhile steady winds that trained snow bands Friday on Gaylord, Michigan, dumped 24.8 inches (63 centimeters), setting a new single-day record for the city, which sits in a region dotted by ski resorts, said Keith Berger, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Gaylord office. The previous record of 17.0 inches (43 centimeters) was from March 9, 1942. 

The snowfall was good news for Treetops Resort, which features 80 acres (32 hectares) of ski hill terrain among its 2,000 acres (809 hectares), said Doug Hoeh, the resort’s director of recreation. It boosted the base that snowmaking machines will be adding to in the coming days before the resort opens for the season next weekend. 

“Obviously when you get that much snowfall, it’s great for the snow hills, but it’s bad for the parking lots, so we’re kind of digging out,” Hoeh said. “But we’re close to being ready to pull the trigger on skiing, and the natural snowfall definitely helps.” 

In Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro signed a proclamation of disaster emergency and said parts of Erie County in the state’s northwest had already received nearly 2 feet (1 meter) of snow with more expected through Monday night. 

State Police responded to nearly 200 incidents during the 24-hour period from 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday, officials said. 
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BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA — The world’s nations will wrap up negotiating a treaty this weekend to address the global plastic pollution crisis.

Their meeting is scheduled to conclude Sunday or early Monday in Busan, South Korea, where many environmental organizations have flocked to push for a treaty to address the volume of production and toxic chemicals used in plastic products.

Greenpeace said it escalated its pressure Saturday by sending four international activists to Daesan, South Korea, who boarded a tanker headed into port to load chemicals used to make plastics.

Graham Forbes, who leads the Greenpeace delegation in Busan, said the action is meant to remind world leaders they have a clear choice: Deliver a treaty that protects people and the planet, or side with industry and sacrifice the health of every living person and future generations.

Here’s what to know about plastics:

Every year, the world produces more than 400 million tons of new plastic.

The use of plastics has quadrupled over the past 30 years. Plastic is ubiquitous. And every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes, the U.N. said. Most nations agreed to make the first global, legally binding plastic pollution accord, including in the oceans, by the end of 2024.

Plastic production could climb about 70% by 2040 without policy changes.

The production and use of plastics globally is set to reach 736 million tons by 2040, according to the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Panama is leading an effort to address the exponential growth of plastic production as part of the treaty, supported by more than 100 countries. There’s just too much plastic, said Juan Carlos Monterrey, head of Panama’s delegation.

“If we don’t have production in this treaty, it is not only going to be horribly sad, but the treaty may as well be called the greenwashing recycling treaty, not the plastics treaty,” he said in an interview. “Because the problem is not going to be fixed.”

China, the United States and Germany are the biggest plastics players.

China was by far the biggest exporter of plastic products in 2023, followed by Germany and the U.S., according to the Plastics Industry Association.

Together, the three nations account for 33% of the total global plastics trade, the association said.

The United States supports having an article in the treaty that addresses supply, or plastic production, a senior member of the U.S. delegation told The Associated Press Saturday.

Most plastic ends up as waste

Less than 10% of plastics are recycled. Most of the world’s plastic goes to landfills, pollutes the environment or is burned.

Sarah Dunlop, head of plastics and human health at the Minderoo Foundation, said chemicals are leaching out of plastics and “making us sick.”

The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Plastics held an event about the impact of plastics Saturday on the sidelines of the talks. They want the treaty to fully recognize their rights and the universal human right to a healthy, clean, safe and sustainable environment.

Juan Mancias of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation in Texas spoke about feeling a spiritual connection to the land.

“Five hundred years ago, we had clean water, clean air, and there was no plastics,” he said. “What happened?”

Many plastics are used for packaging

About 40% of all plastics are used in packaging, according to the United Nations. This includes single-use plastic food and beverage containers — water bottles, takeout containers, coffee lids, straws and shopping bags — that often end up polluting the environment.

U.N. Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen told negotiators in Busan the treaty must tackle this problem.

“Are there specific plastic items that we can live without, those that so often leak into the environment? Are there alternatives to these items? This is an issue we must agree on,” she said.
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YANQING, CHINA — In a research facility in the northwest of Beijing, molecular biologist Li Jieping and his team harvest a cluster of seven unusually small potatoes, one as tiny as a quail’s egg, from a potted plant.

Grown under conditions that simulate predictions of higher temperatures at the end of the century, the potatoes provide an ominous sign of future food security.

At just 136 grams, the tubers weigh less than half that of a typical potato in China, where the most popular varieties are often twice the size of a baseball.

China is the world’s biggest producer of potatoes, which are crucial to global food security because of their high yield relative to other staple crops.

But they are particularly vulnerable to heat, and climate change, driven by fossil fuel emissions, is pushing temperatures to dangerous new heights while also worsening drought and flooding.

With an urgent need to protect food supplies, Li, a researcher at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Beijing, is leading a three-year study into the effects of higher temperatures on the vegetable. His team is focusing on China’s two most common varieties.

“I worry about what will happen in the future,” Li said. “Farmers will harvest fewer potato tubers, it will influence food security.”

Li’s team grew their crop over three months in a walk-in chamber set at 3 degrees Celsius above the current average temperature in northern Hebei and Inner Mongolia, the higher altitude provinces where potatoes are usually grown in China.

Their research, published in the journal Climate Smart Agriculture this month, found the higher temperatures accelerated tuber growth by 10 days, but cut potato yields by more than half.

Under current climate policies, the world is facing as much as 3.1 C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100, according to a United Nations report released in October.

Farmers in China say they are already feeling the effect of extreme weather events.

In Inner Mongolia, dozens of workers clutching white sacks rush to gather potatoes dug up from the soil before the next downpour.

“The biggest challenge for potatoes this year is the heavy rain,” said manager Wang Shiyi. “It has caused various diseases… and greatly slowed down the harvest progress.”

Meanwhile, seed potato producer Yakeshi Senfeng Potato Industry Company has invested in aeroponic systems where plants are grown in the air under controlled conditions.

Farmers are increasingly demanding potato varieties that are higher-yielding and less susceptible to disease, particularly late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-19th century and thrives in warm and humid conditions.

“Some new and more aggressive (late blight) strains have begun to appear, and they are more resistant to traditional prevention and control methods,” said general manager Li Xuemin, explaining the Inner Mongolia-based company’s strategy.

The research by CIP, which is headquartered in Lima, is part of a collaborative effort with the Chinese government to help farmers adapt to the warmer, wetter conditions.

In the greenhouse outside Li’s lab, workers swab pollen on white potato flowers to develop heat-tolerant varieties.

Li says Chinese farmers will need to make changes within the next decade, planting during spring instead of the start of summer, or moving to even higher altitudes to escape the heat.

“Farmers have to start preparing for climate change,” Li said. “If we don’t find a solution, they will make less money from lower yields and the price of potatoes may rise.” 
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New data released Wednesday from a Chinese government-affiliated research firm showed sales of foreign-branded smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone, fell 44.25% year-on-year in China in October, while overall phone sales in China have increased 1.8%, Reuters reported.

The data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology revealed sales of foreign-branded phones in China decreased to 6.22 million units last month, down from 11.149 million units a year earlier.

The decrease of foreign phone sales comes in the wake of Chinese tech conglomerate Huawei’s rise to the top of the phone market in China.

Huawei was widely popular in China’s smartphone market last year when it released the Mate 60 Pro, a phone with a tiny computer chip more advanced than any other chip previously made by a Chinese company.

Chinese consumers have eagerly embraced Huawei’s smartphones, drawn to the appeal of locally made technology — an option that has swayed many who might have previously chosen iPhones.

On Tuesday, the Chinese phone maker launched the next generation of the Mate 60 Pro, the Mate 70 series. The smartphone was described by Huawei’s consumer group chairman Richard Yu as the “smartest” Mate phone, The New York Times reported.

The Mate 70 series features hardware and software that are the most independent from Western influence to date. Highlights of Huawei’s newest phone include artificial intelligence-enabled functions and improved photography. The phone uses an operating system of HarmonyOS, which allows the smartphones to connect with smart devices.

Huawei’s ability to self-supply the chips required for its hardware and software represents a notable development, following previous U.S. measures to restrict the company’s access to key partners and suppliers.

AI technology relies on advanced semiconductor chips, a critical resource that has received attention amid tensions between Beijing and Washington, as both countries compete to dominate the advanced technology industry.

Apple’s iPhone 16 features AI capabilities, but these features have yet to be implemented in iPhones in China.

Apple, which considers China its second-most important market, has seen its market share decrease substantially. Apple CEO Tim Cook is traveling to China this week for the third time this year to attend an industry conference.
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UNITED NATIONS — The U.N.’s children’s fund raised the alarm on Friday over the high rate of new HIV infections among young women and girls, warning they lacked access to prevention and treatment.

In a report ahead of world AIDS day on Sunday, UNICEF said that 96,000 girls and 41,000 boys aged 15-19 were newly infected with HIV in 2023, meaning seven out of 10 new adolescent infections were among girls.

In sub-Saharan Africa, nine out of 10 new HIV infections among 15- 19-year-olds were among girls in the most recent period for which data is available.

“Children and adolescents are not fully reaping the benefits of scaled up access to treatment and prevention services,” said UNICEF associate director of HIV/AIDS Anurita Bains.

“Yet children living with HIV must be prioritized when it comes to investing resources and efforts to scale up treatment for all, this includes the expansion of innovative testing technologies.”

As many as 77% of adults living with HIV have access to anti-retroviral therapy, but just 57% of children 14 and younger, and 65% of teenagers aged 15-19, can obtain lifesaving medicine.

Children 14 and younger account for only 3% of those living with HIV, but account for 12% — 76,000 — of AIDS-related deaths in 2023.

Around 1.3 million people contracted the disease in 2023, according to a report from the UNAIDS agency.

That is still more than three times higher than needed to reach the U.N.’s goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

Around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses last year, the lowest level since a peak of 2.1 million in 2004, the report said ahead of World AIDS Day on Sunday.

Much of the progress was attributed to antiretroviral treatments that can reduce the amount of the virus in the blood of patients.

Out of the nearly 40 million people living with HIV around the world, some 9.3 million are not receiving treatment, the report warned. 
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Cucumbers shipped to 13 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces have been recalled because of potential salmonella contamination, the Food and Drug Administration said this week.

SunFed Produce, based in Arizona, recalled the cucumbers sold between October 12 and November 26, the FDA said Thursday.

No illnesses were immediately reported. People who bought cucumbers during the window should check with the store where they purchased them to see if the produce is part of the recall. Wash items and surfaces that may have been in contact with the produce using hot, soapy water or a dishwasher.

Salmonella can cause symptoms that begin six hours to six days after ingesting the bacteria and include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. Most people recover without treatment within a week, but young children, people older than 65 and those with weakened immune systems can become seriously ill.

Earlier this summer, a separate salmonella outbreak in cucumbers sickened 450 people in the United States.
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