Category: Silicon Valley
Silicon valley news. Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley
LUSAKA, Zambia — A Zambian court on Friday sentenced 22 Chinese nationals to long prison terms for cybercrimes that included internet fraud and online scams targeting Zambians and other people from Singapore, Peru and the United Arab Emirates.
The Magistrates Court in the capital, Lusaka, sentenced them for terms ranging from seven to 11 years. The court also fined them between $1,500 and $3,000 after they pleaded guilty to charges of computer-related misrepresentation, identity fraud and illegally operating a network or service on Wednesday. A man from Cameroon also was sentenced and fined on the same changes.
They were part of a group of 77 people, the majority of them Zambians, arrested in April over what police described as a “sophisticated internet fraud syndicate.”
Director-general of the drug enforcement commission, Nason Banda, said investigations began after authorities noticed a spike in the number of cyber-related fraud cases and many people complained about inexplicably losing money from their mobile phones or bank accounts.
Officers from the commission, police, the immigration department and the anti-terrorism unit in April swooped on a Chinese-run business in an upmarket suburb of Lusaka, arresting the 77, including those sentenced Friday. Authorities recovered over 13,000 local and foreign mobile phone SIM cards, two firearms and 78 rounds of ammunition during the raid.
The business, named Golden Top Support Services, had employed “unsuspecting” Zambians aged between 20 and 25 to use the SIM cards to engage “in deceptive conversations with unsuspecting mobile users across various platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, chat rooms and others, using scripted dialogues,” Banda said in April after the raid. The locals were freed on bail.
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NEW YORK — The mysterious death of a man in Mexico who had one kind of bird flu is unrelated to outbreaks of a different type at U.S. dairy farms, experts say.
Here’s a look at the case and the different types of bird flu.
What happened in the Mexico bird flu case? A 59-year-old man in Mexico who had been bedridden because of chronic health problems developed a fever, shortness of breath and diarrhea in April. He died a week later, and the World Health Organization this week reported it.
The WHO said it was the first time that version of bird flu — H5N2 — had been seen in a person.
What’s been happening in the U.S. with bird flu? A different version of bird flu — H5N1 — has been infecting poultry flocks over the last several years, leading to millions of birds being culled. It also has been spreading among all different kinds of animals around the world.
This year, that flu was detected in U.S. dairy farms. Dozens of herds have seen infections, most recently in Iowa and Minnesota.
The cow outbreak has been tied to three reported illnesses in farmworkers, one in Texas and two in Michigan. Each had only mild symptoms.
What do the letters and numbers mean in bird flu names? So-called influenza A viruses are the only viruses tied to human flu pandemics, so their appearance in animals and people is a concern. These viruses are divided into subtypes based on what kinds of proteins they have on their surface — hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).
Scientists say there are 18 different “H” subtypes and 11 different “N” subtypes, and they appear in scores of combinations. H1N1 and H3N2 are common causes of seasonal flu among humans. There are many versions seen in animals as well.
H5N1, the version that has worried some U.S. scientists lately, historically has been seen mainly in birds, but has in recent years has spread to a wide variety of mammals.
What is H5N2? H5N2 has long been seen in Mexican poultry, and farms vaccinate against it.
It’s also no stranger to the United States. An H5N2 outbreak hit a flock of 7,000 chickens in south-central Texas in 2004, the first time in two decades a dangerous-to-poultry avian flu appeared in the U.S.
H5N2 also was mainly responsible for a wave outbreaks at U.S. commercial poultry farms in 2014 and 2015.
How dangerous is H5N2? Over the years, H5N2 has teetered between being considered a mild threat to birds and a severe threat, but it hasn’t been considered much of a human threat at all.
A decade ago, researchers used mice and ferrets to study the strain afflicting U.S. poultry at the time, and concluded it was less likely to spread and less lethal than H5N1. Officials also said there was no evidence it was spreading among people.
Rare cases of animal infections are reported each year, so it’s not unexpected that a person was diagnosed with H5N2.
“If you’re a glass half full kind of person, you’d say, ‘This is the system doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: detecting and documenting these rare human infections, where years ago we were stumbling in the dark,'” said Matthew Ferrari, director of Penn State’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.
Indeed, Mexico Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said kidney and respiratory failure — not the virus — actually caused the man’s death.
Some experts said it is noteworthy that it’s not known how he caught the man caught H5N2.
“The fact there was no reported contact (with an infected bird) does raise the possibility that he was infected by someone else who visited him, but it’s premature to jump to those conclusions,” said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
What about other types of bird flu? At this point, H5N2 is still considered a minor threat compared to some of the other kinds of bird flu out there. Most human illnesses have been attributed to H7N9, H5N6 and H5N1 bird flu viruses.
From early 2013 through October 2017, five outbreaks of H7N9 were blamed for killing more than 600 people in China. And at least 18 people in China died during an outbreak of H5N6 in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
H5N1 was first identified in 1959, but didn’t really began to worry health officials until a Hong Kong outbreak in 1997 that involved severe human illnesses and deaths.
H5N1 cases have continued since then, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected animals. Globally, more than 460 human deaths have been identified since 2003, according to WHO statistics that suggest it can kill as many as half of the people reported to be infected.
Like other viruses, H5N1 as evolved over time, spawning newer versions of itself. In the last few years, the predominant version of the virus has spread quickly among a wide range of animals, but counts of human fatalities have slowed.
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Zimbabwe is facing long hours of power cuts due to its dilapidated infrastructure and the impact of recurring droughts on hydropower. To help, the United Nations Development Program is installing solar panels on government-owned health facilities. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Bulawayo.
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Boca Chica, Texas — SpaceX’s mega Starship rocket completed its first full test flight Thursday, returning to Earth without exploding after blasting off from Texas.
The previous three test flights ended in explosions of the rocket and the spacecraft. This time, both managed to splash down in a controlled fashion.
The world’s largest and most powerful rocket — almost 121 meters tall — was empty as it soared above the Gulf of Mexico and headed east on a flight to the Indian Ocean.
Minutes after Thursday morning’s liftoff, the first-stage booster separated from the spacecraft and splashed into the gulf precisely as planned, after firing its engines.
An hour later, live views showed parts of the spacecraft breaking away during the intense heat of reentry, but it remained intact enough to transmit data all the way to its targeted splashdown site in the Indian Ocean.
“And we have splashdown!” SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice announced from Mission Control at company headquarters in California.
It was a critical milestone in the company’s plan to eventually return Starship’s Super Heavy booster to its launch site for reuse.
SpaceX came close to avoiding explosion in March, but lost contact with the spacecraft as it careened out of space and blew up short of its goal. The booster also ruptured in flight, a quarter-mile above the gulf.
Last year’s two test flights ended in explosions shortly after blasting off from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. The first one cratered the pad at Boca Chica Beach and hurled debris for thousands of feet (meters).
SpaceX upgraded the software and made some rocket-flyback changes to improve the odds. The Federal Aviation Administration signed off Tuesday on this fourth demo, saying all safety requirements had been met.
Starship is designed to be fully reusable. That’s why SpaceX wants to control the booster’s entry into the gulf and the spacecraft’s descent into the Indian Ocean — it’s intended as practice for planned future landings. Nothing is being recovered from Thursday’s flight.
NASA has ordered a pair of Starships for two moon-landing missions by astronauts, on tap for later this decade. Each moon crew will rely on NASA’s own rocket and capsule to leave Earth, but meet up with Starship in lunar orbit for the ride down to the surface.
SpaceX already is selling tourist trips around the moon. The first private lunar customer, a Japanese tycoon, pulled out of the trip with his entourage last week, citing the oft-delayed schedule.
SpaceX’s founder and CEO has grander plans: Musk envisions fleets of Starships launching people and the infrastructure necessary to build a city on Mars.
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BRUSSELS/GENEVA — Each of the past 12 months ranked as the warmest on record in year-on-year comparisons, the EU’s climate change monitoring service said on Wednesday, as U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to avert “climate hell.”
The average global temperature for the 12-month period to the end of May was 1.63 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average – making it the warmest such period since record-keeping began in 1940, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said.
This 12-month average does not mean that the world has yet surpassed the 1.5 degrees C global warming threshold, which describes a temperature average over decades, beyond which scientists warn of more extreme and irreversible impacts.
In a separate report, the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said there is now an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will mark the first calendar year with an average temperature that temporarily exceeds 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels — up from a 66% chance last year.
Speaking about the findings, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized how quickly the world was heading in the wrong direction and away from stabilizing its climate system.
“In 2015, the chance of such a breach was near zero,” Guterres said in a speech marking World Environment Day.
With time running out to reverse course, Guterres urged a 30% cut in global fossil fuel production and use by 2030.
“We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell,” he said, adding: “The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s.”
‘Way off track’
Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels – the main cause of climate change – hit a record high last year despite global agreements designed to curb their release and a rapid expansion in renewable energy.
Coal, oil and gas still provide more than three quarters of the world’s energy, with global oil demand remaining strong.
The latest climate data show that the world is “way off track” from its goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C – the key target of the world’s 2015 Paris Accord, WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said.
“We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price in terms of trillions of dollars in economic costs, millions of lives affected by more extreme weather, and extensive damage to the environment and biodiversity,” Barrett said.
Barrett described the cooling effect of La Nina weather conditions, which are expected to take hold later this year, as “a mere blip in the upward curve” in the heat felt across the globe.
“We all need to know that we need to reverse this curve and we need to do it urgently,” she said.
While last year registered as the warmest calendar year on record at 1.45 degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures, at least one of the next five years is likely to be even warmer than 2023, the WMO data show.
Scientists at Copernicus said there were some surprising developments – such as the steep loss of Antarctic sea ice in recent months – but that the overall climate data were in line with projections of how rising greenhouse gas emissions would heat the planet.
“We have not seen anything like this in the last several thousand years,” said Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo.
Guterres took aim at fossil fuel companies.
“The godfathers of climate chaos – the fossil fuel industry – rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies,” he said.
Drawing a comparison with many governments’ restrictions on advertising for harmful substances like tobacco, he said, “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies, and I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”
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Many Israeli and Palestinian children are suffering from trauma because of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing eight months of war between the two sides. Therapists in both communities say the emotional scars could linger for years. Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem.
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Geneva — The World Health Organization said Wednesday a person in Mexico had died in the first confirmed human case globally of infection with the H5N2 variant of bird flu.
The patient, who died on April 24 after developing fever, shortness of breath, diarrhea and nausea, had “no history of exposure to poultry or other animals” and “multiple underlying medical conditions,” the WHO said.
Mexican health authorities reported the confirmed case of human infection with the virus to the U.N. health body on May 23, after a 59-year-old was taken to a hospital in Mexico City.
The WHO said the case was the “first laboratory-confirmed human case of infection with an influenza A(H5N2) virus reported globally”.
The source of exposure to the virus was unknown, the WHO said, although cases of H5N2 have been reported in poultry in the country.
According to the U.N. health body, H5N2 cases affected poultry in the state of Michoacan in March, with other outbreaks identified in the state of Mexico.
But it said establishing a link between the human case and the poultry infections was so far impossible, estimating the risk to people as “low.”
A different variant of bird flu, H5N1, has been spreading for weeks among dairy cow herds in the United States, with a small number of cases reported among humans.
But none of the cases are human-to-human infections, with the disease instead jumping from cattle to people, authorities have said.
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NEW YORK — The U.N. secretary-general said Wednesday that the world is “at a moment of truth” to reach targets in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming, as the planet has just experienced the 12 hottest consecutive months on record.
“The truth is, almost ten years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the target of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is hanging by a thread,” Antonio Guterres told an audience at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, where exhibits about extinct dinosaurs offered their own planetary warning.
“The World Meteorological Organization reports today that there is an 80% chance the global annual average temperature will exceed the 1.5-degree limit in at least one of the next five years,” he said.
“We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” he warned in a special climate speech under the museum’s famous blue whale, marking World Environment Day.
The U.N. chief said the richest 1% of countries are emitting as much pollution as two-thirds of all humanity.
He said the planet is emitting around 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually and will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” of around 200 billion tons well before 2030. Guterres also said global emissions need to fall 9% each year between now and 2030 in order to keep the 1.5 degree Celsius limit alive. Last year, they rose by 1%.
The bill for the climate crisis will keep growing without meaningful action.
“Even if emissions hit zero tomorrow, a recent study found that climate chaos will still cost at least $38 trillion a year by 2050,” Guterres said.
Fossil fuels
The climate crisis has been a signature issue of Guterres’ tenure since becoming the world’s top diplomat seven-and-a-half years ago. He has repeatedly called for the phasing out of coal and other fossil fuels in favor of cleaner renewable energies like wind and solar power — which already produce nearly a third of the world’s electricity.
He raised the ante Wednesday, urging banks to stop financing oil, coal and gas and invest in renewables instead. He called on countries to ban advertising from fossil fuel producers and said news and technology platforms should stop taking their advertising.
“I call on leaders in the fossil fuel industry to understand that if you are not in the fast lane to clean energy transformation, you are driving your business into a dead end — and taking us all with you,” the U.N. chief said, adding that the oil and gas industry invested only 2.5% of its total spending on clean energy in the last year.
He urged public relations companies and lobbyists to stop enabling the industry’s “planetary destruction” and drop those clients.
“Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action — with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns,” he said.
Leveling the field
The secretary-general reiterated his stance that those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis are suffering the most — mainly poorer nations in Africa and small island states. The G20 major economies produce 80% of the world’s emissions.
“It is a disgrace that the most vulnerable are being left stranded, struggling desperately to deal with a climate crisis they did nothing to create,” he said.
Guterres warned that the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees could mean survival or extinction for some small island nations and coastal communities.
“1.5 degrees is not a target. It is not a goal. It is a physical limit,” he said.
Global warming is already hurting the planet’s oceans, their coral reefs and marine ecosystems, and melting sea ice. Across the globe, severe floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and other climate-related catastrophes are becoming all too frequent.
The secretary-general said there must be more financing and technical support from richer countries to mitigate climate impacts and invest in renewables for lower income states. He also said a global early warning system must be in place by 2027, to protect everyone on Earth from hazardous weather, water or climate events.
He urged citizens to continue to make their voices heard and said it is time for leaders to decide whose side they are on.
“Now is the time to mobilize; now is the time to act; now is the time to deliver,” he said to a standing ovation. “This is our moment of truth.”
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washington — Federal health advisers voted Tuesday against a first-of-a-kind proposal to begin using the mind-altering drug MDMA as a treatment for PTSD, handing a potentially major setback to advocates who had hoped to win a landmark federal approval and bring the banned drugs into the medical mainstream.
The panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration sided 10-1 against the overall benefits of MDMA when used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. They cited flawed study data, questionable research conduct and significant drug risks, including the potential for heart problems, injury and abuse.
“It seems like there are so many problems with the data — each one alone might be OK, but when you pile them on top of each other … there’s just a lot of questions I would have about how effective the treatment is,” said Dr. Melissa Decker Barone, a psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The FDA is not required to follow the group’s advice and is expected to make its final decision by August, but the negative opinion could strengthen FDA’s rationale for rejecting the treatment.
The vote followed hours of pointed questions and criticisms about the research submitted on MDMA — sometimes called ecstasy or molly. Panelists pointed to flawed studies that could have skewed the results, missing follow-up data on patient outcomes, and a lack of diversity among participants. The vast majority of patients studied were white, with only five Black patients receiving MDMA, raising questions about the generalizability of the results.
“The fact that this study has so many white participants is problematic because I don’t want something to roll out that only helps this one group,” said Elizabeth Joniak-Grant, the group’s patient representative.
The FDA advisers also drew attention to allegations of misconduct in the trials that have recently surfaced in news stories and a report by the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which evaluates experimental drug treatments. The incidents include a 2018 report of apparent sexual misconduct by a therapist interacting with a patient.
Lykos Therapeutics, the company behind the study, said it previously reported the incident to the FDA and regulators in Canada, where the therapist is based. Lykos is essentially a corporate spinoff of the nation’s leading psychedelic advocacy group, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, which funded the studies. The group was founded in 1986 to promote the benefits of MDMA and other mind-altering substances.
MDMA is the first in a series of psychedelics — including LSD and psilocybin — that are expected to come before the FDA in the next few years. The panel’s negative ruling could further derail financial investments in the fledgling industry, which has mainly been funded by a small number of wealthy backers.
MDMA’s main effect is triggering feelings of intimacy, connection and euphoria. When used to enhance talk therapy, the drug appears to help patients process their trauma and let go of disturbing thoughts and memories.
But the panel struggled with the reliability of those results, given the difficulties of objectively testing psychedelic drugs.
Because MDMA causes intense, psychological experiences, almost all patients in two key studies of the drug were able to guess whether they had received the MDMA or a dummy pill. That’s the opposite of the approach generally required for high-quality drug research, in which bias is minimized by “blinding” patients and researchers to whether they received the drug under investigation.
“I’m not convinced at all that this drug is effective based on the data I saw,” said Dr. Rajesh Narendran, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who chaired the panel.
Panelists also noted the difficulty of knowing how much of patients’ improvement came from MDMA versus simply undergoing the extensive therapy, which totaled more than 80 hours for many patients. Results were further marred by other complicating factors, including a large number of patients who had previously used MDMA or other psychedelics drugs recreationally.
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