Category: Silicon Valley

tokyo — Japan’s spacecraft arrived on the surface of the moon early Saturday, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the landing was a success, because the Japanese space agency said it was still “checking its status.”

More details about the spacecraft, which is carrying no astronauts, would be given at a news conference, officials said. If the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed successfully, Japan would become the fifth country to accomplish the feat after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

SLIM came down onto the lunar surface at around 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time Saturday (1520 GMT Friday).

As the spacecraft descended, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s mission control said that everything was going as planned and later said that SLIM was on the lunar surface. But there was no mention of whether the landing was successful.

Mission control kept repeating that it was “checking its status” and that more information would be given at a news conference. It wasn’t immediately clear when the news conference would start.

SLIM, nicknamed “the Moon Sniper,” started its descent at midnight Saturday, and within 15 minutes it was down to about 10 kilometers (six miles) above the lunar surface, according to the space agency, which is known as JAXA.

At an altitude of five kilometers (three miles), the lander was in a vertical descent mode, then at 50 meters (165 feet) above the surface, SLIM was supposed to make a parallel movement to find a safe landing spot, JAXA said.

About a half-hour after its presumed landing, JAXA said that it was still checking the status of the lander.

SLIM, which was aiming to hit a very small target, is a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle. It was using “pinpoint landing” technology that promises far greater control than any previous moon landing.

While most previous probes have used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM was aiming at a target of just 100 meters (330 feet).

The project was the fruit of two decades of work on precision technology by JAXA.

The mission’s main goal is to test new landing technology that would allow moon missions to land “where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land,” JAXA has said. If the landing was a success, the spacecraft will seek clues about the origin of the moon, including analyzing minerals with a special camera.

The SLIM, equipped with a pad to cushion impact, was aiming to land near the Shioli crater, near a region covered in volcanic rock.

The closely watched mission came only 10 days after a moon mission by a U.S. private company failed when the spacecraft developed a fuel leak hours after the launch.

SLIM was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September. It initially orbited Earth and entered lunar orbit on Dec. 25.

Japan hopes a success will help regain confidence for its space technology after a number of failures. A spacecraft designed by a Japanese company crashed during a lunar landing attempt in April, and a new flagship rocket failed its debut launch in March.

JAXA has a track record with difficult landings. Its Hayabusa2 spacecraft, launched in 2014, touched down twice on the 900-meter-long (3,000-foot-long) asteroid Ryugu, collecting samples that were returned to Earth.

Experts say a success of SLIM’s pinpoint landing, especially on the moon, would raise Japan’s profile in the global space technology race.

Takeshi Tsuchiya, aeronautics professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, said it was important to confirm the accuracy of landing on a targeted area for the future of moon explorations.

“It is necessary to show the world that Japan has the appropriate technology in order to be able to properly assert Japan’s position in lunar development,” he said. The moon is important from the perspective of explorations of resources, and it can also be used as a base to go to other planets, like Mars, he said.

SLIM is carrying two small autonomous probes — lunar excursion vehicles LEV-1 and LEV-2, which were due to be released just before landing.

LEV-1, equipped with an antenna and a camera, is tasked with recording SLIM’s landing. LEV-2, is a ball-shaped rover equipped with two cameras, developed by JAXA together with Sony, toymaker Tomy and Doshisha University.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Turkey’s first astronaut and three other crew members representing Europe were launched from Florida on Thursday on a voyage to the International Space Station in the latest commercially arranged mission from Texas startup Axiom Space. 

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom quartet lifted off about an hour before sunset from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, beginning a planned 36-hour flight to the orbiting laboratory. 

The launch was shown live on an Axiom webcast. 

The autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the space station early Saturday morning and dock with the orbiting outpost 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. 

The mission was the third such flight organized by Houston-based Axiom over the past two years as the company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by foreign governments and private enterprise into Earth’s orbit. 

The company charges its customers at least $55 million for each astronaut seat. 

Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the launch was postponed for 24 hours to allow more time for final inspections and data analysis, including for an issue related to the parachute system used to slow the capsule’s return descent before splashdown, Axiom and SpaceX said. 

Plans for the Axiom-3 mission call for the crew to spend roughly 14 days aboard the station conducting more than 30 scientific experiments, most of them focused on the effects of spaceflight on human health and disease. 

More symbolically, the mission reflects the growing number of nations venturing to Earth’s orbit as a way of enhancing global prestige, military prowess and satellite-based communications. 

Turkey, a longtime applicant for EU membership, was poised to enter the exclusive-but-expanding club of space station guest countries by sending Alper Gezeravcı, 44, a Turkish air force veteran, on his nation’s debut human spaceflight as an Ax-3 mission specialist. 

He was being joined by Italian Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei, 49, Ax-3’s designated pilot; Swedish aviator Marcus Wandt, 43, another mission specialist; and retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 65, a dual citizen of Spain and the United States, acting as mission commander. Lopez-Alegria, an Axiom executive, also commanded the company’s first mission to the space station in April 2022. 

Axiom billed the flight as “the first all-European commercial astronaut mission” to the space station. 

In May 2023, Axiom-2 launched a team of two Americans and two Saudis, including Rayyanah Barnawi, a biomedical scientist who became the first Arab woman ever sent to orbit, on an eight-day mission to the space station. 

SpaceX, the privately funded rocket and satellite company of billionaire Elon Musk, provides Axiom’s launch vehicles and crew capsules under contract, as it has for NASA missions to the space station. SpaceX also runs mission control for its rocket launches from the company’s headquarters near Los Angeles. 

NASA, besides furnishing the launch site at Cape Canaveral, assumes responsibility for the astronauts once they rendezvous with the space station. 

Axiom, an eight-year-old venture headed by NASA’s former space station program manager, is one of a handful of companies building a commercial space station that’s intended to eventually replace the international facility, which NASA expects to retire around 2030. 

Launched to orbit in 1998, the International Space Station has been continuously occupied since 2000 under a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan and 11 countries that belong to the European Space Agency.
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The American Red Cross has declared a critical blood shortage, with supplies running the lowest in 20 years. The number of donors in the country has declined by 40%, for reasons that include COVID, seasonal infections, and bad weather. Angelina Bagdasaryan visited a blood donation station in Los Angeles and talked with some of the donors. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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Capitol Hill — U.S. lawmakers renewed calls Wednesday to pass bipartisan legislation that would restrict American investment in Chinese technology.

“It should come as no surprise that China’s military and surveillance state are exploiting loopholes in U.S. policy to access billions of U.S. investment dollars and expertise. We know that U.S. investment has not democratized China and countries which are controlled by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] have no power over the applications of their technology. The CCP can direct it to us for military or surveillance purposes,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said at a hearing on the legislation Wednesday. 

The bill – which has support from both conservative organizations and the Biden administration – was not included in the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA passed late last year. Republican Senator John Cornyn has sponsored companion legislation in the U.S. Senate that passed with more than ninety votes. 

Lawmakers hope it can still be passed individually and signed into law.  

If passed, McCaul said the measure, H.R. 6349, would target “specific technology sectors, like AI [artificial intelligence] and quantum computing, that are empowering China’s military development and surveillance.” 

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said an executive order issued by the Biden administration last August “that calls for provisions and notification requirements of specific types of American investments in China, or in certain companies that develop or produce semiconductors, quantum computers, and artificial intelligence applications” is an important first step. 

But experts in U.S.-China relations told a House panel more could be done. 

“Congress has an opportunity to build on the initial steps taken by the Trump and Biden administrations to prevent U.S. capital from fueling China’s military and intelligence capabilities. First, Washington should take a sectoral rather than merely an entity-based approach. The Treasury Department has demonstrated since at least 2021 that it is disinterested in using even its existing narrow authorities to limit investment in Chinese military-linked companies. And in fairness to the Treasury Department tackling the problem on a company-by-company basis would be a resource-intensive and gargantuan task,” Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser during the Trump administration, said Wednesday. 

“We still haven’t learned that they will do everything they can to take anything we sell, particularly in the area of electronics and really high tech, and use it for the military. They’ve been doing that for decades. We don’t learn. We think somehow if you trade more, they’ll matriculate from dictatorship to democracy,” Republican Rep. Chris Smith said Wednesday.

The bipartisan push in the U.S. House comes as Senate negotiators continue work on the White House’s $106 billion national security supplemental request that includes funding to combat Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. Citing a border security crisis, Senate Republicans have sought changes to U.S. immigration law in return for their votes to pass more than $50 billion in assistance to Ukraine that is also part of the Biden administration’s request. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged lawmakers Wednesday to reach an agreement soon. 

“It’s become quite fashionable in Washington to talk about how we’re not taking competition with China seriously enough,” McConnell said. “Winning this competition means credibly deterring Beijing’s worst impulses, which, for us, means investing in American strength. Outcompeting the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will require greater investments in our military capabilities and in our industrial capacity to produce them. The West cannot be caught unprepared for this challenge. We cannot afford to neglect the lessons of history.” 
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Harare, Zimbabwe — The U.N.’s Children’s Fund expressed alarm this week about a cholera outbreak in Africa that has spread to at least 10 countries, with the situation in Zambia and Zimbabwe “very serious.”

Dr. Paul Ngwakum, the regional health adviser for UNICEF in East and Southern Africa, said about 200,000 cases have been reported and more than 3,000 lives taken by the disease.

Of the 10 countries he named as having an active outbreak, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Somalia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are in “acute cholera crisis.”

“The key drivers are long-term poor water sanitation and hygiene conditions, exacerbated by changing weather patterns, climate change leading to floods and droughts, end-of-year festivities, inadequate community sensitization [and] late care-seeking behavior for those that are affected,” Ngwakum said.

“Children, unfortunately, carry the lion’s share of the affected,” he said. “For example, over 52% of the cases in Zambia are children less than 15 years old.”

Ngwakum said Zambia and Zimbabwe are experiencing a rapid rise in the number of cases since the Christmas and New Year holidays, with 1,000 cholera cases reported a week in each of the neighboring countries.

“The situation in Zambia and Zimbabwe is very serious,” he said. “These two countries are the most affected in the region. In Zambia, nine out of 10 provinces are reporting cases.”

The disease’s fatality rate is alarmingly high, Ngwakum said, with 4% of the more than 9,000 cases ending in death.

“This is extremely high because the acceptable threshold is below 1%,” he said. “Since the beginning of 2024 alone, Zimbabwe has recorded over 17,000 cases, with about 384 deaths. … And these continue to spread geographically.”

In Zimbabwe, a shortage of purified water is forcing residents to depend on open sources. That, along with uncollected refuse and running sewage, are being blamed for the waterborne disease.

Douglas Mombeshora, Zimbabwe’s health minister, said the central government is doing all it can to contain the outbreak, starting in the capital, Harare.

“If you move around … Harare, people are just dumping garbage in undesignated areas, and this has not been collected,” Mombeshora said. “So government has mobilized resources so that we clean up Harare. And government is moving in to mobilize resources to procure water-treating chemicals. Supply of potable water has dropped from 350 megaliters to 200 megaliters per day.”

Itai Rusike, executive director of the Community Working Group on Health in Zimbabwe, called on the government to declare a national disaster so that international aid agencies such as WHO, UNICEF and USAID can swiftly help to contain the cholera outbreak.

“All the measures to end cholera are in the purview of the government — central government or local government — by providing safe water, safe sanitation and also hygienic safe disposal,” Rusike said. “So the buck stops with the government in making sure that people are provided with uninterrupted potable water, refuse is collected on time, burst sewer pipes are fixed [promptly] and the general public are given information about cholera guidelines and protocols.”

UNICEF fears that if the outbreaks are not controlled, it will mean schools closing — as is already the case in Zambia.
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sydney — The Australian government is considering new laws to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in “high-risk” areas such as law enforcement and self-driving vehicles.

Voluntary measures also are being explored, such as asking companies to label AI-generated content.

The country has outlined its plan to respond to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, or AI.

Under the Canberra government’s plan announced Wednesday, safeguards would be applied to technologies that predict the chances of someone again committing a crime, or that analyze job applications to find a well-matched candidate.

Australian officials have said that new laws could also mandate that organizations using high-risk AI must ensure a person is responsible for the safe use of the technology.

The Canberra government also wants to minimize restrictions on low-risk areas of AI to allow their growth to continue.

An expert advisory committee will be set up to help the government to prepare legislation.

Ed Husic is Australia’s federal minister for industry and science. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. On Wednesday that he wants AI-generated content to be labeled so it can’t be mistaken as genuine.

“We need to have confidence that what we are seeing we know exactly if it is organic or real content, or if it has been created by an AI system.  And, so, industry is just as keen to work with government on how to create that type of labeling,” he said. “More than anything else, I am not worried about the robots taking over, I’m worried about disinformation doing that. We need to ensure that when people are creating content that it is clear that AI has had a role or a hand to play in that.”

Kate Pounder, the head of the Tech Council of Australia, which represents the technology sector, told local media that the government’s AI proposals strike a sensible balance between fostering innovation and ensuring systems are developed safely.

The Australian Parliament defines artificial intelligence as “an engineered system that generates predictive outputs such as content, forecasts, recommendations…without explicit programming.”

Recent research shows that most Australians still distrust the technology, which they see as unsafe and prone to errors.

 
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nairobi, kenya — Kenya has embarked on its biggest rhino relocation project and began the difficult work Tuesday of tracking, darting and moving 21 of the critically endangered beasts, which can each weigh over a ton, to a new home.

A previous attempt at moving rhinos in the East African nation was a disaster in 2018, as all 11 of the animals died.

The latest project experienced early troubles. A rhino targeted for moving was successfully hit with a tranquilizer dart shot from a helicopter but ended up in a creek. Veterinarians and rangers held the rhino’s head above water with a rope to save it while a tranquilizer reversal drug took effect, and the rhino was released.

Wildlife officials have stressed that the challenging project will take time, likely weeks.

The black rhinos are a mix of males and females and are being moved from three conservation parks to the private Loisaba Conservancy in central Kenya, the Kenya Wildlife Service said. They are being moved because there are too many in the three parks, and they need more space to roam and hopefully, to breed.

Rhinos are generally solitary animals and are at their happiest in large territories.

Kenya has had relative success in reviving its black rhino population, which dipped below 300 in the mid-1980s because of poaching, raising fears that the animals might be wiped out in a country famous for its wildlife.

Kenya now has nearly 1,000 black rhinos, according to the wildlife service. That’s the third biggest black rhino population in the world behind South Africa and Namibia.

There are just 6,487 wild rhinos left in the world, according to rhino conservation charity Save the Rhino, all of them in Africa.

Kenyan authorities say they have relocated more than 150 rhinos in the last decade.

Six years ago, Kenya relocated 11 rhinos from the capital, Nairobi, to another sanctuary in the south of the country. All died soon after arriving at the sanctuary. Ten of them died from stress, dehydration and starvation intensified by salt poisoning as they struggled to adjust to saltier water in their new home, investigations found. The other rhino was attacked by a lion.

Some of the 21 rhinos in the latest relocation are being transferred from Nairobi National Park and will make a 300-kilometer (186-mile) trip in the back of a truck to Loisaba. Others will come from parks closer to Loisaba.

The moving of the rhinos to Loisaba is poignant, given the region was once home to a healthy black rhino population before they were wiped out in that area 50 years ago, said Loisaba Conservancy CEO Tom Silvester.

Kenyan wildlife authorities say the country is aiming to grow its black rhino population to about 2,000, which they believe would be the ideal number considering the space available for them in national and private parks.
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geneva — While new data show that smoking globally is on the decline, the World Health Organization warns that this good news is being undercut by an alarming rise in the use of e-cigarette and vaping devices, especially among children.

“It is an alarming increase in the last four to five years. That is why we are ringing the alarm bell here,” said Ruediger Krech, director of health promotion at WHO.

“In a couple of countries, we see huge increases in the use of e-cigarettes and vaping devices. We see a 150% increase in the U.K. and in the U.S. We also see an uptick in double-digit numbers of vaping among children,” he said.

Krech accuses the tobacco industry of employing devious tactics to get a future generation of young people hooked on tobacco by introducing them to novel products “where they actually try to get our children as young as 8 years old to use e-cigarettes or vapers.”

“If you know that your actions will cause death … I personally believe that this is criminal,” he said.

Tobacco control measures effective

National surveys show that children ages 13-15 in most countries are accessing and using tobacco and other nicotine products. WHO estimates that at least 37 million children ages 13-15 currently are using some form of tobacco, and “many countries have found alarming levels of e-cigarette use among adolescents, as well.”

This trend is gaining pace at a time when new information indicates that years of tobacco control measures are paying off. According to WHO, 1.25 billion adults globally use tobacco.

The latest estimates in WHO’s global report on trends in prevalence of tobacco use 2000-2030, issued Tuesday, find a continued decline in tobacco use rates around the world. The data show about one in five adults worldwide in 2022 consumed tobacco compared to one in three in 2000.

“In just the last two years, we already see a drop of around 19 million tobacco users in the world,” said Krech. “This is despite the continuing growth of the world’s population, which added approximately 149 million adults over the same period.

“In total, 150 countries are now on a downward trend in tobacco use, with 56 among them already tracking towards the global target of a 30% reduction by 2025,” he said.

Tobacco industry targets Africa

WHO reports the highest prevalence of tobacco users are in the Southeast Asian region at 26.5%, with the European region not far behind at 25.3%. It notes that rates among women in the European region are more than double the global average for women.

Currently, the report finds that the fastest decreases in tobacco use are happening in the lower middle-income group of countries, with the lowest prevalence in the African region, where smoking has decreased from around 18% in 2000 to under 10% in 2022.

“We are seeing the tobacco industry targeting Africa the most because it has the lowest prevalence, and they are trying to increase their growth. So, they are trying to interfere with governments and policies,” Krech said.

“Also, Africa is a very young continent, so once they recruit their victims,” Krech said, “they know that they might have a presence there for a very long time.”

WHO is urging countries to fight tobacco industry interference by implementing tobacco control policies, including taxing tobacco, banning tobacco advertisements, and regulating sales.

Krech said it was critically important for countries that have not banned e-cigarettes to enact strong regulatory measures to ensure that children have no access to e-cigarettes.

He warned that the tobacco industry was making the use of e-cigarettes very attractive to get young people hooked on nicotine, a highly addictive product.

“There are thousands of e-flavored cigarettes on the market, including vanilla ice cream and gummy bears, which are very attractive to children,” he said. “We strongly recommend that all flavors be banned.”

WHO says tobacco smoking is the leading cause of preventable death and disease worldwide. It says tobacco causes about 8 million premature deaths a year and that smoking also can cause cancer, heart diseases, stroke, lung diseases and diabetes.
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An automated restaurant is opening this month in Pasadena, California. CaliExpress will be serviced by robots that make food in the kitchen and AI that takes clients’ orders. The only job humans will still need to do is assemble and pack the food. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian
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NEW YORK — Sixty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general released a report that settled a longstanding public debate about the dangers of cigarettes and led to huge changes in smoking in America.  

Today, some public health experts say a similar report could help clear the air about vaping.  

Many U.S. adults believe nicotine vaping is as harmful as — or more dangerous than — cigarette smoking. That’s wrong. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and most scientists agree that, based on available evidence, electronic cigarettes are far less dangerous than traditional cigarettes.  

But that doesn’t mean e-cigarettes are harmless either. And public health experts disagree about exactly how harmful, or helpful, the devices are. Clarifying information is urgently needed, said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University.  

“There have been so many confusing messages about vaping,” Gostin said. “A surgeon general’s report could clear that all up.”  

One major obstacle: E-cigarettes haven’t been around long enough for scientists to see if vapers develop problems like lung cancer and heart disease.  

“There’s a remarkable lack of evidence,” said Dr. Kelly Henning, who leads the public health program at Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Smoking and Vaping

Cigarette smoking has long been described as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the annual toll at 480,000 lives. That count should start to fall around 2030, according to a study published last year by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, thanks in part to a decline in smoking rates that began in the 1960s.  

Back then, ashtrays were everywhere and more than 42% of U.S. adults smoked.  

On Jan. 11, 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released an authoritative report that said smoking causes illness and death — and the government should do something about it. The report is considered a watershed moment: In the decades that followed, warning labels were put on cigarette packs, cigarette commercials were banned, governments raised tobacco taxes and new restrictions were placed on where people could light up.  

By 2022, the adult smoking rate was 11%.  

Some experts believe e-cigarettes deserve some of the credit. The devices were billed as a way to help smokers quit, and the FDA has authorized a handful of e-cigarettes as less-harmful alternatives for adult smokers.  

Vaping’s popularity exploded in the 2010s, among both adults but and teens. In 2014, e-cigarettes surpassed combustible cigarettes as the tobacco product that youth used the most. By 2019, 28% of high schoolers were vaping.

U.S. health officials sounded alarms, fearing that kids hooked on nicotine would rediscover cigarettes. That hasn’t happened. Last year, the high school smoking rate was less than 2% — far lower than the 35% rate seen about 25 years ago.

“That’s a great public health triumph. It’s an almost unbelievable one,” said Kenneth Warner, who studies tobacco-control policies at the University of Michigan.

“If it weren’t for e-cigarettes, I think we would be hearing the public health community shouting at the top of their lungs about the success of getting kids not to smoke,” he said.

Vaping’s Benefits and Harms

Cigarettes have been called the deadliest consumer product ever invented. Their smoke contains thousands of chemicals, at least 69 of which can cause cancer. 

The vapor from e-cigarettes has been estimated to contain far fewer chemicals, and fewer carcinogens. Some toxic substances are present in both, but show up in much lower concentrations in e-cigarette vapor than in cigarette smoke.

Studies have shown that smokers who completely switch to vaping have better lung function and see other health improvements.

“I would much rather see someone vaping than smoking a Marlboro. There is no question in my mind that vaping is safer,” said Donald Shopland, who was a clerk for the committee that generated the 1964 report and is co-author of a forthcoming book on it.

But what about the dangers to people who have never smoked?

There have been 100 to 200 studies looking at vaping, and they are a mixed bag, said Dr. Neal Benowitz, of the University of California, San Francisco, a leading academic voice on nicotine and tobacco addiction. The studies used varying techniques, and many were limited in their ability to separate the effects of vaping from former cigarettes smoking, he said.

“If you look at the research, it’s all over the map,” Warner said.

Studies have detected bronchitis symptoms and aggravation of asthma in young people who vape. Research also indicates vaping also can affect the cells that line the blood vessels and heart, leading to looks for a link to heart disease. Perhaps the most cited concern is nicotine, the stimulant that makes cigarettes and vapes addictive.

Animal studies suggest nicotine exposure in adolescents can affect development of the area of the brain responsible for attention, learning and impulse control. Some research in people suggests a link between vaping and ADHD symptoms, depression and feelings of stress. But experts say that the research is very limited and more work needs to be done.

Meanwhile, there’s not even a clear scientific consensus that vaping is an effective way to quit smoking, with different studies coming up with different conclusions.

Clearing the Air

Last month, the World Health Organization raised alarms about the rapidly growing global markets for electronic cigarettes, noting they come in thousands of flavors that attract young people.

In 2016, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said efforts were needed to prevent and reduce e-cigarette use by children and young adults, saying nicotine in any form is unsafe for kids.

About four months before the report’s release, the FDA began taking steps to regulate e-cigarettes, believing they would benefit smokers.

The agency has authorized several e-cigarettes, but it has refused more than 1 million product marketing applications. Critics say the FDA has been unfair and inconsistent in regulation of products.

Meanwhile, the number of different e-cigarette devices sold in the U.S. has boomed, due largely to disposables imported from China that come in fruit and candy flavors. But vaping by youths has recently been falling: Last year, 10% of high school students surveyed said they had used e-cigarettes in the previous month, down from 14% the year before.

Why the decline? “It’s hard to say what’s working,” said Steven Kelder, a University of Texas researcher.

He mentioned a 2019 outbreak of hospitalizations and deaths among people who were vaping products with THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its high.

The illnesses were traced to a thickening agent used in black market vape cartridges, a substance not used in commercial nicotine e-cigarettes. But it may be a reason many Americans think of e-cigarettes as unsafe, Kelder said.

Sherri Mayfield, a 47-year-old postal worker, remembers the 2019 outbreak and reports of rapid illnesses and deaths in youths. Vaping “absolutely” needs to be studied more, Mayfield said last week while on a cigarette break in New York with some co-workers.

“Cigarettes aren’t safe” but at least it can take them decades to destroy your health, she said.

The surgeon general’s office said in a statement that the 1964 report “catalyzed a 60-year movement to address the harmful effects of smoking” and suggested similar action was needed to address youth vaping.

Murthy’s website, however, currently lists neither vaping nor smoking as a priority issue.
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TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Sunday the country’s north-central region of Noto for the first time since the deadly Jan. 1 earthquakes to alleviate growing concern about slow relief work and the spread of diseases in evacuation centers.

The magnitude 7.6 earthquake left 220 dead and 26 others still missing while injuring hundreds. More than 20,000 people, many of whom had their homes damaged or destroyed, are taking refuge at about 400 school gymnasiums, community centers and other makeshift facilities, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency report.

Road damage has hampered rescue efforts, and though relief supplies have reached most regions affected by the quake, hundreds of people in isolated areas are getting little support. Additionally, in the hard-hit towns of Noto, Wajima and Suzu, elderly residents account for half their population, and many are facing growing risks of deteriorating health, officials and experts say.

Kishida, in his disaster-response uniform, visited a junior high school that has turned into an evacuation center in Wajima where officials showed him the evacuees’ severe living conditions. They also spoke about the potential risk of spreading infectious diseases, such as influenza, COVID-19 and stomach flu due to the lack of running water.

The prime minister said he takes the evacuee’s conditions seriously and promised support. “We will do everything we can so that you can have hope for the future,” he said.

To prevent possible health problems and risk of death at evacuation centers, local and central government officials said they would provide the evacuees free accommodation at hotels and apartments — further away from their neighborhoods — until temporary housing was ready. But many of the locals have refused to move out, worried about their destroyed homes, belongings and communities.

Ishikawa Gov. Hiroshi Hase urged on Friday the residents to temporarily relocate to the recommended facilities to rest better and “protect your lives.”

Mototaka Inaba, a medical doctor who heads an international relief organization Peace Winds Japan, told an NHK talk show on Sunday that a secondary evacuation of elderly residents was critical from a medical perspective but should be done in a way that didn’t isolate them.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi also stressed in a pre-recorded interview with NHK the importance of relocating the residents taking into consideration their sense of community, jobs and education.

Many have criticized Kishida’s government over what they called a slow disaster response.

The Cabinet has approved 4.7 billion yen (about $32 million) for relief efforts and is backing the call for a secondary evacuation, including to facilities in the capital region.
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ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — The Tyrannosaurus rex seemingly came out of nowhere tens of millions of years ago, with its monstrous teeth and powerful jaws dominating the end of the age of the dinosaurs. 

How it came to be is among the many mysteries that paleontologists have long tried to solve. Researchers from several universities and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science say they now have one more piece of the puzzle. 

On Thursday, they unveiled fossil evidence and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Their study identifies a new subspecies of tyrannosaur thought to be an older and more primitive relative of the well-known T. rex. 

There were oohs and ahs as the massive jaw bone and pointy teeth were revealed to a group of schoolchildren. Pieces of the fragile specimen were first found in the 1980s by boaters on the shore of New Mexico’s largest reservoir. 

The identification of the new subspecies came through a meticulous reexamination of the jaw and other pieces of the skull that were collected over years at the site. The team analyzed the specimen bone by bone, noting differences in numerous features compared with those synonymous with T. rex. 

“Science is a process. With each new discovery, it forces us to go back and test and challenge what we thought we knew, and that’s the core story of this project,” said Anthony Fiorillo, a co-author of the study and the executive director of the museum. 

The differences between T. rex and Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis are subtle. But that’s typically the case in closely related species, said Nick Longrich, a co-author from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. 

“Evolution slowly causes mutations to build up over millions of years, causing species to look subtly different over time,” he said. 

The analysis suggests the new subspecies Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis was a side-branch in the species’ evolution, rather than a direct ancestor of T. rex. 

The researchers determined it predated T. rex by up to 7 million years, showing that tyrannosaurs were in North America long before paleontologists previously thought.

T. rex has a reputation as a fierce predator. It measured up to 40 feet (12 meters) long and 12 feet (3.6 meters) high. Study co-author Sebastian Dalman and the other researchers say T. mcraeensis was roughly the same size and also ate meat. 

Thomas Richard Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, said the tyrannosaur fossil from New Mexico has been known for a while but its significance was not clear. 

One interesting aspect of the research is that it appears T. rex’s closest relatives were from southern North America, with the exception of Mongolian Tarbosaurus and Chinese Zhuchengtyrannus, Holtz said. That leaves the question of whether these Asian dinosaurs were immigrants from North America or if the new subspecies and other large tyrannosaurs were immigrants from Asia. 

“One great hindrance to solving this question is that we don’t have good fossil sites of the right environments in Asia older than Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus, so we can’t see if their ancestors were present there or not,” Holtz said. 

He and the researchers who analyzed the specimen agree that more fossils from the Hall Lake Formation in southern New Mexico could help answer further questions.
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geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information.

“Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva.

He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven’t been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines.

Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, so current vaccines should still provide some protection.

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia.

“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it’s now summer.

While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, “we are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.”

WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated.

“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO.
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An estimated 130,000 people have descended on Las Vegas for CES 2024, the consumer technology show that attracts big and small companies alike. VOA’s Tina Trinh met with some of the more than 4,000 exhibitors for a look at emerging trends in artificial intelligence, digital health and more.
Camera: Tina Trinh
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