Category: Silicon Valley

The Biden administration on Thursday announced the first cancer-focused initiative under its advanced health research agency. The goal is to help surgeons more easily differentiate between healthy tissue and cancerous cells.

The Precision Surgical Interventions program, which is being launched under the administration’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, will aim to significantly improve cancer outcomes over the next few decades.

In a Thursday statement announcing the initiative, President Joe Biden called the investment “a major milestone in the fight to end cancer as we know it.” The initiative is part of Biden’s “cancer moonshot” initiative.

The hope is that the investment will help doctors develop tools that will remove all cancerous cells while avoiding healthy nerves and blood vessels.

Biden said he eventually wants the cancer death rate to be cut in half.

“Harnessing the power of innovation is essential to achieving our ambitious goal of turning more cancers from death sentences to treatable diseases and — in time — cutting the cancer death rate in half,” he said.

“As we’ve seen throughout our history, from developing vaccines to sequencing the genome, when the U.S. government invests in innovation, we can achieve breakthroughs that would otherwise be impossible, and save lives on a vast scale. ARPA-H follows in that tradition of bold, urgent innovation,” Biden said, using an acronym for his Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health initiative.

“What’s true is that many cancer treatments still start with surgery,” Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, told The Associated Press. “So being really smart and attacking and developing new technology to make that first step better could really revolutionize how we are able to treat cancer for so many Americans.”

Formed in 2022, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The military-focused agency played a central role in developing GPS and the internet.

The “cancer moonshot,” as well as the ARPA-H more broadly, are part of the Biden administration’s unity agenda, which “aims to bring people from both parties together to get big things done for the American people,” Biden said in the statement.

In September, ARPA-H will host an event in Chicago for interested researchers with the intent of quickly authorizing projects.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press. 
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that it is not too late to “stop the worst” of the climate crisis, but only with “dramatic, immediate” action.

“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” Guterres told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York, where the temperature outside was approaching 86 degrees Fahrenheit before 10 a.m. and set to hit 91 degrees Fahrenheit later in the day.

He spoke as the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service released new data confirming July is set to be the hottest month ever recorded.

“According to the data released today, July has already seen the hottest three-week period ever recorded; the three hottest days on record; and the highest-ever ocean temperatures for this time of year,” Guterres said.

The U.N. chief, who has been ringing the alarm bell on the climate crisis since he entered office in January 2017, noted it has been a difficult summer in many parts of the world because of climate-related events, including fires, floods and scorching heat.

“For the entire planet, it is a disaster,” he said. “And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame.”

He said the rising temperatures are consistent with all the scientific predictions; the only surprise is how fast it is happening.

He acknowledged progress on renewable energies and positive steps from industrial sectors but warned that none of it is going far or fast enough.

“Accelerating temperatures demand accelerated action,” the U.N. secretary-general said.

Guterres called for ambitious new national emissions reduction targets from G20 countries — as they are responsible for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. He urged developed countries to reach net zero emissions as close as possible to the target date of 2040, and emerging economies by 2050.

He also repeated his mantra that there must be a transition away from fossil fuels to renewables.

“And we must reach net zero electricity by 2035 in developed countries and 2040 elsewhere, as we work to bring affordable electricity to everyone on Earth,” the secretary-general noted.

He said countries on the climate “frontlines” — who have contributed the least to the climate crisis — need financial help from developed nations for adaptation and mitigation. Developed countries have committed to contributing $100 billion per year to help developing countries, but they have fallen short. Guterres urged them to honor those commitments.

In September, the U.N. chief will convene a Climate Ambition Summit on the sidelines of the General Assembly high-level week, ahead of November’s two-week long climate review conference — COP28 — in Dubai.
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The World Health Organization on Thursday warned that health threats are surging as the war in Sudan escalates and millions of people, many sick and wounded, flee for safety within Sudan and across borders to neighboring countries where health services are fragile and hard to reach.

The war, which erupted April 15 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, is not contained within the country but has profound regional implications.

The conflict has displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, including 2.5 million inside Sudan. Nearly 760,000 people have been forced to flee as refugees to six neighboring countries, with many people reportedly arriving in poor health, carrying infectious diseases and other afflictions.

The Federal Ministry of Health reports at least 1,136 people have been killed and more than 12,000 injured since the conflict began. “Of course, this is very underreported of the number of casualties,” said Nima Abid, World Health Organization representative in Sudan.

He said the scale of the health crisis triggered by the conflict in Sudan was enormous, noting that the fragile health system in Sudan was unable to cope with the multiple emergencies that exist as “two-thirds of the hospitals in the affected areas are not functional” and are unable to respond to the huge public health needs.

WHO has verified 51 attacks on health facilities since the conflict began, resulting in 10 deaths and 24 injuries and “cutting off access to urgently needed care.”

Abid said that “all the organizational activities have stalled; vector control activities have stalled. Currently, we have a large measles outbreak with more than 2,000 cases and 30 deaths.

“I mean, even before the war, the vaccination coverage was not high,” added Abid, noting that the Blue Nile and White Nile states were the most heavily affected. “So, now we have outbreaks affecting almost 10 states.”

Abid also said he was concerned that cases of malaria, dengue and rift valley fever will rise during the current rainy season, noting that “all these vector-borne diseases are endemic in Sudan” and control measures have stopped.

“We do have an outbreak of cholera in South Kordofan,” he said, “with more than 300 cases and seven deaths. So, all this will have an impact on the health system and public health in Sudan.”

Neighboring Chad is hosting a quarter million Sudanese refugees, and the U.N. expects an equal number will arrive in the country by the end of the year. “This will significantly increase the health needs and exert huge pressure on the available health facilities,” said Jean-Bosco Ndihokubwayo, WHO representative in Chad.

WHO reports around 2,500 people are arriving in Chad every day, many with serious gunshot wounds, while many others arrive sick with infectious diseases, malaria and cholera.

Ndihokubwayo cited malnutrition as the most serious health problem facing people in refugee camps.

“For the time being, we have more than 4,000 children who are suffering from serious malnutrition. Two hundred and fifty children are being hospitalized, 65 dead … and when this is combined with a disease like measles in children who are poorly nourished, it has huge effects as it does with our other current diseases,” he said.

The World Health Organization reports cases of malaria among children under age 5, as well as suspected cases of yellow fever also have been identified among some 17,000 Sudanese who have sought refuge in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.). It added that a suspected cholera outbreak has been reported among many displaced people in northern Ethiopia.

Magdalene Armah, Incident Manager for the Sudan Crisis, WHO regional office for Africa, said the African region has received 65% of the Sudanese population that has fled the country.

She said it was important to establish cross-border operations to ensure that all vulnerable populations are reached with health care. “We want to increase access to health care services by expanding the set-up of emergency teams that are in the various border regions.

“We want to ensure that vaccination campaigns can happen to mitigate further outbreaks. We want to ensure that disease surveillance goes down to the communities,” she said, adding that it was important that humanitarian agencies had the funding to enable it to carry out these vital health projects.

WHO and its partners are working to deliver emergency assistance and medical supplies to people in Chad, as well as in C.A.R., Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan, as swiftly as possible. But WHO says resources are overstretched, so providing aid to those in need is becoming increasingly difficult.
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If the United States imposes more investment restrictions and export controls on China’s semiconductor industry, Beijing will respond in kind, according to China’s ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, whose tough talk analysts see as the latest response from a so-called wolf-warrior diplomat.

Xie likened the U.S. export controls to “restricting their opponents to only wearing old swimsuits in swimming competitions, while they themselves can wear advanced shark swimsuits.”

Xie’s remarks, made at the Aspen Security Forum last week, came as the U.S. finalized its mechanism for vetting possible investments in China’s cutting-edge technology. These include semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, all of which have military as well as commercial applications.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is also considering imposing new restrictions on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, despite the objections of U.S. chipmakers.

Wen-Chih Chao, of the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs Studies at Taiwan’s National Chung Cheng University, characterized Xie’s remarks as part of China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomacy, as China’s increasingly assertive style of foreign policy has come to be known. 

He said the threatened Chinese countermeasures would depend on whether Beijing just wants to show an “attitude” or has decided to confront Western countries head-on.

He pointed to China’s investigations of some U.S. companies operating in China. He sees these as China retaliating by “expressing an attitude.”

Getting tougher

But as the tit-for-tat moves of the U.S. and China seem to be “escalating,” Chao pointed to China’s retaliation getting tougher.

An example, he said, is the export controls Beijing slapped on exporters of gallium, germanium and other raw minerals used in high-end chip manufacturing. As of August 1, they must apply for permission from the Ministry of Commerce of China and report the details of overseas buyers.

Chao said China might go further by blocking or limiting the supply of batteries for electric vehicles, mechanical components needed for wind-power generation, gases needed for solar panels, and raw materials needed for pharmaceuticals and semiconductor manufacturing.

China wants to show Western countries that they must think twice when imposing sanctions on Chinese semiconductors or companies, he said.

But other analysts said Beijing does not want to escalate its retaliation to the point where further moves by the U.S. and its allies harm China’s economy, which is only slowly recovering from draconian pandemic lockdowns.

No cooperation

Chao also said China could retaliate by refusing to cooperate on efforts to limit climate change, or by saying “no” when asked to use its influence with Pyongyang to lessen tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

“These are the means China can use to retaliate,” Chao said. “I think there are a lot of them. These may be its current bargaining chips, and it will not use them all simultaneously. It will see how the West reacts. It may show its ability to counter the West step by step.”

Cheng Chen, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Albany, said China’s recent announcement about gallium, germanium and other chipmaking metals is a warning of its ability, and willingness, to retaliate against the U.S.

Even if the U.S. invests heavily in reshaping these industrial chains, it will take a long time to assemble the links, she said.

Chen said that if the U.S. further escalates sanctions on China’s high-tech products, China could retaliate in kind — using tariffs for tariffs, sanctions for sanctions, and regulations for regulations.

Most used strategy

Yang Yikui, an assistant researcher at Taiwan National Defense Security Research Institute, said economic coercion is China’s most commonly used retaliatory tactic.

He said China imposed trade sanctions on salmon imported from Norway when the late pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Beijing tightened restrictions on imports of Philippine bananas, citing quarantine issues, during a 2012 maritime dispute with Manila over a shoal in the South China Sea.

Yang said studies show that since 2018, China’s sanctions have become more diverse and detailed, allowing it to retaliate directly and indirectly. It can also use its economic and trade relations to force companies from other countries to participate.

Yang said that after Lithuania agreed in 2021 to let Taiwan establish a representative office in Vilnius, China downgraded its diplomatic relations from the ambassadorial level to the charge d’affaires and removed the country from its customs system database, making it impossible for Lithuanian goods to pass customs.

Beijing then reduced the credit lines of Lithuanian companies operating in the Chinese market and forced other multinational companies to sanction Lithuania. Companies in Germany, France, Sweden and other countries reportedly had cargos stopped at Chinese ports because they contained products made in Lithuania. 

When Australia investigated the origins of COVID, an upset China imposed tariffs or import bans on Australian beef, wine, cotton, timber, lobster, coal and barley. But Beijing did not sanction Australia’s iron ore, wool and natural gas because sanctions on those products stood to hurt key Chinese sectors. 

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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A system of ocean currents that transports heat northward across the North Atlantic could collapse by midcentury, according to a new study. Scientists have said that such a collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise and extreme weather across the globe. 

In recent decades, researchers have both raised and downplayed the specter of Atlantic current collapse. It even prompted a movie that strayed far from the science. Two years ago, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said any such catastrophe was unlikely this century. But the new study published in Nature Communications suggests it might not be as far away and unlikely as mainstream science says. 

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is a vital system of ocean currents that circulates water throughout the Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s a lengthy process, taking an estimated 1,000 years to complete, but has slowed even more since the mid-1900s. 

A further slowdown or complete halting of the circulation could create more extreme weather in the Northern Hemisphere, sea level rise on the East Coast of the United States and drought for millions in southern Africa, scientists in Germany and the U.S. have said. But the timing is uncertain. 

In the new study, Peter and Susanne Ditlevsen, two researchers from Denmark, analyzed sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic between 1870 and 2020 as a way of assessing this circulation. They found the system could collapse as soon as 2025 and as late as 2095, given current global greenhouse gas emissions.

“There are large uncertainties in this study, in many prior studies, and in climate impact assessment overall, and scientists sometimes miss important aspects that can lead to both over- and underprediction of impacts,” Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, a carbon management company, said in a statement. “Still, the conclusion is obvious: Action must be swift and profound to counter major climate risks.” 

Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author on a 2018 study on the subject, published an extensive analysis of the Ditlevesens’ study on RealClimate, a website that publishes commentary from climate scientists. While he said that a tipping point for the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was “highly uncertain,” he also called the IPCC estimate conservative. 

“Increasingly the evidence points to the risk being far greater than 10% during this century,” he wrote, “… rather worrying for the next few decades.” 
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The U.S. government “absolutely” has recovered extraterrestrial craft, according to a former combat officer who was a member of a Department of Defense task force that investigated unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.

Dave Grusch, in response to a House member’s questions during a congressional hearing Wednesday, said he knows the exact locations of such alien craft and that he had provided this information to the intelligence community’s inspector general.

Grusch, who has become a whistleblower and testified that he has faced retaliation for his revelations, told lawmakers that the U.S. government also possesses evidence of non-human biologics. Grusch did not elaborate, stating he had not seen any alien craft or beings himself, but was basing his testimony on dozens of interviews he had conducted within the U.S. intelligence community.

The Air Force veteran, who also worked for two intelligence agencies, was one of three former military officers who appeared before the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee, which held a 135-minute open televised hearing on unidentified flying objects.

The technology “is beyond anything we have,” said David Fravor, who in 2004 as a U.S. Navy pilot videotaped off the coast of California a physics-defying flight of an object, known as the “Tic-Tac.”

“There’s four sets of human eyeballs [that witnessed the incident], we’re all very credible,” testified Fravor. “It’s not a joke.”

A third witness, Ryan Graves, was an F/A-18 Super Hornet U.S. Navy pilot stationed in Virginia in 2014 when his squadron first began encountering unknown objects. He described what he and his colleagues saw as a “dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere” approximately 1.5 to 4.5 meters in diameter. Such incidents became so frequent, according to Graves, that air crews would discuss potential risks from the objects as a routine part of their pre-flight briefings.

Under questioning by a lawmaker, Graves said he knew the craft could not be of domestic origin because they were able to remain completely stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds and then could accelerate to supersonic speeds.

Graves said there were similar reports by military pilots and others from nearly everywhere in the world the U.S. Navy operates.

The hearing contained other sensational testimony, for which there has been no independent confirmation but is similar to statements the witnesses and others have made in recent years in mainstream media articles, including those published by The New York Times.

A Defense Department entity established to investigate UAP phenomena, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, is refuting Grusch’s claim that access to some materials for an earlier task force was denied.

“To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads,” said Sue Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson.

Grusch told the bipartisan group of lawmakers there is more classified information, including about a flying object the size of a football field, he could reveal “in a closed session at the right level.”

Lawmaker Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, said the committee was denied access to the Secure Classified Information Facility, or SCIF, within the U.S. Capitol to hear further testimony from the witnesses regarding classified matters.

Several members of the committee pledged to work to make more information about the topic public.

“We’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” lawmaker Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, said in expressing appreciation for the witnesses appearing at a public congressional hearing. “I want to thank everybody. We made history today.”

Lawmaker Robert Garcia, a freshman California Democrat, told the witnesses they “had a lot of courage” and characterized Wednesday’s hearing as the most bipartisan discussion he had experienced during his first seven months in Congress.

“Many Americans are deeply interested in this issue, and it shouldn’t take the potential of nonhuman origin to bring us together,” added lawmaker Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat.

Luna recently accused the U.S. government of stonewalling lawmakers’ efforts for transparency, saying she and other lawmakers were rebuffed by officials when they went to an Air Force base in Florida seeking information on UAP sightings by military pilots.

“They refuse to answer questions posed by whistleblowers, avoiding the concerns of Americans and acknowledging the possible threat of UAPs poses to our national security as well as public safety,” Luna said at a news conference last week. “It is extremely unnecessary and an overclassification.”

During Wednesday’s session, Graves noted there are many more credible witnesses with significant information but who are “hesitant to come forward” because they fear ridicule and retaliation.” He said a centralized method for reporting sightings would circumvent potential retaliation, a system lawmakers expressed interest in creating through bipartisan legislation.

UAP are “a national security issue worth looking at,” according to John Kirby, a former Navy admiral, who is a National Security Council spokesman. He said the matter is taken seriously by President Joe Biden and his administration.

“In some cases, these phenomena have affected military training, have impacted military readiness,” Kirby told White House reporters following the congressional hearing. “The truth is we don’t have hard and fast answers on these things.”
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Japan imposed export controls on advanced microchip technologies this week, mirroring recent moves by the United States and the Netherlands. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Tokyo, the controls are widely seen as targeting China
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Can artificial intelligence wipe out humanity?

A senior U.S. official said the United States government is working with leading AI companies and at least 20 countries to set up guardrails to mitigate potential risks, while focusing on the innovative edge of AI technologies.

Nathaniel Fick, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy, spoke Tuesday to VOA about the voluntary commitments from leading AI companies to ensure safety and transparency around AI development.

One of the popular generative AI platforms is ChatGPT, which is not accessible in China. If a user asked it politically sensitive questions in Mandarin Chinese such as, “What is the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre?” the user would get information that is heavily censored by the Beijing government.

But ChatGPT, created by U.S.-based OpenAI, is not available in China.

China has finalized rules governing its own generative AI. The new regulation will be effective August 15. Chinese chatbots reportedly have built-in censorship to avoid sensitive keywords.

“I think that the development of these systems actually requires a foundation of openness, of interoperability, of reliability of data. And an authoritarian top-down approach that controls the flow of information over time will undermine a government’s ability, a company’s ability, to sustain an innovative edge in AI,” Fick told VOA.

The following excerpts from the interview have been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: Seven leading AI companies made eight promises about what they will do with their technology. What do these commitments actually mean?

Nathaniel Fick, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy: As we think about governance of this new tech frontier of artificial intelligence, our North Star ought to be preserving our innovative edge and ensuring that we can continue to maintain a global leadership position in the development of robust AI tools, because the upside to solve shared challenges around the world is so immense. …

These commitments fall into three broad categories. First, the companies have a duty to ensure that their products are safe. … Second, the companies have a responsibility to ensure that their products are secure. … Third, the companies have a duty to ensure that their products gain the trust of people around the world. And so, we need a way for viewers, consumers, to ascertain whether audio content or visual content is AI-generated or not, whether it is authentic or not. And that’s what these commitments do.

VOA: Would the United States government fund some of these types of safety tests conducted by those companies?

Fick: The United States government has a huge interest in ensuring that these companies, these models, their products are safe, are secure, and are trustworthy. We look forward to partnering with these companies over time to do that. And of course, that could certainly include financial partnership.

VOA: The White House has listed cancer prevention and mitigating climate change as two of the areas where it would like AI companies to focus their efforts. Can you talk about U.S. competition with China on AI? Is that an administration priority?

Fick: We would expect the Chinese approach to artificial intelligence to look very much like the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] approach to other areas of technology. Generally, top down. Generally, not focused on open expression, not focused on open access to information. And these AI systems, by their very definition, require that sort of openness and that sort of access to large data sets and information.

VOA: Some industry experts have warned that China is spending three times as much as the U.S. to become the world’s AI leader. Can you talk about China’s ambition on AI? Is the U.S. keeping up with the competition?

Fick: We certainly track things like R&D [research and development] and investment dollars, but I would make the point that those are inputs, not outputs. And I don’t think it’s any accident that the leading companies in AI research are American companies. Our innovation ecosystem, supported by foundational research and immigration policy that attracts the world’s best talent, tax and regulatory policies that encourage business creation and growth.

VOA: Any final thoughts about the risks? Can AI models be used to develop bioweapons? Can AI wipe out humanity?

Fick: My experience has been that risk and return really are correlated in life and in financial markets. There’s huge reward and promise in these technologies and of course, at the same time, they bring with them significant risks. We need to maintain our North Star, our focus on that innovative edge and all of the promise that these technologies bring in. At the same time, it’s our responsibility as governments and as responsible companies leading in this space to put the guardrails in place to mitigate those risks.
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The fingerprints of climate change are all over the intense heat waves gripping the globe this month, a new study finds. Researchers say the deadly hot spells in the American Southwest and Southern Europe could not have happened without the continuing buildup of warming gases in the air.

These unusually strong heat waves are becoming more common, Tuesday’s study said. The same research found the increase in heat-trapping gases, largely from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has made another heat wave — the one in China — 50 times more likely with the potential to occur every five years or so.

A stagnant atmosphere, warmed by carbon dioxide and other gases, also made the European heat wave 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter, the one in the United States and Mexico 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer and the one in China one 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) toastier, the study found.

Several climate scientists, using tree rings and other stand-ins for temperature records, say this month’s heat is likely the hottest Earth has been in about 120,000 years, easily the hottest of human civilization.

“Had there been no climate change, such an event would almost never have occurred,” said study lead author Mariam Zachariah, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London. She called heat waves in Europe and North America “virtually impossible” without the increase in heat from the mid-1800s. Statistically, the one in China could have happened without global warming.

Since the advent of industrial-scale burning, the world has warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), so “they are not rare in today’s climate and the role of climate change is absolutely overwhelming,” said Imperial College climate scientist Friederike Otto, who leads the team of volunteer international scientists at World Weather Attribution who do these studies.

The particularly intense heat waves that Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila are now roasting through are likely to happen about once every 15 years in the current climate, the study said.

But the climate is not stabilized, even at this level. If it warms a few more tenths of a degree, this month’s heat will become even more common, Otto said. Phoenix has had a record-shattering 25 straight days of temperatures at or above 43.3 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) and more than a week when the nighttime temperature never dropped below 32.2 Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).

The heat in Spain, Italy, Greece and some Balkan states is likely to reoccur every decade in the current climate, the study said.

Because the weather attribution researchers started their analysis of three simultaneous heat waves on July 17, the results are not yet peer reviewed, which is the gold standard for science. But it used scientifically valid techniques, the team’s research regularly gets published and several outside experts told The Associated Press it makes sense.

The way scientists do these rapid analyses is by comparing observations of current weather in the three regions to repeated computer simulations of “a world that might have been without climate change,” said study co-author Izidine Pinto, a climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

In Europe and North America, the study doesn’t claim human-caused climate change is the sole cause of the heat waves, but it is a necessary ingredient because natural causes and random chance couldn’t produce this alone.

Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said the study was reasonable, but looks at a broad area of the U.S. Southwest, so it may not be applicable to every single place in the area.

“In the United States, it’s clear that the entire southern tier is going to see the worst of the ever-worsening heat and this summer should be considered a serious wake-up call,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck.

With heat waves, “the most important thing is that they kill people and they particularly kill and hurt and destroy lives and livelihoods of those most vulnerable,” Otto said.
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Next year, a daily oral birth control pill will be available in the United States without a prescription for the first time. Reproductive health advocates say the move will improve the well-being of women in the country, but some groups have raised concerns. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias explains.
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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is exploring ways artificial intelligence can help detect illegal shipments of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. VOA footage by Adam Greenbaum
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Beach season has started across Japan, which means seafood for holiday makers and good times for business owners. But in Fukushima, that may end soon. 

Within weeks, the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is expected to start releasing treated radioactive wastewater into the sea, a highly contested plan still facing fierce protests in and outside Japan. 

Residents worry that the water discharge, 12 years after the nuclear disaster, could deal another setback to Fukushima’s image and hurt their businesses and livelihoods. 

“Without a healthy ocean, I cannot make a living,” said Yukinaga Suzuki, a 70-year-old innkeeper at Usuiso beach in Iwaki about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the plant. And the government has yet to announce when the water release will begin. 

While officials say the possible impact would be limited to rumors, it’s not yet clear if it will be damaging to the local economy. Residents say they feel “shikataganai” — meaning helpless. 

Suzuki has requested officials hold the plan at least until the swimming season ends in mid-August. 

“If you ask me what I think about the water release, I’m against it. But there is nothing I can do to stop it as the government has one-sidedly crafted the plan and will release it anyway,” he said. “Releasing the water just as people are swimming at sea is totally out of line, even if there is no harm.” 

The beach, he said, will be in the path of treated water traveling south on the Oyashio current from off the coast of Fukushima Daiichi. That’s where the cold Oyashio current meets the warm, northbound Kuroshio, making it a rich fishing ground. 

The government and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, have struggled to manage the massive amount of contaminated water accumulating since the 2011 nuclear disaster, and announced plans to release it to the ocean during the summer. 

They say the plan is to treat the water, dilute it with more than a hundred times the seawater and then release it into the Pacific Ocean through an undersea tunnel. Doing so, they said, is safer than national and international standards require. 

Suzuki is among those who are not fully convinced by the government’s awareness campaign that critics say only highlights safety. “We don’t know if it’s safe yet,” Suzuki said. “We just can’t tell until much later.” 

The Usuiso area used to have more than a dozen family-run inns before the disaster. Now, Suzuki’s half-century old Suzukame, which he inherited from his parents 30 years ago, is the only one still in business after surviving the tsunami. He heads a safety committee for the area and operates its only beach house. 

Suzuki says his inn guests won’t mention the water issue if they cancel their reservations and he would only have to guess. “I serve fresh local fish to my guests, and the beach house is for visitors to rest and chill out. The ocean is the source of my livelihood.” 

The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt and contaminating their cooling water, which has since leaked continuously. The water is collected, filtered and stored in some 1,000 tanks, which will reach their capacity in early 2024. 

The government and TEPCO say the water must be removed to make room for the plant’s decommissioning, and to prevent accidental leaks from the tanks because much of the water is still contaminated and needs retreatment. 

Katsumasa Okawa, who runs a seafood business in Iwaki, says those tanks containing contaminated water bother him more than the treated water release. He wants to have them removed as soon as possible, especially after seeing “immense” tanks occupying much of the plant complex during his visit a few years ago. 

An accidental leak would be “an ultimate strikeout. … It will cause actual damage, not reputation,” Okawa says. “I think the treated water release is unavoidable.” It’s eerie, he adds, to have to live near the damaged plant for decades. 

Fukushima’s badly hit fisheries community, tourism and the economy are still recovering. The government has allocated 80 billion yen ($573 million) to support still-feeble fisheries and seafood processing and combat potential reputation damage from the water release. 

Japanese fishing organizations strongly opposed Fukushima’s water release, as they worry about further damage to the reputation of their seafood as they struggle to recover. Groups in South Korea and China have also raised concerns, turning it into a political and diplomatic issue. Hong Kong has vowed to ban the import of aquatic products from Fukushima and other Japanese prefectures if Tokyo discharges treated radioactive wastewater into the sea. 

China plans to step up import restrictions and Hong Kong restaurants began switching menus to exclude Japanese seafood.  

Japan sought support from the International Atomic Energy Agency for transparency and credibility. IAEA’s final report, released this month and handed directly to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, concluded that the method meets international standards and its environmental and health impacts would be negligible. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said radioactivity in the water would be almost undetectable and there is no cross-border impact. 

Scientists generally agree that environmental impact from the treated water would be negligible, but some call for more attention on dozens of low-dose radionuclides that remain in the water, saying data on their long-term effect on the environment and marine life is insufficient. 
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A class that teaches teenage girls how to code – or write instructions for computers – is drawing lots of interest in Mongolia. For VOA, Graham Kanwit and Elizabeth Lee have the story about a program that prepares them for jobs in technology. Camera: Sam Paakkonen
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Elon Musk has unveiled a new black and white “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.

Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture on Monday of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.

Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.

In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.

Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal,

He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.”

Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an ” everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.

Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

Experts, however, predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following a raft of Musk’s other changes. The site also faces new competition from Threads, the new app by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta that directly targets Twitter users.
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Jill Biden has represented her country at the Olympics in Tokyo, a king’s coronation in London and a royal wedding in Jordan. She gets another chance to put her ambassadorial skills to work this week when the United States formally rejoins a United Nations agency devoted to education, science and culture around the globe.

Biden arrived in Paris early Monday, accompanied by her daughter, Ashley Biden, after flying overnight from Washington to join other VIPs and speak at a ceremony Tuesday at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The American flag will be raised to mark the U.S. return to UNESCO membership after a five-year absence.

UNESCO aims to foster global collaboration in education, science and culture. It also designates World Heritage sites, deeming them worthy of eternal preservation.

The agency on Sunday condemned Russia’s attack on a cathedral in Odesa and other heritage sites in Ukraine in recent days and said it will send a team to the Black Sea port city to assess damage.

In a statement, UNESCO noted that Odesa’s historic center was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site earlier this year and said attacks by Russian forces contradict recent promises by Russian authorities to take precautions to spare such sites across the country.

Before returning to Washington on Wednesday, Biden will tour a historic venue in France, Mont-Saint-Michel, a 1,000-year-old Benedictine abbey that was listed as a World Heritage site in 1979. It sits on an island in Normandy, in the north of the country.

A daughter and mother of U.S. service members, the first lady will also visit Brittany American Cemetery and Memorial to pay respects to the more than 4,400 U.S. service members buried there, most of whom died in Normandy and Brittany during World War II.

She will also stop at the Elysée Palace in Paris on Tuesday to catch up with Brigitte Macron, a former teacher and the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. The women have met several times over the past two years, including in Washington last December when Macron was on a state visit to the U.S.

Senior Biden administration officials said returning to UNESCO fits President Joe Biden’s goal of strengthening global partnerships and recommitting to American leadership at the U.N. and other international organizations to serve as a counter to nations that do not share U.S. values.

Others said Jill Biden, who teaches English and writing at a Virginia community college, was best suited to represent the United States in Paris on Tuesday.

“The first lady, as a lifelong educator and believer in the power of educational opportunity across the world, is honored to help celebrate this important milestone,” said Elizabeth Alexander, a spokesperson. “She looks forward to raising the flag for the United States once again at the UNESCO headquarters, showing our country’s commitment to international cooperation in education, science, and culture.”

The U.S. pulled out of the Paris-based organization in 2018, under then-President Donald Trump, a Republican who claimed UNESCO was biased against Israel.

The administration of Biden, a Democrat, pushed to rejoin over concerns that China was filling the void in leadership created by the U.S. absence.

The administration announced in June that it would apply to rejoin the 193-member organization, which also plays a major role in setting international standards for artificial intelligence and technology education.

The organization’s governing board voted earlier this month to approve the Biden plan to rejoin, and the U.S. delivered a document certifying that it would accept the invitation to become the 194th member of UNESCO.

“Our organization is once again moving towards universality,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said at the time. She cast the U.S return as “excellent news for multilateralism as a whole. If we want to meet the challenges of our century, there can only be a collective response.”

The Trump administration in 2017 announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. That decision that took effect a year later.

The U.S. and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011.

The Biden administration has requested $150 million for the 2024 budget to go toward UNESCO dues and arrears. The plan foresees similar requests for the ensuing years until the full debt of $619 million is repaid.

That makes up a big chunk of UNESCO’s $534 million annual operating budget. Before leaving, the U.S. contributed 22% of the agency’s overall funding.

The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance Soviet interests. It rejoined in 2003 during George W. Bush’s presidency. Bush’s wife, Laura, a former elementary school teacher and librarian, spoke at that ceremony.

Standing in for the president at home and abroad has become a big part of a first lady’s unofficial job description, and Jill Biden travels at least several times a week to promote administration initiatives.

The trip to Paris is her fourth solo international excursion this year.

She visited Namibia and Kenya in February, followed by a trip to London in May for the coronation of King Charles III. In June, she traveled to Jordan to attend the royal wedding of a son of King Abdullah II, followed by stops in Egypt, Morocco and Portugal.

Before flying to Paris on Sunday night, she headlined fundraisers Friday and Saturday in Massachusetts for her husband’s reelection campaign.
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Researchers say the central districts in Sydney are close to becoming the first place in the world to reach the U.N.’s target for ending transmission of HIV. The city was once at the heart of Australia’s HIV epidemic but new infections among gay men have fallen by 88% between 2010 and 2022. The U.N.’s goal is a 90% reduction in cases by 2030.

In 1987, the ‘Grim Reaper’ advert warned Australians about the march of a deadly virus.

“At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS,” the TV spots said, “but now we know everyone one of us could be devastated by it.”

HIV attacks the body’s immune system, and if not treated, can lead to AIDS.

In the central parts of Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, thousands of gay men died in the 1980s and ’90s.

In remarkable turnaround, researchers say that only 11 new HIV cases were recorded in central Sydney last year.

Almost all HIV-positive people in Australia are on antiretroviral drugs. They suppress the level of the virus in the blood, reducing the risk of sexual transmission. There’s also the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis. These are preventative medicines taken by people who don’t have HIV to lower their chance of infection.

Gay men make up about 20% of the male population in inner Sydney, and they represent most of the city’s HIV cases.

The research confirming the change in HIV rates in Sydney was presented to the International AIDS Society’s HIV science conference being held in the Queensland city of Brisbane by Andrew Grulich, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp’s 7.30 program earlier this month that he’s seen HIV gradually being conquered over his academic career.

“My life in research has been over that period,” Grulich said. “So, it has been terrible, and it has been extraordinary and now it is getting close to wonderful, really, with the possibility that we have.”

However, rates of infection have fallen by only a third in some outer Sydney suburbs, where public health awareness, access to medical treatments and testing new cases are more limited.

Jane Costello, the chief executive officer of Positive Life, an organization that helps people living with HIV, told VOA about some groups still being left behind.

“Overseas-born men who have sex with men, heterosexual populations, people from culturally and linguistically-diverse backgrounds and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” she said. “So, it is a question of equity as well.”

The AIDS conference in Brisbane has heard that parts of the United Kingdom and Western Europe have also seen rapid drops in new HIV cases. But few places, if any, can rival Sydney’s fall in infections of almost 90% over the past decade.
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Elon Musk said Sunday that he plans to change the logo of Twitter to an “X” from the bird, marking what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year. 

In a series of posts on his Twitter account starting just after 12 a.m. ET, Twitter’s owner said that he’s looking to make the change worldwide as soon as Monday. 

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote on his account. 

Earlier this month, Musk put new curfews on his digital town square, a move that came under sharp criticism that it could drive away advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter. 

In May, Musk hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO in a move to win back advertisers. 

Luring advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media platform, fearing damage to their brands in the ensuing chaos. Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but provided no specifics. 

 
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Associated Press photographer Matt York, who has covered Arizona for 23 years, recently was caught off guard by the heat wave that has shattered records in Phoenix. The 50-year-old York photographed life in the city for six of seven days as temperatures hovered above 110 Fahrenheit. On Tuesday, he went in for a medical procedure to remove a skin cancer spot and learned he was suffering from heat exhaustion and was at risk of a heart attack. He shares his story as a cautionary tale.

PHOENIX — Heat never scared me before.

I’ve spent 23 years covering Phoenix as a photographer for The Associated Press, shooting golf tournaments, baseball games and other outdoor sporting events, the city’s growing homeless population, immigration and crime.

And, of course, heat.

Like most people around here, I talk about temperatures being in the teens as if it’s a given that people know to always put a one in front of that number.

But this summer’s record-shattering heat wave has been like no other.

No amount of water or Gatorade can keep you going in these conditions without adequate cool-downs throughout the day.

My phone and cameras continually glitch out and stop working. Even my car’s air conditioning has struggled to keep up.

In my car, I keep a thermometer that I once used to check the temperature of chemicals in a darkroom. The heat inside when the air conditioner is off is way hotter than the air outside, and the thermometer often goes up to 51.6 degrees Celsius.

In recent days it blew past that, with the needle registering well beyond where the numbers stop.

On the morning of July 10, I spent more than three hours off and on photographing life outdoors. Heat features are tough in part because people aren’t stupid enough to be outside, unlike photojournalists.

When I got home, I was exhausted. But I got up the next day and went back out for another consecutive day of temperatures above 43.3 Celsius.

At one point my camera stopped working, and I had to cool it down in the car. It burned my hand to hold onto it.

On July 12, I covered a cooling shelter for homeless people and photographed a man at his tent in The Zone, an area of downtown blocks dotted by tents. The black asphalt streets were radiating heat.

I was sweating so profusely it dripped off me like a basketball player in an intense game. It wasn’t the first time this has happened and it’s why I often carry a towel to dry off and keep the sweat from dripping in my viewfinder.

But then I realized there was no need to wipe down. I was dry. I’d stopped sweating altogether. My body had no more water to give. My legs started feeling chilled, an odd sensation. Then they cramped. It was obvious I needed to get out of the heat.

But I didn’t think any more of it. That night I slept fitfully as temperatures remained high, and I had a headache.

By July 14, I was super lethargic and just wanted the work week to end. I was done with covering heat. 

On July 15 I rested and thought, “I’m in Arizona. It is what it is.” 

I had a dermatology appointment on July 18 to remove a spot of basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. Such procedures have become almost routine after so many years working in Arizona. 

That day Phoenix broke its record for the longest streak above 43.3 Celsius, marking the 19th day with such heat.

When I got checked, they told me I was a mess. My blood pressure was clocked at 178/120. After telling me that, it shot up to 200/120. The nurse wanted to send me in an ambulance to the emergency room because they thought I was going to have a heart attack.

It’s so surprising it seems funny now. I assumed I was just tired from work.

I opted to see my doctor Wednesday and was told I was suffering from heat exhaustion.

I had precautionary blood work done the next day to make sure all is normal. But not without first experiencing more heat-related fallout: they couldn’t draw blood from either arm because I was still slightly dehydrated. Unfortunately that meant they took it through my hands, which wasn’t pleasant.

The great news is, I’m fine. I spent two days inside and my blood pressure Friday was down to 128/72.

I will be more cautious going forward until this heat wave passes and have developed a plan with my fellow photographer, Ross Franklin.

In extreme heat, we will limit ourselves to 30– to 40-minute windows of photography before breaking to cool down. We’re keeping chilled, damp towels in a cooler in our cars and about two to three times as much water and Gatorade as we would have normally.

A separate cooler with plastic ice packs holds our cameras when we’re not shooting pictures. We have extra dry towels for sweat. We also plan to send all our images to the newsroom from inside a cooled building, not from our cars as we usually do.

And if we really feel bad, we promise to simply call it quits. No exceptions.

We typically fight through not feeling well on assignments — but not with heat.

It’s too risky. 
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