Category: Silicon Valley

Microsoft says hackers used a flaw in its code to steal emails from government agencies and other clients. 

In a blog post published Friday, the company said that Chinese hackers were able to take advantage of “a validation error in Microsoft code” to carry out their cyberespionage campaign. 

The blog provided the most thorough explanation yet for a hack that rattled both the cybersecurity industry and China-U.S. relations. Beijing has denied any involvement in the spying. 

Microsoft and U.S. officials said on Wednesday night that since May, Chinese state-linked hackers had been secretly accessing email accounts at about 25 organizations. U.S. officials said those included at least two U.S. government agencies. 

Microsoft has not identified any of the hack’s targets, but several victims have acknowledged they were affected, including personnel at the State Department, the Commerce Department and the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in a meeting in Jakarta on Thursday that any action that targets the U.S. government, U.S. companies or American citizens “is of deep concern to us, and that we will take appropriate action to hold those responsible accountable,” according to a senior State Department official. 

Microsoft’s own security practices have come under scrutiny, with officials and lawmakers calling on the Redmond, Washington-based company to make its top level of digital auditing, also called logging, available to all its customers free of charge.
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Countries at this year’s U.N. climate summit must face up to how far behind they are on climate change targets and agree to a plan to get on track, the United Arab Emirates’ incoming president of the event said on Thursday. 

In a speech laying out the country’s plan for the COP28 summit, to be held in Dubai in November, Sultan al-Jaber said the event should also yield international goals to triple renewable energy as well as double energy savings and hydrogen production by 2030. 

“We must be brutally honest about the gaps that need to be filled, the root causes and how we got to this place here today,” Jaber told a meeting in Brussels of climate ministers and officials from countries including Brazil, China, the United States and European Union members. 

“Then we must apply a far-reaching, forward-looking, action-oriented and comprehensive response to address these gaps practically,” he said. 

The COP28 summit will be the first formal assessment of countries’ progress towards the Paris Agreement’s target to limit climate change to 1.5 Celsius (34.7 Fahrenheit) of warming. The current policies and pledges of countries would fail to meet that goal.  

“We can’t afford a meaningless stocktake. This is about accountability of our previous, present and future updates,” Canadian Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault told Thursday’s meeting. 

The assessment at COP28 — known as the Global Stocktake — will increase pressure on major emitters to update their actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

Jaber said all governments should update their emissions-cutting targets by September, which the UAE did last month.  

Fund for poorer countries  

The UAE, a major OPEC oil exporter, has been under pressure to lay out its vision for the COP28 summit and guide preparations among the nearly 200 countries expected to attend. 

A round of preparatory United Nations climate negotiations in June yielded little progress. Countries spent days wrangling over issues including whether to even discuss urgent CO2-cutting action — known in U.N. jargon as the “mitigation work program.” 

Jaber, who is also the head of UAE state-owned oil company ADNOC, said the COP28 summit also aims to establish a promised fund to compensate poorer countries where climate change is inflicting irreparable damage.  

Countries finally agreed at last year’s U.N. climate talks to form the “loss and damage” fund, but left the toughest decisions for later, including which countries should pay into it. 

Finance has dominated recent climate negotiations, as poorer nations demand greater support to both invest in low-carbon energy and cope with spiraling costs from droughts, floods and rising sea levels. 

Jaber called for a “comprehensive transformation” of international financial institutions to unlock more capital to tackle climate change — echoing ideas put forward by climate-vulnerable nations including the Barbados-led “Bridgetown Initiative” to reform multilateral finance institutions.  
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Health care providers in Zimbabwe are leaving the country in droves for better work abroad. The government is scrambling to fill the gaps by better equipping hospitals, as Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, Zimbabwe.
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An Indian rocket hurtled into space Friday to land a robotic rover on an unexplored area of the moon – a challenging feat India was unable to accomplish on a mission four years ago.   

Only three countries, the U.S., China and Russia, have made what is called a “soft” or “controlled” landing on the lunar surface. If the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, is successful this time, some observers say the mission will establish India’s position as one of the world’s leading space powers.   

Millions around the country watched a live telecast of the launch of the “Chandrayaan-3” spacecraft from Sriharikota in southern India and thousands packed a viewing gallery in the launch site’s vicinity.   

“Congratulations India. Chandrayaan-3 has started its journey toward the moon,” ISRO Chairman Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said, after the launch, as scientists at the mission control center clapped and shook hands.   

The mission’s real test will come some 40 days from now when the lander equipped with a robotic rover will separate from the main spacecraft to land on the lunar surface on August 23 or August 24.  

“This remarkable mission will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is visiting France, tweeted ahead of the launch.  

Friday’s launch by the ISRO is the country’s first major space mission since the failed attempt in 2019 when scientists lost contact with the lander minutes before it was scheduled to descend on the lunar surface. It was later established that it had crashed.   

Chandrayaan-3 also will deploy a rover near the lunar South Pole, where it is expected to run a series of experiments for 14 days focusing on the composition of lunar soil and rocks. Chandrayaan means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit.  

India is hoping to become the first country to conduct studies of the South Pole, where no mission has ventured, and which scientists say has a different geology from the equatorial regions of the lunar surface.  

There is an expectation the South Pole has ice deposits in the depths of craters, as well as minerals.    

Scientists at the ISRO expressed optimism about Chandrayaan-3 achieving its goal of a “soft landing,” saying the mistakes that led to the failure of the previous mission have been rectified.  

The Chandrayaan-3 mission is crucial for India — even though its space program is much more modest than that of countries like the U.S. and China, the country wants to showcase its technological prowess amid its ambitions to be seen as an emerging global power.  

“It is indeed a moment of glory for India and a moment of destiny for all of us,” India’s minister for science and technology, Jitendra Prasad, said after the lift-off of the spacecraft.   

“Entering a small elite club, or becoming one of the pioneers of certain efforts, such as those in space, will continue to be a major indicator of skill, talent, capability and sound organization that decision-makers are able to utilize and leverage in politics,” Tomas Hrozensky of the European Space Policy Institute told VOA in emailed comments.    

India’s space program, built largely on its own proprietary technology, has long been a source of pride for the country. Its first mission to the moon helped establish the presence of water on the moon.

Although the second mission was unsuccessful in making a landing, it placed an orbiter around the moon that continues to relay data. An unmanned mission to Mars in 2013 marked the country’s first interplanetary mission. The ISRO is now developing a spacecraft to take astronauts into orbit, probably in 2025.    

India has also for decades launched its own satellites and those of other countries with its space program focusing heavily on low-cost access to space.  

Experts also say the price tag of India’s current mission, $75 million, also underlines India’s prowess in conducting space exploration at a modest cost.    

Exploring the moon has reemerged on the radar of many countries in recent years. The U.S. space agency NASA has announced that a four-member astronaut crew will carry out a planned test mission around the moon next year. In addition, India and the U.S. are collaborating to send an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station next year.  
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Leading global health agencies report consumers who limit their intake of aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are at little risk of getting cancer.

“The occasional level of exposure, which is far from the acceptable daily intake, is safe and is not producing appreciable health risk,” said Francesco Branca, World Health Organization director, department of nutrition and food safety.

“The problem is for high consumers and the problem is for situations where consumption is shifting towards high consumers,” he said. “But I think our results do not indicate that occasional consumption should pose a risk to most consumers.”

Aspartame, an artificial sweetener, has been widely used in a variety of foods and beverages, including diet soda, chewing gum, ice cream, and breakfast cereal, since the 1980s.

Recent media reports that the WHO’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, was likely to declare aspartame carcinogenic for humans created an uproar among stalwart dieters hooked on these low-fat products.

Two scientific bodies conducted independent but complementary reviews to assess the potential carcinogenic hazard and other health risks associated with aspartame consumption.

Mary Schubauer-Berigan, head of the IARC monographs program, says her agency’s task was to identify the possible hazards, not the risks associated with aspartame.

“It is very important to note that this was a hazard identification and not a risk assessment,” she said. “A hazard identification aims to identify the specific properties of the agent and their potential to cause harm, that is the potential of an agent to cause cancer,” she said, noting it does not reflect the risk of developing cancer at a given exposure level. “So, the working group classified aspartame as possibly carcinogenic to humans.”

Schubauer-Berigan said the IARC Group 2C classification was made based on limited evidence from three studies for a type of liver cancer in humans, adding that there also was limited evidence for cancer in experimental animals.

“Despite consistent positive findings in the three studies, the working group concluded that chance, bias, and confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence. And, thus, they concluded that the evidence was limited,” she said.

The WHO’s Branca said the JECFA, the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives, reviewed the risks associated with aspartame and concluded that “there was no convincing evidence from experimental or human data that aspartame has adverse effects after ingestion within the previously established daily intake of 0-40 milligrams per kilo body weight.”

What this means, he said, is that a person who weighs 70 kilograms can consume 2,800 milligrams of aspartame a day. “If we look at, for example, the contents of aspartame in common sodas, which is between 200 and 300 milligrams per day, that means consuming between nine and 14 cans of these sodas. You can see this is quite a large amount.”

Since the long-range impact of artificial sweeteners is not known, Branca advises people to limit the consumption of sweetened products altogether.

“It is particularly important for young children who will be exposed early enough to a taste adjustment, and they will then basically be on a track to continually consume sweetened products.”

He said a child who weighs 20 kilograms could consume two to three cans of soda laced with artificial sweeteners, which would be within the prescribed acceptable daily intake. However, he warned many children are likely to consume much more.

“You may have families that instead of having water at the table, have a big can of sparkling drinks with sweeteners. That is not good practice,” he said. “So, children may be at a higher risk also because starting the consumption early in life, not only puts you on a track of being accustomed to that taste and levels, but also because we have a really long-term exposure, and I am not sure whether our studies have been able to tell us about the lifelong exposure.”

While companies could reconsider their products, Branca said WHO is not advising food and drink companies to consider replacing aspartame with alternative sweeteners.

“It is not about really looking at new alternatives for the moment. It is about changing the formulation of products and changing the choice of ingredients so that you can have still tasty products without the need to use sweeteners,” he said.

In the meantime, he suggests people consider consuming products that do not contain either free sugars or artificial sweeteners, such as water and fresh fruit that is naturally sweet.
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India is set to launch a spacecraft to the moon Friday.

If successful, it would make India only the fourth country to do so, after the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China.

It will take the $75 million Chandrayaan-3 over a month to reach the moon’s south pole  in August.

The south pole is a special place of interest because scientists believe water is present there.

Chandrayaan-3’s equipment includes a lander to deploy a rover.

Chandrayaan-3 means “moon craft” in Sanskrit.
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The World Health Organization’s cancer agency has deemed the sweetener aspartame — found in diet soda and countless other foods — as a possible cause of cancer, while a separate expert group looking at the same evidence said it still considers the sugar substitute safe in limited quantities.

The differing results of the coordinated reviews were released early Friday in Europe. One came from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a special branch of the WHO. The other report was from an expert panel selected by WHO and another U.N. group, the Food and Agriculture Organization, based in Rome.

The Lyon, France-based cancer agency periodically reviews potential cancer hazards but doesn’t determine how likely they are to cause cancer in their evaluations, which range from possibly carcinogenic to probably to cancer-causing.

Aspartame joins a category with more than 300 other possible cancer-causing agents, including things like aloe vera extract, Asian-style pickled vegetables and carpentry work.

The guidance on use of the sweetener, though, isn’t changing.

“We’re not advising consumers to stop consuming [aspartame] altogether,” said WHO’s nutrition director, Dr. Francesco Branca. “We’re just advising a bit of moderation.”

Here’s a look at the announcement:

What is aspartame?

Aspartame is a low-calorie artificial sweetener that is about 200 times sweeter than sugar. It is a white, odorless powder and the world’s most widely used artificial sweetener.

Aspartame is authorized as a food additive in Europe and the U.S. and is used in numerous foods, drinks such as Diet Coke, desserts, chewing gum, medications including cough drops, and foods intended to help with weight loss. It’s in tabletop sweeteners sold as Equal, Sugar Twin and NutraSweet.

Aspartame was approved in 1974 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with an acceptable daily intake of 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. According to the FDA, a person weighing 60 kilograms (132 pounds) would need to consume about 75 aspartame packets to reach that level.

U.N. experts evaluated the safety of aspartame in 1981 and set the safe daily limit slightly lower, at 40 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram.

David Spiegelhalter, an emeritus statistics professor at Cambridge University, said the guidance means that “average people are safe to drink up to 14 cans of diet drink a day … and even this ‘acceptable daily limit’ has a large built-in safety factor.”

What did the two groups say?

WHO’s cancer agency, the IARC, convened its expert group in June to assess the potential of aspartame to cause cancer. It based its conclusion that aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic” on studies in humans and animals that found limited evidence that the compound may be linked to liver cancer.

In a separate evaluation, experts assembled by WHO and the food agency updated their risk assessment, including reviewing the acceptable daily intake. They concluded there was “no convincing evidence” at the currently consumed levels that aspartame is dangerous; their guidelines regarding acceptable levels of consumption were unchanged.

The announcements came weeks after the WHO said that non-sugar sweeteners don’t help with weight loss and could lead to increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and early death in adults.

Should I be concerned about getting too much?

No, as long as you don’t exceed the guidelines. The FDA said scientific evidence continues to support the agency’s conclusion that aspartame is “safe for the general population,” when used within limits.

Almost any substance can be dangerous in excessive amounts, said David Klurfeld, a nutrition expert at the Indiana University School of Public Health in Bloomington.

“The dose makes the poison,” said Klurfeld, who previously served on an IARC panel. “Even essential nutrients like vitamin A, iron and water will kill you within hours if too much is consumed.”

What should consumers do?

WHO’s Branca said it was acceptable for people to consume a “pretty large” amount of aspartame without suffering any ill effects. “High consumers” might want to cut back, he said.

Dr. Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which previously nominated aspartame for IARC review, said there’s an easy choice for consumers.

“At least when it comes to beverages, our message is your best choice is to drink water or an unsweetened beverage,” he said.

The IARC has previously classified processed meat like hot dogs and bacon as cancer-causing, noting in particular its link to colon cancer. That move surprised others in the scientific community — the U.K.’s biggest cancer charity reassured Britons that eating a bacon sandwich every so often wouldn’t do them much harm.

What does this mean for the food and beverage industry?

Food and beverage producers say there’s no reason to avoid products with aspartame.

“There is a broad consensus in the scientific and regulatory community that aspartame is safe,” the American Beverage Association said in a statement.

WHO’s Branca said the agency advises food manufacturers in general to “use ingredients that do not require the addition of too much sugar.” After the latest assessments of aspartame, Branca said that using sweeteners “is probably not the way forward.”
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HIV/AIDS can end as a public health threat by 2030 if nations can muster the political will and critical financial support to completely defeat it, a new report published Thursday says. The deadly disease has killed 40.4 million people since the start of the epidemic in 1981.

“The data in this report show that the path that ends AIDS is not a mystery, but it is a choice. It is a political and a financial choice,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS.

“The report shows that HIV responses can succeed when they are anchored in strong political leadership,” she said.

The report released by UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS program, finds that in 2022, 39 million people worldwide were living with HIV, 1.3 million became newly infected and 630,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses. 

While new infections have been declining globally over the past 10 to 12 years, rates remain high in several regions. Data show that two-thirds of all people living with HIV are found in sub-Saharan Africa, the hardest-hit region in the world. Other heavily infected regions include Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The report says women and girls are still disproportionately affected, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Every single week, 4,000 adolescent girls and young women were newly infected with HIV globally; 3,100 of those are from sub-Saharan Africa. It is a sub-Saharan crisis,”  Byanyima said.

At the same time, she noted that eastern and southern Africa, the region with the highest burden of HIV, is also where resources have been well-deployed and have achieved positive results.

“We see that since 2010 to now, new infections have been reduced by 57 percent. It is the region with the sharpest decline in new infections,” she said.

She said that since 2000, millions of lives have been saved through antiretroviral therapy. The number of people receiving this life-saving treatment worldwide “has risen four times since 2010 from 7.7 million to 29.8 million last year,” Byanyima said.

Another notable success has been in nearly doubling the number of pregnant and breast-feeding women living with HIV who were accessing antiretroviral treatment in 2022. Byanyima said that number has risen from 46% in 2010 to 82% last year.

“This has led to a reduction of 58 percent in new infections among children over the past 12 years,” she said.

Still, Byanyima noted that significant issues remain to be resolved before the prospect of ending AIDS can be realized. She said it is critical for governments to reach out to society’s most vulnerable, marginalized groups, including men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender women, drug users and prisoners.

“Tackling inequalities is key to making progress,” she said, noting that several countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, the Cook Islands, Barbados, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Singapore, have decriminalized same-sex relations.

“Unfortunately, Uganda, my country, took the opposite direction, and that is not positive,” she said, referring to the country’s new anti-LGBTQ law that includes the death penalty.  

She added that stigmatizing people serves to drive the infection underground where it can blossom and grow.

The report highlights several countries as diverse as Botswana and Cambodia, as well as Eswatini, Rwanda and Tanzania, that have made considerable progress toward ending HIV/AIDS.

Sheila Tiou, Botswana’s former health minister and co-chair of the Global HIV Prevention Coalition, said the countries have succeeded in doing this “by scaling up proven interventions, addressing inequalities, enabling communities, and investing in resources.” 

“We have already heard about countries that have succeeded, but countries like Cameroon, Nepal, Zimbabwe have achieved major reductions in new HIV infections thanks to focused and scaled-up comprehensive prevention programs,” she said.

But she underscored that inequalities and inequities are blocking quicker and wider access in protecting people against HIV.

“Doing the right things will drastically improve the health and well-being of societies, it will reduce HIV vulnerabilities, and indeed, it will avert new HIV infections,” she said.

Tiou said AIDS can be ended if world leaders are courageous, tackle stigma and discrimination, empower and work with communities, and invest in what is needed.

“The data is clear. The evidence is all there,” she said.

Byanyima echoed these sentiments, emphasizing the opportunity for successfully ending the epidemic is dependent upon action.

“The facts and figures shared in this report do not show that as a world, we are already on the path.”

However, she said they show that the world can get on the right path “to save millions of lives and protect the health of everyone by putting a stop to the world’s deadliest pandemic.”
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U.S. officials have approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, which will let American women and girls buy contraceptive medication from the same aisle as aspirin and eyedrops.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it cleared Perrigo’s once-a-day Opill to be sold without a prescription, making it the first such medication to be moved out from behind the pharmacy counter. The company won’t start shipping the pill until early next year, and there will be no age restrictions on sales.

Hormone-based pills have long been the most common form of birth control in the U.S., used by tens of millions of women since the 1960s. Until now, all of them required a prescription.

Medical societies and women’s health groups have pushed for wider access, noting that an estimated 45% of the 6 million annual pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended. Teens and girls, women of color and those with low incomes report greater hurdles in getting prescriptions and picking them up.

Some of the challenges can include paying for a doctor’s visit, getting time off from work and finding child care.

“This is really a transformation in access to contraceptive care,” said Kelly Blanchard, president of Ibis Reproductive Health, a non-profit group that supported the approval. “Hopefully this will help people overcome those barriers that exist now.”

Ireland-based Perrigo did not announce a price. Over-the-counter medicines are generally much cheaper than prescriptions, but they aren’t covered by insurance.

Many common medications have made the switch to non-prescription status in recent decades, including drugs for pain, heartburn and allergies.

Perrigo submitted years of research to FDA to show that women could understand and follow instructions for using the pill. Thursday’s approval came despite some concerns by FDA scientists about the company’s results, including whether women with certain underlying medical conditions would understand they shouldn’t take the drug.

FDA’s action only applies to Opill. It’s in an older class of contraceptives, sometimes called minipills, that contain a single synthetic hormone and generally carry fewer side effects than more popular combination hormone pills.

But women’s health advocates hope the decision will pave the way for more over-the-counter birth control options and, eventually, for abortion pills to do the same.

That said, FDA’s decision has no relation to the ongoing court battles over the abortion pill mifepristone. The studies in Perrigo’s FDA application began years before the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, which has upended abortion access across the U.S.

With some states curtailing women’s reproductive rights, the FDA has faced pressure from Democratic politicians, health advocates and medical professionals to ease access to birth control. The American Medical Association and the leading professional society for obstetricians and gynecologists backed Opill’s application for over-the-counter status.

An outside panel of FDA advisers unanimously voted in favor of the switch at a hearing in May where dozens of public speakers called for Opill’s approval.

Dyvia Huitron was among those who presented, explaining how she has been unable to get prescription birth control more than three years after becoming sexually active. The 19-year-old University of Alabama student said she still isn’t comfortable getting a prescription because the school’s health system reports medical exams and medications to parents.

“My parents did not let me go on the pill,” Huitron said in a recent interview. “There was just a lot of cultural stigma around being sexually active before you’re married.”

While she uses other forms of contraception, “I would have much preferred to have birth control and use these additional methods to ensure that I was being as safe as possible.”

Huitron spoke on behalf of Advocates for Youth, one of the dozens of groups that have pushed to make prescription contraceptives more accessible.

The groups helped fund some of the studies submitted for Opill and they encouraged HRA Pharma, later acquired by Perrigo, to file its application with the FDA.

Advocates were particularly interested in Opill because it raised fewer safety concerns. The pill was first approved in the U.S. five decades ago but hasn’t been marketed here since 2005.

“It’s been around a long time and we have a large amount of data supporting that this pill is safe and effective for over-the-counter use,” said Blanchard, of Ibsis Reproductive Health.

Newer birth control pills typically combine two hormones, estrogen and progestin, which can help make periods lighter and more regular. But their use carries a heightened risk of blood clots and they shouldn’t be used by women at risk for heart problems, such as those who smoke and are over 35.

Opill has only progestin, which prevents pregnancy by blocking sperm from reaching the cervix. It must be taken around the same time daily to be most effective.

In its internal review published in May, the FDA noted that some women in Perrigo’s study had trouble understanding the drug’s labeling information. In particular, the instructions warn that women with a history of breast cancer should not take the pill because it could spur tumor growth. And women who have unusual vaginal bleeding are instructed to talk to a doctor first, because it could indicate a medical problem.

Perrigo executives said the company will spend the rest of the year manufacturing the pill and its packaging so it can be available in stores nationwide and online by early next year.
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It is possible to end AIDS by 2030 if countries demonstrate the political will to invest in prevention and treatment and adopt non-discriminatory laws, the United Nations said on Thursday.

In 2022, an estimated 39 million people around the world were living with HIV, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS program. HIV can progress to AIDS if left untreated.

“We have a solution if we follow the leadership of countries that have forged strong political commitment to put people first and invest in evidence-based HIV prevention and treatment programs,” UNAIDS said in a report published on Thursday.

It said an effective response to HIV also meant adopting non-discriminatory laws and empowering community networks, among other initiatives. People living with HIV or AIDS in many countries face stigma, discrimination and violence.

“Progress has been strongest in the countries and regions that have the most financial investments, such as in eastern and southern Africa, where new HIV infections have been reduced by 57% since 2010,” the report said.

It added, however, that there has been a steep increase in new infections in eastern Europe and central Asia, as well as in the Middle East and North Africa.

“These trends are due primarily to a lack of HIV prevention services for marginalized and key populations and the barriers posed by punitive laws and social discrimination,” it said.

Last year, 1.3 million people became newly infected with HIV and 630,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses, according to UNAIDS.
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Warmer, drier weather because of an earlier-than-usual El Nino is expected to hamper rice production across Asia, hitting global food security in a world still reeling from the impacts of the war in Ukraine. 

An El Nino is a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific that shifts global weather patterns, and climate change is making them stronger. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this one in June, a month or two earlier than it usually does. This gives it time to grow. Scientists say there’s a one in four chance it will expand to supersized levels. 

That’s bad news for rice farmers, particularly in Asia where 90% of the world’s rice is grown and eaten, since a strong El Nino typically means less rainfall for the thirsty crop. 

Past El Ninos have resulted in extreme weather, ranging from drought to floods. 

There are already “alarm bells,” said Abdullah Mamun, a research analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute or IFPRI, pointing to rising rice prices due to shortfalls in production. The average price of 5% broken white rice in June in Thailand was about 16% higher than last year’s average. 

Global stocks have run low since last year, in part due to devastating floods in Pakistan, a major rice exporter. This year’s El Nino may amplify other woes for rice-producing countries, such as reduced availability of fertilizer due to the war and some countries’ export restrictions on rice. Myanmar, Cambodia and Nepal are particularly vulnerable, warned a recent report by research firm BMI. 

“There is uncertainty over the horizon,” Mamun said. 

Recently, global average temperatures have hit record highs. Monsoon rains over India were lighter than usual by the end of June. Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday asked his ministers to anticipate a long dry season. And in the Philippines, authorities are carefully managing water to protect vulnerable areas. 

Some countries are bracing for food shortages. Indonesia was among the worst hit by India’s decision to restrict rice exports last year after less rain fell than expected and a historic heat wave scorched wheat, raising worries that domestic food prices would surge. 

Last month, India said it would send more than 1 million metric tons (1.1 million U.S. tons) to Indonesia, Senegal and Gambia to help them meet “their food security needs.” 

Challenges finding fertilizer

Fertilizer is another crucial variable. Last year China, a major producer, restricted exports to keep domestic prices in check after fertilizers were among exports affected by sanctions on Russian ally Belarus for human rights violations. Sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine don’t target fertilizers but the war has disrupted shipments of the three main chemical fertilizers: potash, phosphorus, and nitrogen. 

Bangladesh found suppliers in Canada to make up for lost potash shipments from Belarus, but many countries are still scrambling to find new sources. 

Farmers such as Abu Bakar Siddique, who cultivates 1.2 hectares (3 acres) in northern Bangladesh, had enough fertilizer to keep his yields steady last year. But less rainfall meant he had to rely more on electric pumps for his winter harvest at a time of power shortages due to war-related shortfalls of diesel and coal. 

“This increased my costs,” he said. 

Attempting to adapt

Each El Nino is different, but historical trends suggest scarce rainfall in South and Southeast Asia will parch the soil, causing cascading effects in coming years, said Beau Damen, a natural resources officer with the Food and Agriculture Organization based in Bangkok, Thailand. Some countries, like Indonesia, may be more vulnerable in the early stages of the phenomenon, he said. 

Kusnan, a farmer in Indonesia’s East Java, said rice farmers there have tried to anticipate that by planting earlier so that when the El Nino hits, the rice might be ready for harvest and not need so much water. Kusnan, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said he hoped high yields last year would help offset any losses this year. 

Widodo, the Indonesian leader, stressed the need to manage water in coming weeks, warning that various factors — including export restrictions and fertilizer shortages — could combine with the El Nino to “make this a particularly damaging event.” 

Baldev Singh, a 52-year-old farmer in northern India’s Punjab state, is already worried. He typically sows rice from late June until mid-July, then needs the monsoon rains to flood the paddies. Less than a tenth of the usual rainfall had come by early this month, and then floods ravaged northern India, battering young crops that had just been planted. 

The government has encouraged Punjab farmers to grow rice along with their traditional wheat crops since the 1960s to improve India’s food security, even though farmers like Singh don’t typically eat rice and irrigation of rice fields has drained the area’s aquifers. But he keeps growing it, counting on the certainty of government purchases at fixed prices. 

With rain scarce, Singh may need to dig wells. Last year, he dug down 200 feet (60 meters) to find water. 

“Rice has been our ruin … I don’t know what will happen in the future,” he said. 

 
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Hackers, possibly linked to China’s intelligence agencies, are being blamed for a monthlong campaign that breached some unclassified U.S. email systems, allowing them to access to a small number of accounts at the U.S. State Department and a handful of other organizations.

Microsoft first announced the intrusion Tuesday, attributing the attack on its Outlook email service to Chinese threat actors it dubbed Storm-0558.

The company said in a blog post that the hackers managed to forge a Microsoft authentication token and gain access to the email accounts of 25 organizations, both in the U.S. and around the globe, starting in mid-May.

The company said access was cut off after the breach was discovered a month later.

“We assess this adversary is focused on espionage, such as gaining access to email systems for intelligence collection,” Microsoft said. “This type of espionage-motivated adversary seeks to abuse credentials and gain access to data residing in sensitive systems.”

The State Department confirmed Wednesday that it had discovered the breach and had taken “immediate steps” to secure its systems and to notify Microsoft.

Some U.S. officials, however, were hesitant to back Microsoft’s attribution for the attack while saying the U.S. “would make all efforts to impose costs” on whoever was responsible.

“The sophistication of this attack, where actors were able to access mailbox content of victims, is indicative of APT [advanced persistent threat] activity but we are not prepared to discuss attribution at a more specific level,” a senior FBI official told reporters Wednesday, briefing them on the condition of anonymity.

According to senior officials with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the number of U.S. victims of the Microsoft Outlook breach was in the single digits and only a small number of accounts were accessed.

They added that because the breach was detected quickly, the hackers did not have access to any email account for more than a month and never had access to any classified information or systems. In many cases, their access lasted only days.

Still, the officials noted reason for concern.

“The targeting was intentional,” said a senior CISA official who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

“This appears to have been a very targeted, surgical campaign that was not seeking the breadth of access we have seen in other campaigns,” the official added.

Despite the reluctance of some U.S. cyber officials to place the blame on China, there was no hesitation Wednesday from key U.S. lawmakers.

“The Senate Intelligence Committee is closely monitoring what appears to be a significant cybersecurity breach by Chinese intelligence,” Chairman Mark Warner said in a statement.

“It’s clear that the PRC is steadily improving its cyber collection capabilities directed against the U.S. and our allies,” the Virginia Democrat added. “Close coordination between the U.S. government and the private sector will be critical to countering this threat.”

Top U.S. intelligence, security and military officials have long warned about the growing cybersecurity threat posed by China-linked hackers.

Earlier this year, CISA Director Jen Easterly warned China “will almost certainly” employ aggressive cyber operations against the U.S. should tensions between Washington and Beijing get worse.

A separate Defense Department cyber strategy likewise warned of China’s increased investments in military cyber capabilities while also empowering a growing number of cyber proxies. 

But John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google’s Mandiant cybersecurity intelligence operation, said this latest attack showed that the Chinese threat has evolved in a very dangerous way.

“Chinese cyber espionage has come a long way,” Hultquist said in an email. “They have transformed their capability from one that was dominated by broad, loud campaigns that were far easier to detect. They were brash before, but now they are clearly focused on stealth.”

VOA reached out to the Chinese Embassy in Washington about the allegations that Beijing was behind the Microsoft attack.

“China is against cyberattacks of all kinds and has suffered from cyber hacking,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email. “As MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) spokesperson has commented at regular press conference, the source of Microsoft’s claim is information from the U.S. government authorities.”

Liu went on to call the U.S. “the biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief,” saying it was “high time that the U.S. explained its cyberattack activities and stopped spreading disinformation to deflect public attention.”

In its blog post about the latest breach Tuesday, Microsoft said it had managed to repair its systems for all of its customers.

The FBI and CISA on Wednesday separately issued a cybersecurity advisory, urging organizations using Microsoft Exchange Online to take steps to increase their security measures and also their monitoring of their systems to catch any suspicious activity. 
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BEIJING — Employers across much of China were ordered Monday to limit outdoor work due to scorching temperatures, while the east and southwest were warned to prepare for torrential rain as the country struggled with heat, flooding and drought.

Temperatures as high as 40 C (104 F) were reported in cities including Shijiazhuang, southwest of Beijing, the capital. Highs of 35 C (95 F) to 38 C (100 F) were reported in Beijing, Guangzhou in the south, Chongqing in the southwest and Shenyang in the northeast.

The weather agency issued an orange alert, its second-highest warning, for heat across southern China and much of the north and northeast. That requires employers to limit outdoor work, though delivery workers for restaurants and online retailers were still working.

The agriculture ministry warned Sunday that persistent hot weather could damage rice harvests and told local authorities to ensure adequate water supplies to prevent the crop from ripening prematurely.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Water Resources warned the provinces of Shandong on the east coast and Sichuan in the southwest to prepare for heavy rain from Tuesday to Friday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It said multiple rivers were likely to rise above safe levels.

In the central city of Yichang, in Hubei province, heavy rain triggered a landslide Saturday that buried a highway construction site and killed one person. Authorities were searching Monday for seven missing construction workers, Xinhua reported.

Business and schools in Heilongjiang province in the northeast were ordered Monday to close and shut down outdoor electrical equipment after 84 millimeters (3.3 inches) of rain fell in one hour, according to state TV. It said traffic police were ordered to close dangerous road sections.

Tens of thousands of people who were driven out of their homes by earlier flooding moved to shelters in northern, central and southeastern China.

Residents of some cities have moved into underground air raid shelters to escape the heat.

Earth’s average temperature set a new unofficial record high last Thursday, the third such milestone in the hottest week on record.
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The Webb Space Telescope is marking one year of cosmic photographs with one of its best yet: the dramatic close-up of dozens of stars at the moment of birth. 

NASA unveiled the latest snapshot Wednesday, revealing 50 baby stars in a cloud complex 390 light-years away. The region is relatively small and quiet yet full of illuminated gases, jets of hydrogen and even dense cocoons of dust with the delicate beginnings of even more stars. 

“Prepare to be awestruck!” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson tweeted, noting that the image “presents star birth as an impressionistic masterpiece.” 

All of the young stars appear to be no bigger than our sun. Scientists said the breathtaking shot provides the best clarity yet of this brief phase of a star’s life. 

“It’s like a glimpse of what our own system would have looked like billions of years ago when it was forming,” NASA program scientist Eric Smith told The Associated Press. 

“I like to remind people that when this light left, it was roughly 1633. … People were putting Galileo on trial for believing that the Earth goes around the sun, and here we are seeing separate suns and planets forming today,” Smith said. 

This cloud complex, known as Rho Ophiuchi, is the closest star-forming region to Earth and is found in the sky near the border of the constellations Ophiuchus and Scorpius, the serpent-bearer and scorpion. With no stars in the foreground of the photo, NASA noted, the details stand out all the more. Some of the stars display shadows indicating possible planets in the making, according to NASA. 

Webb — the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever launched into space — has been churning out cosmic beauty shots for the past year. The first pictures from the $10 billion infrared telescope were unveiled last July, six months after its liftoff from French Guiana. 

It’s considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting Earth for 33 years. A joint NASA-European Space Agency effort, Webb scans the universe from a more distant perch, 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away.

Still ahead for Webb: Astronomers hope to behold the earliest stars and galaxies of the universe while scouring the cosmos for any hints of life.

“We’ve already been using Webb to look at planets around other stars to see if we can analyze their atmospheres to see if they would be capable of hosting life,” Smith said. “We haven’t found one of them yet, but we’re still only one year into the mission.” 
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The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Tuesday it has extended its probe into Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drugs Ozempic and weight-loss treatment Saxenda, following two reports of suicidal thoughts, to include other drugs in the same class.

The agency began its review on July 3 after Iceland’s health regulator flagged the reports of patients thinking about suicide and one case of thoughts of self-harm after use of Novo Nordisk’s drugs.

There have been issues of suicidal thoughts linked to another class of weight-loss drugs, which have hobbled previous attempts by the drug industry to develop lucrative weight-loss drugs.

Sanofi’s weight-loss drug Acomplia, which never won U.S. approval, was withdrawn in Europe in 2008 after being linked to suicidal thoughts.

The EMA said on Tuesday it will investigate the class of drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, which trigger a feeling of fullness after eating. The review is expected to be completed in November, according to the agency.

Drugmaker Eli Lilly’s shares closed down 3.1%. Its diabetes drug Trulicity also belongs to the same class.

Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy, which contains the active ingredient semaglutide, is also part of the review.

Other GLP-1 drugs include Sanofi’s Suliqua and AstraZeneca’s Bydureon. Both are approved in Europe for treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Sanofi said it has not identified any safety concerns related to “suicidal ideation” from use of its GLP-1 receptor agonist. However, the company has started an investigation and will share all relevant information with the European health regulator.

Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The European health regulator is also investigating GLP-1 drugs for possible risk of thyroid cancer.

 
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Australian scientists say they have developed a special glue that can be used to repair parts of the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef. Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology believe the biodegradable putty has the potential to help the coral recover after it’s been damaged by cyclones, hit by boats or suffered bleaching.

The Great Barrier Reef is arguably Australia’s most valuable natural treasure. It is the world’s largest coral system and faces an array of threats, including climate change, pollution, over-fishing and coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish.

When reefs are damaged by cyclones, or struck by boats, patches of rubble are often left behind.

These can be shifted by waves and currents, preventing the formation of a stable seabed that coral needs to grow. Coral bleaching can also cause reefs to disintegrate. When ocean temperatures are too warm – a consequence of climate change – the coral responds to the heat by expelling the algae that give them their brilliant colors and most of their energy. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead, but it becomes far more fragile.

In a bid to reverse some of that degradation, a team at the Queensland University of Technology has made a reef-binding glue that eventually dissolves away.

Leonie Barner is a professor of chemistry at the Queensland University of Technology. She told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the glue should be a sustainable way to help reefs recover.

“One component that we are using is actually a plant extract. It’s coming from a natural resource, and the other one is a bio-compatible polymer. So, it has no harmful effects on the marine environment. We have tested that in the lab,” said Barner.

However, applying the adhesive putty to large areas is a major challenge. The Great Barrier Reef runs 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeastern coast and spans an area about the size of Japan.

Researchers in Queensland hope that underwater robots could eventually be used to help stick broken pieces of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and other reefs back together.

In the past, researchers tried dropping metal structures and mesh into the ocean to stabilize coral rubble but their use can permanently alter the reef.

Sea trials of the reef-bonding glue are scheduled to start later this month.
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Humanity has etched its way into Earth’s geology, atmosphere and biology with such strength and permanence that a team of scientists figures we have shifted into a new geologic epoch — one of our own creation. It’s called the Anthropocene.

A geologic task force recommends marking this new epoch’s start in the deep, pristine Crawford Lake outside Toronto, Canada, with a “golden spike.” The start of the human epoch is sometime around 1950 to 1954. The specific date will be determined soon, probably by levels of plutonium in new measurements from the bottom of the lake.

“It’s quite clear that the scale of change has intensified unbelievably and that has to be human impact,” said University of Leicester geologist Colin Waters, who chaired the Anthropocene Working Group, which is making the recommendation. “It’s no longer just influencing Earth’s sphere, it’s actually controlling.”

The burning of coal, oil and gas that’s changing Earth’s climate and atmosphere, nuclear bomb detonations spotted in soil around the globe, plastics and nitrogen from fertilizers added on land, and dramatic changes to species that make up the rest of the Earth characterize the new epoch, scientists said.

The idea of the Anthropocene was proposed at a science conference more than 20 years ago by the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen. Teams of scientists have debated the issue for decades.

A special committee was set up to examine whether the designation was needed, when it would start and where a golden spike would be placed to commemorate the start. Such spikes commemorate new geologic time periods across the Earth.

Distinct and multiple signals starting around 1950 in Crawford Lake show that “the effects of humans overwhelm the Earth system,” said Francine McCarthy, a committee member who specializes in that site as an Earth sciences professor at Brock University in Canada.

Because Crawford Lake is 24 meters (79 feet) deep but just under 2,400 square meters (25,800 square feet) in area, the layers on the lake bottom are pristine, showing what’s in the air and on Earth each year, scientists said.

“The remarkably preserved annual record of deposition in Crawford Lake is truly amazing,” said U.S. National Academies of Sciences President Marcia McNutt, who is not part of the committee. “It is just as important to the beginning of an era dominated by one category of Earth species as it is to mark the end.”

The Anthropocene — derived from the Greek terms for “human” and “new” — shows the power and the hubris of humankind, several scientists told The Associated Press.

“The hubris is in imagining that we are in control,” former U.S. White House science adviser John Holdren, who was not part of the working group of scientists and disagrees with its proposed start date, suggesting it should be much earlier. “The reality is that our power to transform the environment has far exceeded our understanding of the consequences and our capacity to change course.”

Jurgen Renn, who directs the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and was not part of the study group, said humans also “need that power, our knowledge, our technologies, but also our capacities of making better societies” to lessen and adapt to the worst consequences of our actions.

This puts the power of humans in a somewhat similar class with the meteorite that crashed into Earth 66 million years ago killing off dinosaurs, starting the Cenozoic Era and what is sometimes called the age of mammals. But that meteorite started a whole new era, and scientists are now proposing humans started a new epoch, which is a much smaller geologic time period.

Geologists measure time in eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages. They propose we have moved from the Holocene Epoch, which started about 11,700 years ago at the end of an ice age, to the Anthropocene Epoch.

It also starts a new age. It’s named Crawfordian, after the lake chosen as the starting point, and ends the Meghalayan Age that started 4,200 years ago, Waters said.

The proposal needs to be approved by three different groups of geologists and will ultimately need to be signed off at during a major conference next year.

The reason geologists didn’t make it a bigger time period change is that the current Quaternary Period is based on permanent ice on Earth’s poles, which still exists. But in a few hundred years, if climate change continues and those disappear, it may be time to change that, Waters said.

“If you know your Greek tragedies, you know power, hubris and tragedy go hand in hand,” said Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes, a working group member. “If we don’t address the harmful aspects of human activities, most obviously disruptive climate change, we are headed for tragedy.”
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U.S. tech titan Mark Zuckerberg has plunged into a high-stakes game of brinkmanship with the European Union by withholding his new Threads app from users in Europe, but analysts say he will struggle to win the fight.

Threads, billed as the killer of Twitter, a platform that has tumbled into chaos under the leadership of mercurial tycoon Elon Musk, has added more than 100 million users in its first week in app stores.

But Zuckerberg’s firm Meta said it could not be released in Europe because of “regulatory uncertainty” around the Digital Markets Act, an antitrust regulation that will not come into force until next year.

“The reason they gave made me laugh,” said Diego Naranjo, head of policy at campaign group European Digital Rights.

“The regulation is not uncertain, it’s very certain, it’s just that Meta doesn’t like it.” 

His theory is that Meta will give Threads to the rest of the world and Europeans will become so vexed at missing out that they will pressure the EU to water down the DMA.

Naranjo, for one, thinks the ploy will fail.

But either way, the rest of the big tech platforms will be glued to their screens as this fight could shape the future regulatory landscape in Europe for all of them.

‘Fatal’ blow

Meta and the rest are already regularly in trouble with EU regulators over their data gathering and retention policies.

They struggle to keep to the terms of Europe’s mammoth five-year-old data privacy regulation (GDPR).

When the DMA was announced, their reaction was muted as it seemed to be about business and competition, a simpler topic for them though not without pitfalls.

The DMA bans the biggest tech firms from favoring their own platforms, particularly problematic for the latest launch as Threads and Instagram accounts are linked.

But the DMA’s Article 5.2 contained a bombshell: the firms will be banned from transferring user data across platforms unless they get consent.

Berin Szoka, president of the pro-business U.S. think tank TechFreedom, said the DMA’s rules would require Meta to ask for the consent of someone’s Instagram contacts before their data could be transferred to Threads.

“In practice, this could prove fatal to Threads’ rollout,” he said, as the network effect would be dead on arrival.

“I don’t really see a good way out here for Meta.”

Naranjo has little sympathy for Meta, saying the European embargo was just a “political push” by the firm against the EU.

“We will see who loses more,” he said. “My guess is that Meta will lose more from not having 450 million potential customers on their network.”

‘Question of time’

The European Consumer Group (BEUC) said the Threads issue showed the DMA doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

“The DMA does not stand in the way of new products or innovation,” said the group’s competition specialist Vanessa Turner.

“It creates an environment for innovation from more competitors and at the same time protects consumers.”

Meta has left the door open for a Threads launch in Europe and few expect it to maintain its embargo indefinitely.

European law expert Alexandre de Streel said big tech firms would probably be hammering out compliance issues with the EU over the coming months.

“I think it’s more a question of time to understand the scope of the legislation and have a dialogue with the commission,” he said.

But Szoka suggested the EU might be about to get a dose of unintended consequences.

“It would be particularly sad if DMA shields Twitter from competition,” he said.

Meta, he argued, had committed to making Threads compatible with its competitors, adding: “That’s something Twitter has only talked about.” 
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