Monthly Archives: May 2019

Bill Nye’s blowtorch talk on climate change

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Science popularizer Bill Nye told viewers of a popular American late-night show that Earth is “on [expletive] fire”, while lighting a globe with a blowtorch!

During his appearance on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” on May 12, Nye used frank language to talk to millennials about the impacts of global warming on Earth.

“By the end of this century, if temperatures keep rising, the average temperature on Earth could go up another 4 to 8 degrees,” Nye said to Oliver. (Nye was referring to degrees Celsius; the equivalent change in Fahrenheit is roughly 7 to 14 degrees). “What I’m saying is, the planet’s on [expletive] fire.”

He explained that addressing climate change means making tough choices in our daily lives to reduce carbon emissions, which are caused by activities such as driving vehicles or burning coal. These emissions produce greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere — warming the planet up, causing ocean levels to rise as glaciers melt, and increasing the severity of hurricanes and storms.

Nye, adding a few more expletives in his explanation, said none of these options to address global warming come free. So, he urged his viewers to grow up and make tough choices. “I didn’t mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12, but you’re adults now. This is an actual crisis — got it?”

Nye is best known for more family-friendly content, such as PBS’s “Bill Nye the Science Guy” in the 1990s and, more recently, the Netflix series “Bill Nye Saves the World.”

[Space]

1 in 7 of all babies born worldwide too small

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More than 20 million babies were born with a low birthweight (less than 2500g / 5.5 pounds) in 2015—around one in seven of all births worldwide according to the first-ever estimates documenting this major health challenge. These findings and more are documented in a new research paper developed by experts from the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, published in The Lancet Global Health.

More than 80% of the world’s 2.5 million newborns who die every year are of low birthweight. Those low birthweight babies who survive have a greater risk of stunting, and developmental and physical ill health later in life, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“Low birthweight is a complex clinical entity…,” says co-author Dr Mercedes de Onis from the Department of Nutrition at WHO. “This is why reducing low birthweight requires an understanding of the underlying causes in a given country. For example, in Southern Asia a large proportion of low birthweight babies are born at term but with intrauterine growth restriction, which is associated with maternal undernutrition, including maternal stunting.

“Conversely, preterm birth is the major contributor to low birthweight in settings with many adolescent pregnancies, high prevalence of infection, or where pregnancy is associated with high levels of fertility treatment and caesarean sections (like in USA and Brazil). Understanding and tackling these underlying causes in high-burden countries should be a priority.”

Affordable, accessible and appropriate health-care is critical for preventing and treating low birthweight. Reductions in death, illness and disability in newborn babies will only be achieved if pregnancy care is fully integrated with appropriate care for low birthweight babies.

[World Health Organization]

Carbon dioxide levels reach highest in human history

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Over the weekend, the climate system sounded simultaneous alarms. Near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia, the temperature surged to 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius). Meanwhile, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eclipsed 415 parts per million for the first time in human history.

By themselves, these are just data points. But taken together with so many indicators of an altered atmosphere and rising temperatures, they blend into the unmistakable portrait of human-induced climate change.

Saturday’s steamy 84-degree reading was posted in Arkhangelsk, Russia, where the average high temperature is around 54 this time of year. In Koynas, a rural area to the east of Arkhangelsk, it was even hotter on Sunday, soaring to 87 degrees (31 Celsius). Many locations in Russia, from the Kazakhstan border to the White Sea, set record-high temperatures over the weekend, some 30 to 40 degrees (around 20 Celsius) above average. The warmth also bled west into Finland, which hit 77 degrees (25 Celsius) Saturday, the country’s warmest temperature of the season so far.

Meanwhile, in Greenland, the ice sheet’s melt season began about a month early. In Alaska, several rivers saw winter ice break up on their earliest dates on record.

Data from the Japan Meteorological Agency show April was the second warmest on record for the entire planet.

These changes all have occurred against the backdrop of unremitting increases in carbon dioxide, which has now crossed another symbolic threshold. Saturday’s carbon dioxide measurement of 415 parts per million at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory is the highest in at least 800,000 years and probably over 3 million years. Carbon dioxide levels have risen by nearly 50 percent since the Industrial Revolution.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that, along with the rise of several other such heat-trapping gases, is the primary cause of climate warming in recent decades, scientists have concluded.

Eighteen of the 19 warmest years on record for the planet have occurred since 2000, and we keep observing these highly unusual and often record-breaking high temperatures. They won’t stop soon, but cuts to greenhouse emissions would eventually slow them down.

[The Washington Post]

Over 90,000 Nigerian refugees in Cameroon

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Officials from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said about 90,000 Nigerian refugees in neighboring Cameroon “are safe” and will soon return, be airlifted by the Nigerian Air Force.

The refugees, mostly from Borno State in the northeast of the country, were displaced by the unending Boko Haram insurgency.

The Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria has led to about 100,000 deaths since 2009, according to the Borno State Government.

The terror group, which has been largely decimated since 2015, seeks to impose strict Islamic law in Northern Nigeria.

[Premium Times]

More than one million people in Gaza – half of the population – may not have enough food by June!

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Unless UNRWA secures at least an additional US$ 60 million by June, their ability to continue providing food to more than 1 million Palestine refugees in Gaza, including some 620,000 abject poor – those who cannot cover their basic food needs and who have to survive on US$ 1.6 per day – and nearly 390,000 absolute poor – those who survive on about US$ 3.5 per day – will be severely challenged.

“This is a near ten-fold increase caused by the blockade that lead to the closure of Gaza and its disastrous impact on the local economy, the successive conflicts that razed entire neighborhoods and public infrastructure to the ground, and the ongoing internal Palestinian political crisis that started in 2007 with the arrival of Hamas to power in Gaza,” said Matthias Schmale, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza.

Moreover, the tragic death of 195 Palestinians – including 14 students from UNRWA schools and the long-lasting physical and psychological injuries of 29,000 people during the year-long demonstrations known as the Great March of Return – come after three devastating conflicts in Gaza since 2009, which resulted in at least 3790 deaths and more than 17,000 injuries combined.

A report issued by the United Nations in 2017 predicted that Gaza would be unlivable by the year 2020. 

[Read full UNRWA article]

Google offers tech aid to take on humanitarian crises

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Frontier technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence have revolutionized Google’s business, and now the tech company is looking to share the wealth with those that need it most: people on the front lines of humanitarian crises.

From among 2,600 applicants, 20 winning nonprofits and social enterprises walked away from Google’s AI Impact Challenge with access to a pool of $25 million in funding, expertise from “Googlers,” and a shot to mitigate humanitarian challenges in their local communities.

“We want to see if we can help make the world a better place by bringing the best of Google,” said Jacquelline Fuller, vice president of Google, and president of the company’s humanitarian arm, Google.org. “We look at issues and see where do we think we could have a differential impact. And so some of those areas include economic opportunity, the future of work, thinking about how to bring digital skilling to millions across the globe.”

This year’s winners include the American University of Beirut, which is developing a tool to help Middle Eastern and African farmers save water; Eastern Health of Australia, which uses machine learning to identify patterns in suicide attempts for more effective prevention; and Hand Talk, a startup that is using AI to translate Portuguese into sign language for disadvantaged, deaf Brazilians.

Fuller said the project helps unite tech companies, civil society, and governments to ensure “everyone has access to the benefits of this technology, and that we are applying it to the problems that really matter most to humanity.”

[Cheddar]

Dozens drown as migrant boat capsizes off Tunisia

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At least 65 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have died after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia, the UN refugee agency says. Some reports put the number on board higher so the toll could rise. Sixteen people were rescued, UNHCR said in a statement.

About 164 people have died on the route between Libya and Europe in the first four months of 2019, UNHCR figures show.

The Tunisian Navy dispatched a ship as soon as it heard about the incident and came across a fishing boat picking up survivors, a statement from the Tunisian defense ministry said.

Thousands of migrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe every year, and Libya is a key departure point.  Those who make the journey often travel in poorly maintained and overcrowded ships, and many have died.

[BBC]

The U.S. has slashed its refugee intake. Syrians fleeing war are most affected

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The number of Syrian refugees allowed into the United States in fiscal 2016 was 12,587.

In fiscal 2018, the United States admitted 62.

The drop is largely the result of the Trump administration slashing the total number of refugees allowed into the country each year and because of enhanced screenings for refugees from 11 countries, including Syria.

[Washington Post]

Global neglect of millions in conflict zones branded ‘pitiful’

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Record numbers of people have been forced from their homes by conflict in a crisis that has received “pitiful” international attention, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council has said.

A total of 41.3 million people were living in a state of internal displacement by the end of 2018 due to violence, researchers for the organization found, with increasing numbers unable to return home for protracted periods. This is a rise of more than a million on the previous year.The number of people forced from their homes but still living in their own country is nearly two-thirds greater than the global total of refugees who have sought shelter abroad.

“Because they haven’t crossed a border, they receive pitiful global attention,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Millions are being “failed by ineffective national governance and insufficient international diplomacy”.

Without huge global investment in disaster preparedness – an unlikely prospect – the numbers of people displaced will continue to rise, said Alexandra Bilak, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council’s internal displacement monitoring center.

Tropical cyclones and monsoon floods caused large numbers of people to be evacuated in the Philippines, China and India. Violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria, and tensions between communities in Ethiopia, Cameroon and Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, also drove millions from their homes. Afghanistan, which faced its worst drought for a decade on top of protracted conflict, was among several countries that faced both violence and disaster. More than a million people in Iraq attempted to go home last year only to find that the neighborhoods where they once lived were no longer habitable due to landmines.

[The Guardian]

Polio vaccine now introduced worldwide

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By the end of 2017 Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, backed by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Norway and the United Kingdom, had helped more than 75 million children to be immunized against polio with IPV. (Nepal was the first Gavi-supported country to introduce the vaccine in September 2014.) Today, every country worldwide has now introduced the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV)  which protects children against polio.

“Introducing IPV into routine immunization programs is a critical milestone on our journey towards a polio-free world,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization and Chair of the GPEI Polio Oversight Board. “It’s also vital that we use the infrastructure that has built up around polio immunization programs to ensure that all children receive other nationally-recommended vaccines. Achieving universal health coverage means making sure that all children, rich and poor, receive the same protection from vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Polio is a highly contagious viral infection, mainly affecting children under the age of five, which can lead to paralysis or even death. Only three countries – Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan – remain endemic to wild poliovirus. Thanks to global efforts and vaccination, since the beginning of 2019 only fifteen cases of wild poliovirus have been recorded in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Moreover, Nigeria, the third endemic country could be declared polio-free by the end of the year. Polio cases have fallen by 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases to 33 reported cases in 2018.

[GAVI Alliance]