In Nairobi, a new restaurant is generating business and buzz – not just because of the food, but because of the staff. Robots serving dishes is the main attraction of diners who flock to the Robot Cafe. Juma Majanga reports. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo.
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cape canaveral, florida — The first of four supermoons this year rises next week, providing tantalizing views of Earth’s constant companion.
Stargazers can catch the first act Monday as the full moon inches a little closer than usual, making it appear slightly bigger and brighter in the night sky.
“I like to think of the supermoon as a good excuse to start looking at the moon more regularly,” said Noah Petro, project scientist for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
August’s supermoon kicks off a string of lunar spectacles. September’s supermoon will coincide with a partial lunar eclipse. October’s will be the year’s closest approach, and November’s will round out the year.
What makes a moon so super?
More a popular term than a scientific one, a supermoon occurs when a full lunar phase syncs up with an especially close swing around Earth. This usually happens only three or four times a year and consecutively, given the moon’s constantly shifting, oval-shaped orbit.
A supermoon obviously isn’t bigger, but it can appear that way, although scientists say the difference can be barely perceptible.
“Unless you have looked at a lot of full moons or compare them in images, it is hard to notice the difference, but people should try,” Petro said in an email.
How do supermoons compare?
There’s a quartet of supermoons this year.
The first will be 361,970 kilometers away. The next will be nearly 4,484 kilometers closer the night of September 17 into the following morning.
A partial lunar eclipse will also unfold that night, visible in much of the Americas, Africa and Europe as the Earth’s shadow falls on the moon, resembling a small bite.
October’s supermoon will be the year’s closest at 357,364 kilometers from Earth, followed by November’s supermoon at 361,867 kilometers.
What’s in it for me?
Scientists point out that only the keenest observers can discern the subtle differences. It’s easier to detect the change in brightness — a supermoon can be 30% brighter than average.
With the U.S. and other countries ramping up lunar exploration with landers and eventually astronauts, the moon beckons brighter than ever. As project scientist for the first team of moonwalkers coming up under Apollo’s follow-on program, Artemis, Petro is thrilled by the renewed lunar interest.
“It certainly makes it more fun to stare at,” Petro said.
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islamabad — From sharing memes to sealing deals, millions of Pakistanis are struggling to communicate digitally as internet and data services have slowed down across much of the country.
Officials are blaming internet service providers for the slowdown, but media reports indicate the problem may stem from the deployment of a nationwide internet firewall aimed at controlling online content and traffic.
Crippling economy
The problem, which began several weeks ago, has worsened in recent days, frustrating freelancers like Moadood Ahmad, who is seeing a drop in income.
“If I don’t show as available on Upwork or Fiverr, then new clients can’t even approach me. Older clients are also disturbed,” Ahmad told VOA. The Lahore-based digital marketing services provider says he has made virtually no money in the last two weeks.
According to DataReportal.com, 111 million Pakistanis in the nation of more than 240 million have access to internet. The country has nearly 189 million active cellular connections. State Bank of Pakistan put the country’s IT exports at $3.2 billion in the financial year that ended in July 2024.
The spokesperson’s office of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) told VOA it has only heard about issues with internet speed and web access through media. Speaking to VOA in late July, a PTA spokesperson blamed the slowdown at that time on a possible technical glitch.
During a hearing Thursday, the secretary for the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication told a Senate committee that it was gathering data about the situation from mobile operators.
But the slump in services is not limited to mobile data users. In a statement to the media Thursday, an alliance of internet service providers (ISPs) said internet speeds had plummeted by 30% to 40%, “crippling [the] digital economy.”
“Many are leaving the smaller ISPs because they can’t sustain the poor service quality anymore. If this continues, we will see a mass exodus of businesses from Pakistan,” said the Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (WISPAP).
Speaking to VOA, WISPAP Chairman Shahzad Arshad said his alliance members were inundated with customer complaints.
“The authorities should at least tell us a timeframe that we can give to the customer,” Arshad said.
Without mentioning the firewall, WISPAP’s statement blamed increased “security and surveillance” for the decline in service quality.
“While the government remains steadfast in its commitment to enhancing security, the question remains: at what cost to the nation’s digital economy?” the statement asked.
Controlling access
A source familiar with the nationwide firewall told VOA the system — acquired from China and installed through the Ministry of Defense — is based at a cable landing station in Pakistan, the place where the undersea internet data cable meets a country’s internet system.
The firewall, also placed on the systems used by data providers, can give Pakistani authorities information about an individual user’s online activities and where they are operating from, allowing for targeted monitoring, the source said.
Efforts to deploy the firewall on servers that major international companies use to store content close to end users are also underway. This can give authorities deeper access to an individual’s data and control of their online activities.
Digital rights activists reject the government’s claim that the firewall is only a cybersecurity tool.
“To me, this is about political control. This desperation to do whatever they can,” said Farieha Aziz, co-founder of the digital rights group Bolo Bhi, an Urdu name that means “speak up.”
Government officials “are still not transparent and open about the capability [of the firewall], what kind of monitoring is happening,” said Aziz. “What are they attempting?”
The country’s latest efforts to control internet traffic and user activity come as the powerful military frequently complains of rising “digital terrorism,” a term it uses for those who criticize or mock the armed forces on social media.
Digital rights activist Aziz also criticized telecom companies and internet service providers for not being transparent with users about the reasons for service disruptions.
Digital freedom is limited in Pakistan. Global rights watchdog Freedom House describes Pakistan as “not free,” with a low score of only 26 out of 100 on its internet freedom index.
Pakistanis trying to bypass poor connectivity and speed by using VPNs are not faring much better either.
“Even those who use VPNs, and use our internet services, are unable to connect,” WISPAP’s Shahzad confirmed to VOA.
A PTA official told the Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, earlier this month that the regulator was working on a plan to approve certain virtual private networks. All other VPNs would be blocked.
Senator Palwasha Khan, chairperson of the Senate’s standing committee on IT, told VOA she expected internet speed to normalize in Pakistan within days. She said the committee was not informed if the problem was because of the firewall, but said she supported the censorship tool.
“I do agree that if some security measures are taken to control the chaos on social media, I don’t have any problem with that,” said Khan, a senator from the Pakistan People’s Party, which is part of the ruling alliance.
Struggling to share voice notes and visual content with clients via a popular messaging app, freelancer Moadood Ahmad told VOA he regretted moving back to Pakistan from the United Arab Emirates.
“I am thinking I made a mistake,” Ahmad said. “I should go back.”
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NEW YORK — Google said Wednesday that an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard had tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump since May.
The tech company’s threat intelligence arm said the group was still actively targeting people associated with Biden, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate last month when he dropped out of the presidential race. It said those targeted have included current and former government officials, as well as presidential campaign affiliates.
The new report from Google’s Threat Analysis Group affirmed and expanded upon a Microsoft report released Friday that revealed a suspected Iranian cyber intrusion in this year’s U.S. presidential election. It shed light on how foreign adversaries are increasing their efforts to disrupt the election that is now less than three months away.
Google’s report said its threat researchers detected and disrupted a “small but steady cadence” of the Iranian attackers using email credential phishing, a type of cyberattack where the attacker poses as a trusted sender to try to get an email recipient to share login details. John Hultquist, chief analyst for the company’s threat intelligence arm, said the company sends suspected targets of these attacks a Gmail pop-up that warns them that a government-backed attacker might be trying to steal their passwords.
The report said Google observed the group gaining access to one high-profile political consultant’s personal Gmail account. Google reported the incident to the FBI in July. Microsoft’s Friday report had shared similar information, noting that the email account of a former senior adviser to a presidential campaign had been compromised and weaponized to send a phishing email to a high-ranking campaign official.
The group is familiar to Google’s threat intelligence arm and other researchers, and this isn’t the first time it has tried to interfere in U.S. elections, Hultquist said. The report noted that the same Iranian group targeted both the Biden and Trump campaigns with phishing attacks during the 2020 cycle, as early as June of that year.
The group also has been prolific in other cyber espionage activity, particularly in the Middle East, the report said. In recent months, as the Israel-Hamas war has fueled tension in the region, that activity has included email phishing campaigns targeted at Israeli diplomats, academics, nongovernmental organizations and military affiliates.
Trump’s campaign said Saturday that it had been hacked and that sensitive internal documents had been stolen and distributed. It said Iranian actors were to blame.
The same day, Politico revealed it had received leaked internal Trump campaign documents by email, though it wasn’t clear whether the leaked documents were related to the suspected Iranian cyber activity. The Washington Post and The New York Times also received the documents.
While the Trump campaign hasn’t provided specific evidence linking Iran to the hack, both Trump and his longtime friend and former adviser Roger Stone have said they were contacted by Microsoft related to suspected cyber intrusions. Stone’s email was compromised by hackers targeting Trump’s campaign, a person familiar with the matter said.
Google and Microsoft wouldn’t identify the people targeted in the Iranian intrusion attempts or confirm that Stone was among them. Google did confirm that the Iranian group in its report, which it calls APT42, is the same as the one in Microsoft’s research. Microsoft refers to the group as Mint Sandstorm.
Harris’ campaign has declined to say whether it has identified any state-based intrusion attempts but has said it vigilantly monitors cyber threats and isn’t aware of any security breaches of its systems.
The FBI on Monday confirmed that it’s investigating the intrusion of the Trump campaign. Two people familiar with the matter said the FBI also is investigating attempts to gain access to the Biden-Harris campaign.
The reports of Iranian hacking come as U.S. intelligence officials have warned of persistent and mounting efforts from both Russia and Iran to influence the U.S. election through their online activity. Beyond these hacking incidents, groups linked to the countries have used fake news websites and social media accounts to churn out content that appears intended to sway voters’ opinions.
While neither Microsoft nor Google specified Iran’s intentions in the U.S. presidential race, U.S. officials have previously hinted that Iran particularly opposes Trump. U.S. officials also have expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations, when asked about the claim of the Trump campaign, denied being involved.
“We do not accord any credence to such reports,” the mission told The Associated Press. “The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election.”
The mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday about Google’s report.
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washington — President Joe Biden on Tuesday visited Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley” to strike at what he identified as a top priority of his dwindling presidency: announcing $150 million in research funding toward the goal of dramatically reducing cancer deaths in the United States.
The Cancer Moonshot is an initiative close to Biden’s heart. Both he and first lady Jill Biden have had brushes with skin cancers. And in 2015, an aggressive brain cancer took the life of their eldest son, Beau.
“We’re moving quickly,” Biden said of the initiative, which has a goal of reducing the U.S. cancer death rate by at least half by 2047. “Because we know that all families touched by cancer are in a race against time.”
Cancer is the second-biggest cause of death worldwide. The National Cancer Institute predicts that 2 million Americans will be diagnosed this year with the immune-mediated disease, which can manifest in organs, bone marrow and blood and which comes in hundreds of different varieties.
“Cancer touches us all,” the first lady said. “When Joe and I lost our son to brain cancer, we decided to turn our pain into purpose. We wanted to help families like ours so that they won’t have to experience this terrible loss, and as president, Joe has brought his own relentless optimism to the Biden Cancer Moonshot to end cancer as we know it. It’s ambitious, but it’s also within our reach – maybe not yet, but one day soon.”
Biden launched the initiative when he was vice president. Since he restored the program as president, the research agency he created has invested more than $400 million in the cause.
Cancer advocates praised the move but stressed the need for long-term engagement.
“We’ve made tremendous strides in how we prevent, detect, treat and survive cancer, but there is still much work to be done to improve the lives of those touched by this disease,” said Dr. Karen E. Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
“Cancer cases are estimated to hit an all-time high this year, and we cannot relent in driving forward public policies that will address this,” Knudsen said. “Funding more researchers across the country focused on more effective and innovative treatments will bring us closer to future cancer breakthroughs and ending cancer as we know it, for everyone.”
And cancer is often compounded by environmental causes – such as those in the 140-kilometer (85-mile) stretch of communities between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, home to a string of major fossil fuel and petrochemical operations.
Karl Minges, associate dean in the School of Health Sciences at the University of New Haven, told VOA that while the disease itself doesn’t discriminate, social factors often make it hit harder in lower-income communities.
“Any time that money from the federal government and publicity is put on a topic, I think it’s something that has the ability to actually make a significant difference,” he told VOA.
And, he said, the fact that this federal money is going toward research institutions – and not private pharmaceutical companies – means the lessons learned can be shared well beyond the United States.
“The U.S. is always on sort of the cutting edge with regard to [research and development] of new drugs and treatments and methodologies,” he said.
“But by giving the money to the institutes, it’s sort of available as public funding for researchers to access, and anytime that’s the case, there’s an imperative, whether it’s a clinical trial or it’s a an observational study, that the results are in the public domain, so that can be then subsumed by other countries outside of the United States who face similar issues,” Minges said.
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SYDNEY — Researchers in Australia have developed a drug that could revolutionize treatment for millions of diabetes patients around the world.
Scientists in the U.S., China and Australia are designing treatments that imitate the body’s natural response to changing blood glucose, or sugar, levels and respond instantly.
The Australian team is handling one of several research projects that have developed different types of so-called ‘smart insulins,’ which sits in the body of a diabetes patient and is activated only when it is needed.
The aim is to keep glucose levels within a safe range, avoiding excessively high blood glucose, which is called hyperglycaemia, and excessively low blood sugar levels, known as hypoglycaemia.
The new treatments are not cures for diabetes but could ease the burden on patients.
Australian researchers say their new insulin delivery method would offer one injection every three days. Patients currently have to administer synthetic insulin up to 10 times a day.
Christoph Hagemeyer, a professor at the Australian Center for Blood Diseases at Monash University and a lead researcher in the study, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. Tuesday how the technology works.
“Smart insulin is responding to sugar levels in the blood,” he said. “In our case we are not actually making the insulin molecule smart, but we are loading the insulin onto a nanoparticle, which has a built-in mechanism that it changes its charge from positive to negative when the sugar levels go up. And that is the trick how we can ensure that there is enough insulin onboard and it is released in a smart manner.”
Insulin is a type of hormone that lowers the level of glucose in the blood. Glucose is a type of sugar from food that gives people energy.
Diabetes affects glucose levels in the blood and is normally split into type 1 and type 2, the most common. Patients have a heightened risk of heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure.
Monash University in Melbourne is part of a global effort to develop different types of smart insulins. It includes teams at Stanford University in the United States and Zhejiang University in China. Each project aims to develop smart insulin to act faster and more accurately to help patients with diabetes and to start trials as soon as possible.
The World Health Organization has estimated that about 422 million people around the world have diabetes and that 1.5 million deaths are directly attributed to the chronic disease each year.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The New Zealand government said Tuesday that it would introduce new legislation to make it easier for companies and researchers to develop and commercialize products using gene technologies such as gene editing.
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins said in a statement that rules and time-consuming processes have made research outside the lab almost impossible.
“These changes will bring New Zealand up to global best practice and ensure we can capitalize on the benefits,” she said.
Current regulations mean that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) cannot be released out of containment without going through a complex and vigorous process and it is difficult to meet the set standard. Furthermore, gene editing is considered the same as genetic modification even when it doesn’t involve the introduction of foreign DNA.
Under the new law, low-risk gene editing techniques that produce changes indistinguishable from conventional breeding will be exempted from regulation, local authorities will no longer be able to prevent the use of GMOs in their regions and there will be a new regulator of the industry.
“This is a major milestone in modernizing gene technology laws to enable us to improve health outcomes, adapt to climate change, deliver massive economic gains and improve the lives of New Zealanders,” Collins said.
The government hopes to have the legislation passed and the regulator in operation by the end of 2025.
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Harare — Zimbabwean authorities recently declared the end of a cholera outbreak which lasted nearly 18 months, but public health experts say the conditions which caused the waterborne disease still exist and need urgent attention.
After battling a cholera outbreak which began in February of last year, Zimbabwe gave the ‘all clear’ after saying no new cases were recorded in July. The last reported case was in June. During the outbreak, the country recorded 34,549 suspected cases and more than 700 deaths.
Dr. Douglas Mombeshora is Zimbabwe’s health minister.
“What it means really is to say the interventions that we undertook as government have yielded [the] results that we wanted, that is to make sure that we suppress cholera. There are other issues that we have to continue working on. Because the bug is still in the community,” he said.
Itai Rusike, the executive director of Community Working Group on Health in Zimbabwe, said while his organization welcomed the news of a cholera-free country, more work needs to be done.
“We had major concerns about the illness and the unnecessary loss of lives from avoidable and preventable deaths. … As a country that experienced the devastation of the 2008-2009 cholera outbreak, we seem not to have derived learning from that and subsequent ones. The cholera outbreaks of 2008-2009 were a marker of the need for investment in water and sanitation infrastructure,” said Rusike.
The government and World Health Organization say Zimbabwe had 98,592 cases and 4,288 deaths during the 2008-2009 outbreak.
Speaking to VOA, Dr. Desta Tiruneh, the World Health Organization representative for Zimbabwe, said eradication means the country can now concentrate on other health concerns.
But he hastened to add, “The underlying factors that contributed to the transmission of cholera are still prevailing. These include access to safe water supply, sanitation facilities and hygiene, plus some other misconceptions among the communities that also fuel transmission. Therefore, we have to focus our priorities in addressing these issues, like provision of water supply should be prioritized for those communities where there is high risk of cholera transmission. … In addition, the government should prioritize in focusing in these high-risk communities to make sure this outbreak does not happen in near future.”
Separately, Doctors Without Borders noted that while eradicating cholera is a big win for Zimbabwe, it “believes more can be done to prevent future outbreaks.” The doctors’ group said there was a need for balance between having timely access to cholera vaccines and ensuring Zimbabwe invests in its water sanitation and hygiene infrastructure in both urban and rural communities.
The group, known by its acronym MSF, is one of the humanitarian organizations that worked with Zimbabwe’s government and U.N. agencies to control the spread of cholera.
Driving around Harare, people were seen walking through heaps of uncollected, fly-infested garbage, while sewage flowed in the streets in some places due to burst sewer pipes in need of repair. In some areas, people have complained of going for days without safe water for household chores and drinking.
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beijing — Engineers sent China’s biggest-yet cargo drone on a test run over the weekend while a helicopter taxi took to the skies on a soon-to-open 100-km route to Shanghai, laying new milestones for the country’s expanding low-altitude economy.
Packing a payload capacity of 2 metric tons, the twin-engine aircraft took off on Sunday on an inaugural flight, state media said, citing developer Sichuan Tengden Sci-tech Innovation Co., for a trip of about 20 minutes in southwestern Sichuan province.
China’s civilian drone makers are testing larger payloads as the government pushes to build a low-altitude economy, with the country’s aviation regulator envisioning a $279-billion industry by 2030, for a four-fold expansion from 2023.
The Tengden-built drone, with a wingspan of 16.1 meters and a height of 4.6 meters, is slightly larger than the world’s most popular light aircraft, the four-seat Cessna 172.
The trial run followed the maiden flight in June of a cargo drone developed by state-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC), the leading aerospace enterprise.
The AVIC’s HH-100 has a payload capacity of 700 kilograms and a flight radius of 520 km. Next year, AVIC plans to test its biggest cargo drone, the TP2000, which can carry up to 2 tons of cargo and fly four times farther than the HH-100.
China has already begun commercial deliveries by drone.
In May, cargo drone firm Phoenix Wings, part of delivery giant SF Express, started delivering fresh fruit from the island province of Hainan to southern Guangdong, using Fengzhou-90 drones developed by SF, a unit of S.F. Holding 002352.SZ.
Cargo drones promise shorter delivery times and lower transport costs, Chinese industry insiders say, while widening deliveries to sites lacking conventional aviation facilities, such as rooftop spaces in heavily built-up cities.
They could also ferry people on taxi services.
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Beersheba, Israel — At 19, Yoni, an Israeli man, has to put aside his plans to join the military and instead enter rehab for drug abuse that has worsened since Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Health professionals said Yoni’s case is not an exception in wartime Israel, noting a surge in drug and alcohol abuse as well as other addictive behaviors.
Yoni, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his privacy, told AFP he had started taking drugs recreationally before, but “after the war it seemed to really get worse.”
“It’s just a way to escape from reality, this whole thing,” said the resident of Beersheba in southern Israel who lost a friend, Nir Beizer, in the Hamas attack that sparked the ongoing Gaza war.
Psychiatrist Shaul Lev-Ran, founder of the Israel Center on Addiction, said that “as a natural reaction to emotional stress and as a search for relief, we’ve seen a spectacular rise in the consumption of various addictive sedative substances.”
A study carried out by his team, based in the central city of Netanya, found “a connection between indirect exposure to the October 7 events and an increase in addictive substances consumption” of about 25%.
Lev-Ran told AFP they have identified a rise in the use of “prescription drugs, illegal drugs, alcohol, or addictive behavior like gambling.”
One in 4 Israelis have increased their addictive substance use, according to the study, which was conducted in November and December on a representative sample of 1,000 Israelis. In 2022, before the war, 1 in 7 struggled with drug addiction.
Contacted by AFP, the Palestinian Authority said there was no equivalent data on addiction and mental health for the Palestinian territories.
‘Shock’
The October 7 attack, when Palestinian militants stormed into southern Israel and attacked towns, communities, army bases and an outdoor rave, caused a real “shock” in Israeli society, Lev-Ran said.
The study found that “the closer individuals were to the trauma on October 7, the higher the risk” of addictive behaviors.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still captive in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 39,790 people, according to health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
The Israel Center on Addiction study found an increase in addictive substance consumption among survivors of the October 7 attack, but also among Israelis displaced since then from communities near the Gaza border or in the north, near Lebanon.
“Some who had never consumed addictive substances started using cannabis, some used substances but increased their use, and some were already treated for addiction and relapsed,” said Lev-Ran.
‘Forget’
Lev-Rab said Israel was already “at the outset of an epidemic in which large swathes of the population will develop an addiction to substances.”
The study found that the use of sleeping pills and painkillers has also skyrocketed, by 180% and 70% respectively.
The psychiatrist gave the example of one of his patients, a man who demanded “something” to help him cope and be able to sleep while his son was fighting in Gaza.
At a bar in Jerusalem, Matan, a soldier deployed to the Palestinian territory who gave only his first name for privacy concerns, told AFP that using drugs “helps forget” the harsh reality.
Yoni said that in the early months of the war, his friends and him would take “party drugs like ecstasy, MDMA, LSD” recreationally “in order not to be bored and not to be afraid.”
Then, Yoni started taking drugs “alone at home,” which he said eventually led him to realize “that I need to go to rehab.”
Once out, he wants to complete his military service, Yoni said, to “prove to myself, prove to the family, that I am indeed capable of more, and [can] contribute to the community like everyone else.”
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Windhoek, Namibia — Poverty, family dysfunction, hopelessness and learning challenges are among the reasons children, sometimes as young as 9, take their own lives. The Namibia Association of Occupational Therapists on Saturday brought together children, parents, and health care workers to teach children how to cope and adapt into adulthood.
When Samuel Njambali was 11 years old, he began drinking and smoking with his peers.
This destructive behavior led to fights and failing grades at school.
His grandmother helped him get his act together.
Now an intern occupational therapist, Njambali gave a peer talk at a #Be Free Youth Campus workshop Saturday on the impact of substance abuse on adolescent mental health and the role of occupational therapy in treating and correcting negative behavior patterns.
“Occupational therapy is a profession that helps people who are using substances to quit, and we help to rehabilitate them through activities,” he told VOA. “So, we will help them with restructuring their activities of their day so changing their routines providing more structure to their habits so that they don’t have free time and opportunities for them to use substances.”
Karlien Burger from the Namibia Association of Occupational Therapists organized the event, which attracted more than 150 students, parents, teachers and health care providers.
Given Namibia’s past of apartheid and colonization, she said, its citizens experienced inter-generational trauma that manifests in poor mental health outcomes.
As occupational therapists, she said, they want to reach families when their children are young to re-model their behavior into healthier lifestyles.
“There are a lot of difficulties with mental health, and because these difficulties are starting earlier and earlier, we wanted to take a pro-active and a preventative approach. And that’s why we are looking at adolescent mental health today at this event and different facets of it. The emotional development that happens and how to look after that, how to prevent substance use, how to support the adolescent learning processes and then lastly, we looked at spirituality and how we can foster health promoting spirituality in our everyday tasks.”
Monica Amukoto, a student at the event, said she now has a greater understanding of how her body works and how she can communicate her boundaries with her parents and her peers.
She said greater awareness in the community can help children like her avoid common substance abuse problems.
“I practically learnt about self-love and how as a young person I am supposed to control my emotions, and we encounter a lot of young people on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “On how I am supposed to control my anger and all these things.”
Occupational therapy is a branch of health care that helps people of all ages with physical, sensory or cognitive problems. It is relatively unknown in Namibia and Africa and the Occupational Therapy Association used the opportunity at the #Be Free Youth Campus to create awareness of its practice.
A first of its kind in Namibia, the #Be Free Youth Campus provides sexual and reproductive health services, counseling, sports and learning facilities in the underserved township of Katutura to teens and young adults.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Mars and Jupiter are cozying up in the night sky for their closest rendezvous this decade.
They’ll be so close Wednesday, at least from our perspective, that just a sliver of moon could fit between them. In reality, our solar system’s biggest planet and its dimmer, reddish neighbor will be more than 575 million kilometers apart in their respective orbits.
The two planets will reach their minimum separation — one-third of 1 degree or about one-third the width of the moon — during daylight hours Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa. But they won’t appear that much different hours or even a day earlier when the sky is dark, said Jon Giorgini of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The best views will be in the eastern sky, toward constellation Taurus, before daybreak. Known as planetary conjunctions, these comic pairings happen only every three years or so.
“Such events are mostly items of curiosity and beauty for those watching the sky, wondering what the two bright objects so close together might be,” he said in an email.
“The science is in the ability to accurately predict the events years in advance.”
Their orbits haven’t brought them this close together, one behind the other, since 2018. And it won’t happen again until 2033, when they’ll get even chummier.
The closest in the past 1,000 years was in 1761, when Mars and Jupiter appeared to the naked eye as a single bright object, according to Giorgini. Looking ahead, the year 2348 will be almost as close.
This latest link up of Mars and Jupiter coincides with the Perseid meteor shower, one of the year’s brightest showers. No binoculars or telescopes are needed.
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LAHAINA, Hawaii — When a deadly wildfire tore through Lahaina on Maui last August, the wall of flames scorched the 151-year-old banyan tree along the historic town’s Front Street. But the sprawling tree survived the blaze, and thanks to the efforts of arborists and dedicated volunteers, parts of it are growing back — and even thriving.
One year after the fire, here’s what to know about the banyan tree and the efforts to restore it.
Why is Lahaina’s banyan tree significant?
The banyan tree is the oldest living one on Maui but is not a species indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands. India shipped the tree as a gift to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries to live in Lahaina. It was planted in 1873, a quarter century before the Hawaiian Islands became a U.S. territory and seven decades after King Kamehameha declared Lahaina the capital of his kingdom.
The tree is widely beloved and fondly remembered by millions of tourists who have visited Maui over the years. But for many others it is a symbol of colonial rule that has dispossessed Native Hawaiians of their land and suppressed their language and culture.
For generations, the banyan tree served as a gathering place along Lahaina’s waterfront. By many accounts, it was the heart of the oceanside community — towering more than 18 meters (60 feet) high and anchored by multiple trunks that span nearly an acre.
The enormous tree has leafy branches that unfurl majestically and offer shade from the sun. Aerial roots dangle from its boughs and eventually latch onto the soil to become new trunks. Branches splay out widely and have become roosting places for choirs of birds.
What happened to it during the fire?
The 2023 fire charred the tree and blackened many of its leaves. But it wasn’t the flames so much as the intense heat that dried out much of the tree, according to Duane Sparkman, chair of the Maui County Arborist Committee. As a result of this loss of moisture, about half of the tree’s branches died, he said.
“Once that section of the tree desiccated, there was no coming back,” he said.
But other parts of the tree are now growing back healthy.
How was it saved?
Those working to restore the tree removed the dead branches so that the tree’s energy would go toward the branches that were alive, Sparkman said.
To monitor that energy, 14 sensors were screwed into the tree to track the flows of cambium, or sap, through its branches.
“It’s basically a heart monitor,” Sparkman said. “As we’ve been treating the tree, the heartbeat’s getting stronger and stronger and stronger.”
Sparkman said there are also plans to install vertical tubes to help the tree’s aerial roots, which appear to be vertical branches that grow down toward the ground. The tubes will contain compost to provide the branches with key nutrients when they take root in the soil.
A planned irrigation system will also feed small drops of water into the tubes. The goal, Sparkman said, is to help those aerial roots “bulk up and become the next stabilizer root.” The system will also irrigate the surrounding land and the tree’s canopy.
“You see a lot of long, long branches with hundreds of leaves back on the tree,” Sparkman said, adding that some branches are even producing fruit. “It’s pretty amazing to see that much of the tree come back.”
What other trees were destroyed in the fire?
Sparkman estimates that Lahaina lost some 25,000 trees in the fire.
These included the fruit trees that people grew in their yards as well as trees that are significant in Hawaiian culture, such as the ulu or breadfruit tree; the fire charred all but two of the dozen or so that remained.
Since the blaze, a band of arborists, farmers and landscapers — including Sparkman — has set about trying to save the ulu and other culturally important trees. Before colonialism, commercial agriculture and tourism, thousands of breadfruit trees dotted Lahaina.
To help restore Lahaina’s trees, Sparkman founded a nonprofit called Treecovery. The group has potted some 3,500 trees, he said, growing them in “micro-nurseries” across the island, including at some hotels, until people can move back into their homes.
“We have grow hubs all over the island of Maui to grow these trees out for as long as they need. So, when the people are ready, we can have them come pick these trees up and they can plant them in their yards,” he said. “It’s important that we do this for the families.”
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PARIS — Women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics has highlighted the complexity of drafting and enforcing sex eligibility rules for women’s sports and how athletes like Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan are left vulnerable in the fallout.
When eligibility for women’s events has come into question, it often has been a legally difficult process for sports bodies that has risked exposing athletes to humiliation and abuse. In the 1960s, the Olympics used degrading visual tests intended to verify the sex of athletes.
The modern era of eligibility rules are widely known to have started in 2009, after South African 800-meter runner Caster Semenya surged to stardom on the track as an 18-year-old gold medalist at the world championships.
Semenya, the Olympic champion in the 800 meters in 2012 and 2016, is not competing in Paris because she effectively is banned from doing so unless she medically reduces her testosterone. She is, however, still involved in a legal challenge to track’s rules, now into its seventh year.
Here’s a look at sex tests in sports and the complexity they create amid changing attitudes toward gender identity:
What is the criteria for female participation?
Testosterone levels — not XY chromosomes, which is the pattern typically seen in men — are the key criterion of eligibility in Olympic events where the sport’s governing body has framed and approved rules.
That’s because some women, assigned female at birth and identifying as women, have conditions called differences of sex development, or DSD, that involves an XY chromosome pattern or natural testosterone higher than the typical female range. Some sports officials say that gives them an unfair advantage over other women in sports, but the science is inconclusive.
Semenya, whose medical data proved impossible to keep private during her legal cases — has a DSD condition. She was legally identified as female at birth and has identified as female her whole life.
Testosterone is a natural hormone that increases the mass and strength of bone and muscle after puberty. The normal adult male range rises to multiple times higher than for females, up to about 30 nanomoles per liter of blood compared with less than 2 nmol/L for women.
In 2019, at a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing, track’s governing body argued athletes with DSD conditions were “biologically male.” Semenya said that was “deeply hurtful.”
Semenya’s case played out very publicly before 2021, when gender identity was a big story at the Tokyo Olympics and in society and sports in general. She took oral contraceptives from 2010-15 to reduce her testosterone levels and said they caused a myriad of unwanted side effects: weight gain, fevers, a constant feeling of nausea and abdominal pain, all of which she experienced while running at the 2011 world championships and 2012 Olympics.
Female athletes of color have historically faced disproportionate scrutiny and discrimination when it comes to sex testing and false accusations that they are male or transgender.
Why does sex verification testing differ between sports?
Each governing body of an Olympic sport is responsible for drafting its own rules, from the field of play to who is eligible to play.
Women’s boxing came to the Paris Games with effectively the same eligibility criterion — an athlete is female in her passport — as at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 after the International Boxing Association was permanently banned from the Games following decades of troubled governance and longstanding accusations of a thorough lack of normal transparency. Much has happened in the science and debate in those eight years.
Since the Tokyo Games in 2021, track’s World Athletics tightened the eligibility rules for female athletes with DSD conditions. Starting in March 2023, it required them to suppress their testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L for six months, commonly through hormone-suppressing treatment, to be eligible to compete.
That was half the level of 5 nmol/L proposed in 2015 for athletes competing at distances from 400 meters to 1 mile (1.6 kilometers).
World Athletics followed another major sport — World Aquatics — in prohibiting transgender women from competing in women’s races if they had undergone male puberty. The International Cycling Union also took this step last year.
The swim body’s world-leading rules additionally require transgender women athletes who did not benefit from male puberty to maintain testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L.
World Aquatics is not actively testing junior athletes. The first step for athletes is that national swim federations “certify their chromosomal sex.”
Similarly, soccer’s world body FIFA defers to its national member federations to verify and register the sex of players.
“No mandatory or routine gender testing verification examinations will take place at FIFA competitions,” it said in a 2011 advisory that is still in force and has been under a lengthy review.
Why do governing bodies care about who identifies as female?
Many sports bodies try to balance inclusion for all athletes and fairness to all on the field of play. They also argue that in contact and combat sports, like boxing, physical safety is a key consideration.
In the Semenya case, the judges at the Court of Arbitration for Sport acknowledged in a 2-1 ruling against her that discrimination against some women was “a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means” to preserve fairness.
Male athletes are not required to regulate their natural levels of testosterone, and female athletes who do not have DSD conditions also can benefit.
“The idea that a testosterone test is some kind of magic bullet is actually not true,” International Olympic Committee spokesperson Mark Adams said in Paris as the women’s boxing debate has raged.
What does the IOC require?
The IOC is at times very powerful and at others not at all.
The Switzerland-based organization manages the “Olympic Charter” book of rules, owns the Olympics brand, picks the hosts and helps fund them through the billions of dollars it earns selling the broadcasting and sponsor rights.
The Olympic sports events, however, are run by the individual governing bodies, like FIFA and World Athletics. They codify and enforce their own athlete eligibility and field-of-play rules as well as disciplinary codes.
So when Olympics sports reviewed and updated how they handled sex eligibility issues, including with transgender athletes, the IOC published advice in 2021, not binding rules.
That was the organization’s framework on gender and sex inclusion that recognized the need for a “safe, harassment-free environment” honoring athletes’ identities while ensuring competitions are fair.
Boxing, however, was different, and the consequences have hit hard in Paris.
The IOC has been in a yearslong and increasingly bitter feud with the International Boxing Association, which is now Russian-led, culminating in a permanent ban from the Olympics last year.
For the second straight Summer Games, the Olympic boxing tournaments have been run by an IOC-appointed administrative committee and not a functioning governing body.
In this dysfunction, boxing eligibility rules have not kept pace with other sports, and the issues weren’t addressed ahead of the Paris Games.
At the 2023 world championships, Khelif and Lin were disqualified and denied medals by the IBA, which said they failed eligibility tests for the women’s competition but has given little information about them. The governing body has contradicted itself repeatedly about whether the tests measured testosterone.
In a chaotic press conference Monday in Paris, IBA officials said they did blood tests on only four of the hundreds of fighters at the 2022 world championships and that it tested Khelif and Lin in response to complaints from other teams, apparently acknowledging an uneven standard of profiling that is considered widely unacceptable in sports.
Who is challenging established rules in some sports?
Before Semenya, there was sprinter Dutee Chand of India who went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She challenged track and field’s initial testosterone rules passed in 2011 as a reaction to Semenya.
A first CAS ruling for Chand in 2015 froze the rules and led to an update in 2018, which was then challenged by Semenya. Her career in the 800 stalled because she refused to take medication to artificially suppress her testosterone levels and was barred from competing at elite events.
Semenya lost at CAS in 2019 but went through Switzerland’s supreme court to the European Court of Human Rights, where she scored a landmark, but not total, win last year.
In May, another ECHR hearing in Semenya’s case was held, and a ruling likely will come next year.
The case could be sent back to Switzerland, maybe even back to CAS in the Olympic home city of Lausanne, Switzerland. Other sports are watching and waiting.
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WUHAN, China — Liu Yi is among China’s 7 million ride-hailing drivers. A 36-year-old Wuhan resident, he started driving part-time this year when construction work slowed in the face of a nationwide glut of unsold apartments.
Now he predicts another crisis as he stands next to his car watching neighbors order driverless taxis.
“Everyone will go hungry,” he said of Wuhan drivers competing against robotaxis from Apollo Go, a subsidiary of technology giant Baidu 9888.HK.
Baidu and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology declined comment.
Ride-hailing and taxi drivers are among the first workers globally to face the threat of job loss from artificial intelligence as thousands of robotaxis hit Chinese streets, economists and industry experts said.
Self-driving technology remains experimental but China has moved aggressively to green-light trials compared with the U.S which is quick to launch investigations and suspend approvals after accidents.
At least 19 Chinese cities are running robotaxi and robobus tests, disclosure showed. Seven have approved tests without human-driver monitors by at least five industry leaders: Apollo Go, Pony.ai, WeRide, AutoX and SAIC Motor 600104.SS.
Apollo Go has said it plans to deploy 1,000 in Wuhan by year-end and operate in 100 cities by 2030.
Pony.ai, backed by Japan’s Toyota Motor 7203.T, operates 300 robotaxis and plans 1,000 more by 2026. Its vice president has said robotaxis could take five years to become sustainably profitable, at which point they will expand “exponentially.”
WeRide is known for autonomous taxis, vans, buses and street sweepers. AutoX, backed by e-commerce leader Alibaba Group 9988.HK, operates in cities including Beijing and Shanghai. SAIC has been operating robotaxis since the end of 2021.
“We’ve seen an acceleration in China. There’s certainly now a rapid pace of permits being issued,” said Boston Consulting Group managing director Augustin Wegscheider. “The U.S. has been a lot more gradual.”
Alphabet’s GOOGL.O Waymo is the only U.S. firm operating uncrewed robotaxis that collect fares. It has over 1,000 cars in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix but could grow to “thousands,” said a person with knowledge of its operations.
Cruise, backed by General Motors GM.N, restarted testing in April after one of its vehicles hit a pedestrian last year.
Cruise said it operates in three cities with safety its core mission. Waymo did not respond to a request for comment.
“There’s a clear contrast between U.S. and China” with robotaxi developers facing far more scrutiny and higher hurdles in the U.S., said former Waymo CEO John Krafcik.
Robotaxis spark safety concerns in China, too, but fleets proliferate as authorities approve testing to support economic goals. Last year, President Xi Jinping called for “new productive forces,” setting off regional competition.
Beijing announced testing in limited areas in June and Guangzhou said this month it would open roads citywide to self-driving trials.
Some Chinese firms have sought to test autonomous cars in the U.S. but the White House is set to ban vehicles with China-developed systems, said people briefed on the matter.
Boston Consulting’s Wegscheider compared China’s push to develop autonomous vehicles to its support of electric vehicles.
“Once they commit,” he said, “they move pretty fast.”
‘Stupid radishes’
China has 7 million registered ride-hailing drivers versus 4.4 million two years ago, official data showed. With ride-hailing providing last-resort jobs during economic slowdown, the side effects of robotaxis could prompt the government to tap the brakes, economists said.
In July, discussion of job loss from robotaxis soared to the top of social media searches with hashtags including, “Are driverless cars stealing taxi drivers’ livelihoods?”
In Wuhan, Liu and other ride-hailing drivers call Apollo Go vehicles “stupid radishes” – a pun on the brand’s name in local dialect – saying they cause traffic jams.
Liu worries, too, about the impending introduction of Tesla’s TSLA.O “Full Self-Driving” system – which still requires human drivers – and the automaker’s robotaxi ambitions.
“I’m afraid that after the radishes come,” he said, “Tesla will come.”
Wuhan driver Wang Guoqiang, 63, sees a threat to workers who can least afford disruption.
“Ride-hailing is work for the lowest class,” he said, as he watched an Apollo Go vehicle park in front of his taxi. “If you kill off this industry, what is left for them to do?”
Baidu declined to comment on the drivers’ concerns and referred Reuters to comments in May by Chen Zhuo, Apollo Go’s general manager. Chen said the firm would become “the world’s first commercially profitable” autonomous-driving platform.
Apollo Go loses almost $11,000 a car annually in Wuhan, Haitong International Securities estimated. A lower-cost model could enable per-vehicle annual profit of nearly $16,000, the securities firm said. By contrast, a ride-hailing car earns about $15,000 total for the driver and platform.
‘Already at the forefront’
Automating jobs could benefit China in the long run given a shrinking population, economists said.
“In the short run, there must be a balance in speed between the creation of new jobs and the destruction of old jobs,” said Tang Yao, associate professor of applied economics at Peking University. “We do not necessarily need to push at the fastest speed, as we are already at the forefront.”
Eastern Pioneer Driving School 603377.SS has more than halved its instructor number since 2019 to about 900. Instead, it has teachers at a Beijing control center remotely monitoring students in 610 cars equipped with computer instruction tools.
Computers score students on every wheel turn and brake tap, and virtual reality simulators coach them on navigating winding roads. Massive screens provide real-time analysis of driver tasks, such as one student’s 82% parallel-parking pass rate.
Zhang Yang, the school’s intelligent-training director, said the machines have done well.
“The efficiency, pass rate and safety awareness have greatly improved.”
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