WASHINGTON — Catastrophic Canadian wildfires last year pumped more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than India did by burning fossil fuels, setting ablaze an area of forest larger than the U.S. state of West Virginia, new research finds.

Scientists at the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland calculated how devastating the impacts were of the monthslong fires in Canada in 2023 that sullied the air around large parts of the globe. They figured it put 2.98 billion metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air, according to a study update published in Thursday’s Global Change Biology. The update is not peer-reviewed, but the original study was.

The fire spewed nearly four times the carbon emissions as airplanes do in a year, study authors said. It’s about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 647 million cars put in the air in a year, based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

Forests “remove a lot of carbon from the atmosphere and that gets stored in their branches, their trunks, their leaves and kind of in the ground as well. So, when they burn all the carbon that’s stored within them, [it] gets released back into the atmosphere,” said the study’s lead author, James MacCarthy, a research associate with WRI’s Global Forest Watch.

When and if trees grow back, much of that can be recovered, MacCarthy said, adding, “It definitely does have an impact on the global scale in terms of the amount of emissions that were produced in 2023.”

MacCarthy and colleagues calculated that the forest burned totaled 77,574 square kilometers (29,951 square miles), which is six times more than the average from 2001 to 2022. The wildfires in Canada made up 27% of global tree cover loss last year; usually it’s closer to 6%, MacCarthy’s figures show.

These are far more than regular forest fires, but researchers focused only on tree cover loss, which is a bigger effect, said study co-author Alexandra Tyukavina, a geography professor at the University of Maryland.

Syracuse University geography and environment professor Jacob Bendix, who wasn’t part of the study, said, “The loss of that much forest is a very big deal, and very worrisome.

“Although the forest will eventually grow back and sequester carbon in doing so, that is a process that will take decades at a minimum, so that there is a quite substantial lag between addition of atmospheric carbon due to wildfire and the eventual removal of at least some of it by the regrowing forest,” he said.

“So, over the course of those decades, the net impact of the fires is a contribution to climate warming.”

It’s more than just adding to heat-trapping gases and losing forests; there were health consequences as well, Tyukavina said.

“Because of these catastrophic fires, air quality in populated areas and cities was affected last year,” she said, mentioning New York City’s smog-choked summer. More than 200 communities with about 232,000 residents had to be evacuated, according to another not-yet-published or peer-reviewed study by Canadian forest and fire experts.

One of the authors of the Canadian study, fire expert Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, puts the acreage burned at twice what MacCarthy and Tyukavina do.

“The 2023 fire season in Canada was [an] exceptional year in any time period,” Flannigan, who wasn’t part of the WRI study, said in an email. “I expect more fire in our future, but years like 2023 will be rare.”

Flannigan, Bendix, Tyukavina and MacCarthy all said climate change played a role in Canada’s big burn. A warmer world means a longer fire season, more lightning-caused fires and especially drier wood and brush to catch fire “associated with increased temperature,” Flannigan wrote.

The average May-to-October temperature in Canada last year was almost 2.2 degrees Celsius warmer than normal, his study found. Some parts of Canada were 8 to 10 degrees Celsius hotter than average in May and June, MaCarthy said.

There’s short-term variability within trends, so it’s hard to blame one specific year and area on climate change, and geographic factors play a role, Bendix said in an email, but still, “there is no doubt that climate change is the principal driver of the global increases in wildfire.”

With the world warming from climate change, Tyukavina said, “The catastrophic years are probably going to be happening more often, and we are going to see those spikier years more often.”
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is putting the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution-fighting “good neighbor” plan on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court’s latest blow to federal regulations.

The justices in a 5-4 vote on Thursday rejected arguments by the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled states that the plan was cutting air pollution and saving lives in 11 states where it was being enforced and that the high court’s intervention was unwarranted.

The rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution. It will remain on hold while the federal appeals court in Washington considers a challenge to the plan from industry and Republican-led states.

The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted the EPA’s authority to fight air and water pollution — including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The court is currently weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.

Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — have challenged the air pollution rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective. They had asked the high court to put it on hold while their challenge makes it way through the courts.

The challengers pointed to decisions in courts around the country that have paused the rule in a dozen states, arguing that those decisions have undermined the EPA’s aim of providing a national solution to the problem of ozone pollution because the agency relied on the assumption that all 23 states targeted by the rule would participate.

The issue came to the court on an emergency basis, which almost always results in an order from the court without arguments before the justices.

But not this time. The court heard arguments in late February, when a majority of the court seemed skeptical of arguments from the administration and New York, representing Democratic states, that the “good neighbor” rule was important to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states.

The EPA has said power plant emissions dropped by 18% last year in the 10 states where it has been allowed to enforce its rule, which was finalized a year ago. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In California, limits on emissions from industrial sources other than power plants are supposed to take effect in 2026.

The rule is on hold in another dozen states because of separate legal challenges. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

States that contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, are required to submit plans ensuring that coal-fired power plants and other industrial sites don’t add significantly to air pollution in other states. In cases in which a state has not submitted a “good neighbor” plan — or in which the EPA disapproves a state plan — the federal plan was supposed to ensure that downwind states are protected.

Ground-level ozone, which forms when industrial pollutants chemically react in the presence of sunlight, can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis. People with compromised immune systems, the elderly and children playing outdoors are particularly vulnerable.
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SAN DIEGO — A pair of giant pandas are on their way from China to the U.S., where they will be cared for at the San Diego Zoo as part of an ongoing conservation partnership between the two nations, officials said Wednesday.

Officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were on hand in China for a farewell ceremony commemorating the departure of the giant pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao.

The celebration included cultural performances, video salutations from Chinese and American students and a gift exchange among conservation partners, the zoo said in a statement. After the ceremony, the giant pandas began their trip to Southern California.

“This farewell celebrates their journey and underscores a collaboration between the United States and China on vital conservation efforts,” Paul Baribault, the wildlife alliance president, said in a statement. “Our long-standing partnership with China Wildlife Conservation Association has been instrumental in advancing giant panda conservation, and we look forward to continuing our work together to ensure the survival and thriving of this iconic species.”

It could be several weeks before the giant pandas will be viewable to the public in San Diego, officials said.

Yun Chuan, a mild-mannered male who’s nearly 5 years old, has connections to California, the wildlife alliance said previously. His mother, Zhen Zhen, was born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007 to parents Bai Yun and Gao Gao.

Xin Bao is a nearly 4-year-old female described as “a gentle and witty introvert with a sweet round face and big ears.”

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has a nearly 30-year partnership with leading conservation institutions in China focused on protecting and recovering giant pandas and the bamboo forests they depend on.
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WASHINGTON — Reality TV star Paris Hilton called for greater federal oversight of youth care programs at a U.S. House of Representatives committee hearing on Wednesday as she described her traumatic experience in youth care facilities.

Hilton, 43, the great-granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, has spoken publicly about the emotional and physical abuse she endured when she was placed in residential youth treatment facilities as a teen.

In remarks to the committee on Wednesday, she described being taken from her bed in the middle of the night at age 16 and transported across state lines to a residential facility where she experienced physical and sexual abuse.

“This $23 billion industry sees this population [of vulnerable children] as dollar signs and operates without meaningful oversight,” she said.

“There’s no education in these places; there’s mold and blood on the walls,” she said in response to lawmaker questions. “It’s horrifying what these places are like. They’re worse than some dog kennels.”

Hilton said private equity firms that have taken a greater stake in the industry in recent years focus on maximizing profits, prompting them to hire unqualified workers.

“They’re caring more about profit than the safety of children,” she said.

Hilton first described her experience at a Utah facility in 2021 and has been a vocal advocate for greater oversight of the system.

“These programs promised ‘healing, growth, and support,’ but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely, or even look out of a window for two years,” Hilton told the committee. “My parents were completely deceived, lied to and manipulated by this for-profit industry, so you can only imagine the experience for youth who don’t have anyone checking in on them.”

Several lawmakers agreed that more federal oversight was necessary.

“We must always be concerned about fraud and guard against Wall Street vultures snatching public funds to line their pockets,” Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell said. “We cannot allow the private equity octopus to reach its tentacles into child services.”
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho when a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk, according to Bloomberg News, which said a copy of the opinion was briefly posted Wednesday on the court’s website. 

The document suggests the court will conclude that it should not have gotten involved in the case so quickly and will reinstate a lower court order that had allowed hospitals in the state to perform emergency abortions to protect a pregnant patient’s health, Bloomberg said. It does not appear likely to fully resolve the issues at the heart of the case. 

The Supreme Court acknowledged that a document was inadvertently posted Wednesday. That document was quickly removed. 

“The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website. The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course,” court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement. 

The case would continue at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals if the Supreme Court dismisses the proceedings. 

WATCH: Are abortion laws in Idaho hurting maternal health care?

The finding may not be the court’s final ruling because the justices’ decision has not been officially released. 

The Biden administration sued Idaho, arguing that hospitals must provide abortions to stabilize pregnant patients in rare emergency cases when their health is at serious risk. 

Most Republican-controlled states began enforcing restrictions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. Idaho is among 14 states that outlaw abortion at all stages of pregnancy with very limited exceptions. Idaho argued its ban does allow abortions to save a pregnant patient’s life and that federal law does not require the exceptions to expand. 

The opinion briefly posted would reverse the Supreme Court’s earlier order that allowed the Idaho law to go into effect, even in medical emergencies, while the case played out. Several women have since needed medical airlifts out of state in cases in which abortion is routine treatment to avoid infection, hemorrhage and other dire health risks, Idaho doctors have said. 

The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling could have ripple effects on emergency care in other states with strict abortion bans. Reports of pregnant women being turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion, according to federal documents obtained by The Associated Press. 

The Justice Department’s lawsuit came under a federal law that requires hospitals accepting Medicare to provide stabilizing care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. The law is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. 

Nearly all hospitals accept Medicare, so emergency room doctors in Idaho and other states with bans would have to provide abortions if needed to stabilize a pregnant patient and avoid serious health risks such as the loss of reproductive organs, the Justice Department argued. 

Idaho argued that its exception for a patient’s life covers dire health circumstances and that the Biden administration misread the law to circumvent the state ban and expand abortion access. 

Doctors have said Idaho’s law has made them fearful to perform abortions, even when a pregnancy is putting a patient’s health severely at risk. The law requires anyone who is convicted of performing an abortion to be imprisoned for at least two years. 

A federal judge initially sided with the Democratic administration and ruled that abortions were legal in medical emergencies. After the state appealed, the Supreme Court allowed the law to go fully into effect in January.
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Dakar, Senegal — Senegal said Monday it had implemented voluntary COVID-19 screening tests and reimposed the wearing of masks at Dakar’s international airport for returning pilgrims fearing the virus was linked to the deaths of some Mecca pilgrims.

Dakar suspects that a number of the some 1,300 deaths — according to a Saudi tally — are down to a respiratory syndrome ailment such as COVID-19, Health Minister Ibrahima Sy said on Sunday.

“Initially, we thought it was related to heatwaves because the temperature was excessively high, but we realized that there is a respiratory syndrome with the cases of death,” Sy said of the deaths during the hajj pilgrimage, which took place during intense heat.

“We told ourselves that, probably, there is a respiratory epidemic, and it was our duty to be able to monitor the pilgrims on their return by putting in place a screening system for everything COVID-19 related,” said Sy in remarks carried by Senegalese broadcasters.

The health ministry said it had “strengthened the health surveillance system” by deploying a team at the airport to provide voluntary screening tests and identify pilgrims suffering from flu-like illnesses.

The ministry also urged the population “to be vigilant, to show restraint and to be more serene to avoid an epidemic.”

Out of 124 rapid diagnostic tests, 78 proved positive for the COVID-19 virus, 36 of which were later confirmed by PCR tests, the ministry said.

Charles Bernard Sagna, chief medical officer for the airport, said the alert was raised when the Senegalese medical team based in Jeddah had reported “a significant number” of passengers with respiratory problems.

“There is no cause for alarm but there also has to be prevention,” the ministry said Sunday.

Senegalese daily L’Observateur reported that five of the dead at the hajj were Senegalese nationals.

They were among an around 12,000-strong officially registered Senegalese contingent.

Saudi Arabia’s official SPA news agency earlier reported 1,301 deaths at the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, where temperatures climbed as high as 51.8 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the country’s national meteorological center.

More than 80 percent of pilgrims attending mainly outdoor rituals were “unauthorized” and walked long distances in direct sunlight, according to SPA.

The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam that all Muslims with the means must complete at least once in their lives.

Saudi officials have said 1.8 million pilgrims took part this year, a similar number to last year, and that 1.6 million came from abroad.
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Cairo — More than 1,000 people died during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia as the faithful faced extreme high temperatures at Islamic holy sites in the desert kingdom, officials said Sunday. 

More than half of the fatalities were people from Egypt, according to two officials in Cairo. Egypt revoked the licenses of 16 travel agencies that helped unauthorized pilgrims travel to Saudi Arabia, authorities said. 

Saudi Arabia has not commented on the deaths during the pilgrimage, which is required of every able Muslim once in their life. 

The Egyptian government announced the death of 31 authorized pilgrims due to chronic diseases during this year’s Hajj, but didn’t offer an official tally for other pilgrims. 

However, a Cabinet official said that at least 630 other Egyptians died during the pilgrimage, with most reported at the Emergency Complex in Mecca’s Al-Muaisem neighborhood. Confirming the tally, an Egyptian diplomat said most of the dead have been buried in Saudi Arabia. 

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists. 

Saudi authorities cracked down on unauthorized pilgrims, expelling tens of thousands of people. But many, mostly Egyptians, managed to reach holy sites in and around Mecca, some on foot. Unlike authorized pilgrims, they had no hotels to escape from the scorching heat. 

In its statement, the government said the 16 travel agencies failed to provide adequate services for pilgrims. It said these agencies illegally facilitated the travel of pilgrims to Saudi Arabia using visas that don’t allow holders to travel to Mecca. 

The government also said officials from the companies have been referred to the public prosecutor for investigations. 

The fatalities also included 165 pilgrims from Indonesia, 98 from India and dozens more from Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Malaysia, according to an Associated Press tally. Two U.S. pilgrims were also reported dead. 

The AP could not independently confirm the causes of death, but some countries like Jordan and Tunisia blamed the soaring heat. 

Associated Press journalists saw pilgrims fainting from the scorching heat during the Hajj, especially on the second and third days. Some vomited and collapsed. 

Deaths are not uncommon at the Hajj, which has seen at times over 2 million people travel to Saudi Arabia for a five-day pilgrimage. The pilgrimage’s history has also seen deadly stampedes and epidemics. 

But this year’s tally was unusually high, suggesting exceptional circumstances. 

A 2015 stampede in Mina during the Hajj killed over 2,400 pilgrims, the deadliest incident ever to strike the pilgrimage, according to an AP count. Saudi Arabia has never acknowledged the full toll of the stampede. A separate crane collapse at Mecca’s Grand Mosque earlier the same year killed 111. 

The second-deadliest incident at the Hajj was a 1990 stampede that killed 1,426 people. 

During this year’s Hajj period, daily high temperatures ranged between 46 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) and 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in Mecca and sacred sites in and around the city, according to the Saudi National Center for Meteorology. Some people fainted while trying to perform the symbolic stoning of the devil. 

The Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is one of the world’s largest religious gatherings. More than 1.83 million Muslims performed the Hajj in 2024, including more than 1.6 million from 22 countries, and around 222,000 Saudi citizens and residents, according to the Saudi Hajj authorities. 

Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars on crowd control and safety measures for those attending the annual five-day pilgrimage, but the sheer number of participants makes ensuring their safety difficult. 

Climate change could make the risk even greater. A 2019 study by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even if the world succeeds in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, the Hajj would be held in temperatures exceeding an “extreme danger threshold” from 2047 to 2052, and from 2079 to 2086. 

Islam follows a lunar calendar, so the Hajj comes around 11 days earlier each year. By 2029, the Hajj will occur in April, and for several years after that it will fall in the winter, when temperatures are milder. 
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BUSHBUCKRIDGE, South Africa — The walls of Shadrack Mashabane’s hut in the rural South African town of Bushbuckridge are covered with traditional fabrics, with a small window the only source of light. What stands out among the herbs and medicines in glass bottles is a white box containing an HIV testing kit.

Mashabane is one of at least 15 traditional healers in the town who, in a pilot study, have been trained by University of Witwatersrand researchers to conduct HIV testing and counseling in an effort to ensure as many South Africans as possible know their status.

It’s part of the largest known effort in the country to involve traditional healers in a public health goal and study the results. Later this year, at least 325 other healers will undergo the training and become certified HIV counselors. Researchers will compare rates of HIV testing by healers and clinics.

Most traditional healers were already knowledgeable about HIV — some from personal experience — and were eager to get involved, researchers said.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world. Stigma remains in many communities around the disease and its treatment — even though HIV antiretroviral medication and pre-exposure prophylaxis are free. Concern about privacy at clinics also keeps people from seeking help.

Many people in rural areas see traditional healers as their first point of contact for illnesses, and the project hopes they can help change attitudes.

South Africa’s large younger population is a special concern. A government study released in December showed that people living with HIV had fallen from 14% in 2017 to 12.7% in 2022, but HIV prevalence rose among girls between 15 and 19, a phenomenon largely attributed to older men sleeping with them.

Around 2,000 traditional healers operate in the Mpumalanga province town of Bushbuckridge, home to about 750,000 people, providing traditional and spiritual services.

Mashabane said patients at first found it difficult to believe he was offering HIV testing — a service they had long expected to be available only at health clinics.

“Many were not convinced. I had to show them my certificate to prove I was qualified to do this,” he said.

The process includes the signing of consent forms to be tested, along with a follow-up with Mashabane to ensure that patients who test positive receive their treatment from the local clinic.

He said breaking the news to a patient who has tested positive for HIV is not that difficult because the illness can be treated with readily available medication. But in many cases, he has to accompany the patient to the clinic “to make it easier for them.”

Florence Khoza is another traditional healer who has been trained to test for HIV. She said risky sexual behavior is common. She often dispenses traditional herbs and medication to treat gonorrhea, but now she goes further by advising patients to test for HIV.

“I tell them it is in their best interest,” she said.

Khoza said many patients fear going to the clinic or hospital and having other community members see them collecting HIV treatment.

“In many cases I collect the HIV medication on their behalf,” she said.

Ryan Wagner, a senior research fellow with the study, said testing and treating via traditional medicine practitioners could “ultimately lead to the end of new HIV cases in communities such as rural Mpumalanga, which has some of the largest HIV burden globally.”

Researchers hope their findings will inspire South Africa’s government to roll out such training across the country. 
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MADRID — Things are looking up for the Iberian lynx.

Just over two decades ago, the pointy-eared wild cat was on the brink of extinction, but as of Thursday the International Union for Conservation of Nature says it’s no longer an endangered species.

Successful conservation efforts mean that the animal, native to Spain and Portugal, is now barely a vulnerable species, according to the latest version of the IUCN Red List.

In 2001, there were only 62 mature Iberian lynx — medium-sized, mottled brown cats with characteristic pointed ears and a pair of beard-like tufts of facial hair — on the Iberian Peninsula. The species’ disappearance was closely linked to that of its main prey, the European rabbit, as well as habitat degradation and human activity.

Alarms went off and breeding, reintroduction and protection projects were started, as well as efforts to restore habitats like dense woodland, Mediterranean scrublands and pastures. More than two decades later, in 2022, nature reserves in southern Spain and Portugal contained 648 adult specimens. The latest census, from last year, shows that there are more than 2,000 adults and juveniles, the IUCN said.

“It’s really a huge success, an exponential increase in the population size,” Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red list unit, told The Associated Press.

One of the keys to their recovery has been the attention given to the rabbit population, which had been affected by changes in agricultural production. Their recovery has led to a steady increase in the lynx population, Hilton-Taylor said.

“The greatest recovery of a cat species ever achieved through conservation (…) is the result of committed collaboration between public bodies, scientific institutions, NGOs, private companies, and community members including local landowners, farmers, gamekeepers and hunters,” Francisco Javier Salcedo Ortiz, who coordinates the EU-funded LIFE Lynx-Connect project, said in a statement.

IUCN has also worked with local communities to raise awareness of the importance of the Iberian lynx in the ecosystem, which helped reduce animal deaths due poaching and roadkill. In addition, farmers receive compensation if the cats kill any of their livestock, Hilton-Taylor said.

Since 2010, more than 400 Iberian lynx have been reintroduced to parts of Portugal and Spain, and now they occupy at least 3,320 square kilometers, an increase from 449 square kilometers in 2005.

“We have to consider every single thing before releasing a lynx, and every four years or so we revise the protocols,” said Ramón Pérez de Ayala, the World Wildlife Fund’s Spain species project manager. WWF is one of the NGOs involved in the project.

While the latest Red List update offers hope for other species in the same situation, the lynx isn’t out of danger just yet, says Hilton-Taylor.

The biggest uncertainty is what will happens to rabbits, an animal vulnerable to virus outbreaks, as well as other diseases that could be transmitted by domestic animals.

“We also worried about issues with climate change, how the habitat will respond to climate change, especially the increasing impact of fires, as we’ve seen in the Mediterranean in the last year or two,” said Hilton-Taylor. 
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ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Health authorities in Ivory Coast launched mobile enrollment centers for the country’s universal health coverage program, which has been criticized since its 2019 inception over difficulties accessing benefits.

Ivory Coast is one of a handful countries in West Africa that offers a universal health program. But, five years in, less than half its citizens have enrolled. Known locally by its French acronym CMU, the program is meant to cover 70% of citizens’ health care costs for a monthly charge of 1,000 West African CFA francs, or about $1.65.

However, many participants who have managed to enroll have reported glitches, including that vouchers given at hospitals that are supposed to provide them with medicine are later not accepted at pharmacies — requiring patients to pay out of pocket.

The mobile enrollment centers being rolled out at markets and remote neighborhoods are meant to allow Ivorians to sign up for the program and provide them with cards on site so they can immediately start receiving care at hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies around the country.

From 2019 until this year, only 13 million people, or 40% of the population, were able to enroll.

The country’s health minister, Pierre Dimba, said the mobile centers are aimed at reaching people who have been unable to sign up for reasons including that they work long hours.

“We used the method which worked well when we did the COVID-19 vaccination, which was to go to these people in the markets, in remote neighborhoods, to get them signed up,” he said.

Resident Bruno Agnissan already has a CMU card, but he came to an Abidjan mobile enrollment center in search of information about how to successfully use it.

He said that while his son was being treated for malaria at a hospital, the facility ran out of medicine. He was given a voucher and told to find the medicine at a local pharmacy.

“When we went to the pharmacy and I presented the voucher, the pharmacy said that no, this is only for civil servants, that it won’t work for us individuals,” Agnissan said. “I went to all the pharmacies, and it didn’t work.”

Ultimately, he had to pay for the medicine out of his own pocket, he said.

Samuel Touffet, another local resident who came to the mobile center to get updated on coverage under the program, echoed Agnissan’s concerns.

“There are so many pharmacies where if we go with the card, it doesn’t work. So we want to know, where are the pharmacies where we can go and use the card?” he said. “Also, when we go to the hospital with the card, they say it doesn’t work. So we don’t know what this card is even worth.”

Resident Martin Abou, who came to enroll himself and his family for the first time, was hopeful. “You never know. We don’t know what tomorrow has in store for us,” he said.

Dimba, the health minister, said that he hoped the program becomes a basic insurance that covers every Ivorian citizen, with private insurance used only as a supplement.

He added that he the goal was to have 20 million Ivorians enrolled by the end of the year.
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Xichang, China — A French-Chinese satellite blasted off Saturday on a hunt for the mightiest explosions in the universe, in a notable example of cooperation between a Western power and the Asian giant.

Developed by engineers from both countries, the Space Variable Objects Monitor, or SVOM, will seek out gamma-ray bursts, the light from which has traveled billions of light years to reach Earth.

The 930-kilogram (2,050-pound) satellite carrying four instruments — two French, two Chinese — took off around 3 p.m. aboard a Chinese Long March 2-C rocket from a space base in Xichang, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, AFP journalists witnessed.

Gamma-ray bursts generally occur after the explosion of huge stars — those more than 20 times as big as the sun — or the fusion of compact stars.

The extremely bright cosmic beams can give off a blast of energy equivalent to over a billion billion suns.

Observing them is like “looking back in time, as the light from these objects takes a long time to reach us,” Ore Gottlieb, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Astrophysics in New York, told AFP.

“Several mysteries”

The rays carry traces of the gas clouds and galaxies they pass through on their journey through space — valuable data for better understanding the history and evolution of the universe.

“SVOM has the potential to unravel several mysteries in the field of [gamma-ray bursts], including detecting the most distant GRBs in the universe, which correspond to the earliest GRBs,” Gottlieb said.

The most distant bursts identified to date were produced just 630 million years after the Big Bang — when the universe was in its infancy.

“We are … interested in gamma-ray bursts for their own sake, because they are very extreme cosmic explosions which allow us to better understand the death of certain stars,” said Frederic Daigne, an astrophysicist at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris.

“All of this data makes it possible to test the laws of physics with phenomena that are impossible to reproduce in the laboratory on Earth,” he said.

Once analyzed, the data could help to better understand the composition of space, the dynamics of gas clouds or other galaxies.

The project stems from a partnership between the French and Chinese space agencies, as well as other scientific and technical groups from both nations.

Space cooperation at this level between the West and China is uncommon, especially since the United States banned all collaboration between NASA and Beijing in 2011.

Race against time

“U.S. concerns on technology transfer have inhibited U.S. allies from collaborating with the Chinese very much, but it does happen occasionally,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States.

In 2018, China and France jointly launched CFOSAT, an oceanographic satellite mainly used in marine meteorology.

And several European countries have taken part in China’s Chang’e lunar exploration program.

So, while SVOM is “by no means unique,” it remains “significant” in the context of space collaboration between China and the West, said McDowell.

Once in orbit 625 kilometers (388 miles) above the Earth, the satellite will send its data back to observatories.

The main challenge is that gamma-ray bursts are extremely brief, leaving scientists in a race against time to gather information.

Once it detects a burst, SVOM will send an alert to a team on duty around the clock.

Within five minutes, they will have to rev up a network of telescopes on the ground that will align precisely with the axis of the burst’s source to make more detailed observations.
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Going into a third year of war, life without clean water has become routine for nearly half a million residents of Ukraine’s frontline city of Mykolaiv. At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Russian forces destroyed the water distribution system. As Lesia Bakalets reports, the city has been looking for ways to restore it since then. Video: Vladyslav Smilianets
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Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, U.S. humanitarian group Project HOPE has provided aid to Ukrainian health clinics and residents of the country’s frontline towns and villages. Yaroslava Movchan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Dmytro Hlushko.
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