AFP UK

How do you help someone with their leg bitten off by a shark? Groundbreaking research by an Australian medic-surfer has uncovered a simple way to stop bleeding and save lives. 

Find the middle point between the hip and the genitals, make a fist and push as hard as you can. 

Shark attacks are rare but on the increase Down Under, due in large part to more people being in the water.

So surfer and Australian National University medical school dean Nicholas Taylor set out to discover how to reduce fatalities in the event of an attack.

Many fatal shark bites occur around the legs, leaving the victim to bleed to death despite making it back to shore.

In a study published by Emergency Medicine Australasia, Taylor found that a simple technique to compress the femoral artery was much more effective in stopping bleeding than traditionally-used tourniquets.

His study showed that by making a fist and pressing down on the artery around 89.7% of blood flow was stopped, versus 43.8% using a surfboard leash as a make-shift tourniquet. 

The technique worked equally well with the patient wearing a wetsuit and without.

“I knew from my background in emergency medicine if people have massive bleeding from their leg, you can push very hard on the femoral artery and you can pretty much cut the entire blood flow of the leg that way,” he said in a statement released by the university on Friday.

“It is easy to do and easy to remember — push hard between the hip and the bits and you could save a life.”

Taylor hopes the technique will become widely known among Australia’s roughly half a million surfers, for whom shark encounters are less uncommon. 

“I want posters at beaches. I want to get it out in the surf community. I want people to know that if someone gets bitten you can pull out the patient, push as hard as you can in this midpoint spot and it can stop almost all of the blood flow,” he said.

Tens of thousands of climate activists including Greta Thunberg are due to descend on German cities Friday ahead of the weekend general election to crank up the pressure on the candidates to succeed Angela Merkel.

As Germany’s top parties hold final rallies ahead of Sunday’s vote, the Fridays for Future youth marches will make the case that the political class has let down the younger generation.

“The political parties haven’t taken the climate catastrophe seriously enough,” Luisa Neubauer, who runs the group’s German chapter, told AFP.

Neubauer said “big change” would only be possible “if we create pressure from the streets” and tell the major parties “now there are no more excuses”.

The race has boiled down to a two-way contest between Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, the moderate finance minister, and Armin Laschet from Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats.

Polls give Scholz a small lead of about 25 percent over Laschet at around 21 percent, with the candidate from the ecologist Greens, Annalena Baerbock, trailing in the mid-teens.

Despite the urgency of the climate issue for a majority of Germans, particularly in the aftermath of deadly floods in the west of the country in July, this has failed to translate into strong support for the relatively inexperienced Baerbock.

More than 400 “climate strikes” are planned across Germany, with the Swedish Thunberg, who inspired the movement, expected to speak outside the Reichstag parliament building.

Gathering under the banners “We are young and need the world!” and “Everything for the climate”, the activists will argue the “climate crisis is this century’s biggest problem”.

– ‘Unfair burden’ –

The activists will be part of a global climate strike in more than 1,000 communities around the world, Fridays for Future said.

Their central demand is to limit the warming of the Earth to maximum 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) as laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The Paris agreement set a goal of reducing global warming by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels with an aspiration to go further and cap the rise to 1.5 Celsius.

Despite Merkel’s vocal support of climate protection measures, Germany has repeatedly failed in recent years to meet its emission reduction targets under the pact.

In a landmark ruling in April, Germany’s constitutional court found the government’s plans to curb CO2 emissions “insufficient” to meet the targets of the Paris agreement and placed an “unfair burden” on future generations. 

The Fridays for Future movement launched global school strikes more than two years ago arguing that time was running out to stop irreversible damage from the warming of the planet. 

In September 2019, it drew huge crowds in cities and towns around the world including 1.4 million protesters in Germany, according to organisers.

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic put the brakes on its weekly rallies but the election campaign in Europe’s top economy has revitalised the movement.

“The climate crisis cannot be solved through party politics alone,” Thunberg told reporters ahead of her appearance in Berlin.

“We can’t just vote for change, we also have to be active democratic citizens and go out on the streets and demand action.”

– Greens as junior partner? –

Around 60.4 million Germans are called to the polls on Sunday and most voters cite climate protection among their top priorities.

All three leading parties have said they aim to implement a climate protection agenda if elected, with the Greens presenting the most ambitious package of measures.

However the Fridays for Future activists have said even the Greens’ official programme falls short of what is needed to stick to the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature rise.

The Greens want to end coal energy use by 2030 instead of the current 2038. They also want the production of combustion engine cars to end from the same year.

While the party is expected to fall far short of its ambition to win the election Sunday and place Baerbock in the chancellery, polls indicate it has a good chance of joining a ruling coalition as a junior partner under Scholz or Laschet.

Surrounded by barbed wire and an electric fence, marijuana plants flourish under the bright sun on a farm in a mountainous area outside Rio de Janeiro.

But this farm has nothing to do with drug trafficking. It belongs, in fact, to a pioneering Brazilian NGO engaged in the production of medical cannabis to help patients with seizures.

Margarete Brito, a lawyer by training, first started growing cannabis several years ago to relieve the seizures of her daughter Sofia, now 12, who is suffering from epilepsy.

After seeing her condition improve, Brito decided to help other patients too. So she founded the Medical Cannabis Research and Patient Support Association, or Apepi, that produces artisanal therapeutic oils made from cannabis to help patients with conditions similar to her daughter’s.

That work has required a lot of effort, since growing marijuana remains illegal in Brazil.

“If we follow the letter of the law, nothing authorizes us to do that,” Brito told AFP.

But she and her husband, Marcos Langenbach, were able to obtain an unprecedented judicial authorization to cultivate cannabis for medical purposes in 2016. 

Today, their farm — about two hours by car from the Brazilian capital — has 2,000 plants growing there to help patients with severe autism, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

And despite initial suspicion and pushback from some, Brito says the endeavor enjoys support in Brazil.

“We have real social legitimacy. That’s what protects us,” Brito said.

– ‘People have prejudices’- 

On a recent visit to the farm, which is protected by an electric fence and barbed wire, agricultural engineer Diogo Fonseca made his way among marijuana plants growing in large black pots and marked with the names of their different varieties: Purple Wreck, Schanti, Doctor, Harle Tsu, Solar, CBG.

These plants are used to produce therapeutic oils that meet the individual needs of each patient, depending on whether they require a higher or lower dose of cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychotropic substance with a relaxing effect.

Using a pocket microscope, the Fonseca examines each plant to assess the ideal time to pick.

In April, armed police with sniffer dogs raided the farm, after a person who had worked on renovating its laboratory reported Apepi to the authorities. 

“A lot of people have prejudices,” Brito said. “We explain how our project works to everyone, but this person believed that we were drug traffickers and informed against us,” said Manoel Caetano, the farm’s manager.

The police eventually realized the farm was a medical cannabis plantation, apologized and left, according to Brito.

– More accessible –

Apepi has forged partnerships with respected scientific institutions, such as the Fiocruz Foundation and the University of Campinas. And it has grown has fivefold over the past two years and now counts 1,500 members. 

Among them is Gabriel Guerra, 19, who suffers from a severe form of autism and cerebral palsy. When he was eight, he would have 60 seizures a day. “But when he started to take the custom oil” — a few drops three times a day — “the attacks stopped. He started to have more independence, looking for ways to communicate,” explained his father Ricardo Guerra. 

Thanks to Apepi, the products have become much more accessible to patients: 150 reais ($28) for a 30 ml bottle, while imported products can cost anywhere from 600 to 3,000 reais ($113 to $565).

Apepi is now awaiting a court decision which they hope would allow the farm to increase its production to 10,000 plants starting next year.

But the group is not very optimistic about the prospect of legalization of medical cannabis any time soon — President Jair Bolsonaro has already indicated that he would veto a bill being debated in Congress.

Using a raised eyebrow or smile, people with speech or physical disabilities can now operate their Android-powered smartphones hands-free, Google said Thursday. 

Two new tools put machine learning and front-facing cameras on smartphones to work detecting face and eye movements.

Users can scan their phone screen and select a task by smiling, raising eyebrows, opening their mouth, or looking to the left, right or up.

“To make Android more accessible for everyone, we’re launching new tools that make it easier to control your phone and communicate using facial gestures,” Google said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 61 million adults in the United States live with disabilities, which has pushed Google and rivals Apple and Microsoft to make products and services more accessible to them.

“Every day, people use voice commands, like ‘Hey Google’, or their hands to navigate their phones,” the tech giant said in a blog post.

“However, that’s not always possible for people with severe motor and speech disabilities.”

The changes are the result of two new features, one is called “Camera Switches,” which lets people use their faces instead of swipes and taps to interact with smartphones.

The other is Project Activate, a new Android application which allows people to use those gestures to trigger an action, like having a phone play a recorded phrase, send a text, or make a call.

“Now it’s possible for anyone to use eye movements and facial gestures that are customized to their range of movement to navigate their phone — sans hands and voice,” Google said.

The free Activate app is available in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States at the Google Play shop.

Apple, Google and Microsoft have consistently rolled out innovations that make internet technology more accessible to people with disabilities or who find that age has made some tasks, such as reading, more difficult.

Voice-commanded digital assistants built into speakers and smartphones can enable people with sight or movement challenges to tell computers what to do.

There is software that identifies text on web pages or in images and then reads it aloud, as well as automatic generation of captions that display what is said in videos.

An “AssistiveTouch” feature that Apple built into the software powering its smart watch lets touchscreen displays be controlled by sensing movements such as finger pinches or hand clenches.

“This feature also works with VoiceOver so you can navigate Apple Watch with one hand while using a cane or leading a service animal,” Apple said in a post.

Computing colossus Microsoft describes accessibility as essential to empowering everyone with technology tools.

“To enable transformative change accessibility needs to be a priority,” Microsoft said in a post.

“We aim to build it into what we design for every team, organization, classroom, and home.”

Guatemala’s Fuego volcano began a strong eruptive phase on Thursday, spewing lava and ash in a series of explosions that have not yet forced any evacuations, authorities said.

The eruptions produced a long river of lava flowing down to the base of the volcano, some 35 kilometers (22 miles) southwest of the capital Guatemala City, said Emilio Barillas of the Insivumeh volcano institute.

“Activity that is taking place at the moment corresponds to the beginning of an eruption of strombolian character,” Barillas said, using the scientific word for a mix of explosions and lava flow.

Fuego, 3.7 kilometers high (12,240 feet), is one of three active volcanoes in Guatemala.

The recently recorded activity is the strongest since June 2018, when Fuego unleashed a torrent of mud and ash that wiped the village of San Miguel Los Lotes from the map, said Barillas.

More than 200 people were killed.

On Thursday, several communities at the foot of the mountain reported nothing more serious than a downpour of ash, said the national Conred disaster coordination center.

“For now, no evacuation program has been initiated,” said Conred spokesman David de Leon, though the situation was being closely followed.

Footprints dating back 23,000 years have been discovered in the United States, suggesting humans settled North America long before the end of the last Ice Age, research published Thursday showed.

The findings push back the date at which the continent was colonized by its first inhabitants by thousands of years.

The footprints were left in mud on the banks of a long-since dried up lake, which is now part of a New Mexico desert.

Sediment filled the indentations and hardened into rock, protecting evidence of our ancient relatives, and giving scientists a detailed insight into their lives.

“Many tracks appear to be those of teenagers and children; large adult footprints are less frequent,” write the authors of the study published in the American journal Science.

“One hypothesis for this is the division of labor, in which adults are involved in skilled tasks whereas ‘fetching and carrying’ are delegated to teenagers. 

“Children accompany the teenagers, and collectively they leave a higher number of footprints.”

Researchers also found tracks left by mammoths, prehistoric wolves, and even giant sloths, which appear to have been around at the same time as the humans visited the lake.

The Americas were the last continent to be reached by humanity.

For decades, the most commonly accepted theory has been that settlers came to North America from eastern Siberia across a land bridge — the present-day Bering Strait.

From Alaska, they headed south to kinder climes.

Archaeological evidence, including spearheads used to kill mammoths, has long suggested a 13,500-year-old settlement associated with so-called Clovis culture — named after a town in New Mexico.

This was considered the continent’s first civilization, and the forerunner of groups that became known as Native Americans.

However, the notion of Clovis culture has been challenged over the past 20 years, with new discoveries that have pushed back the age of the first settlements. 

Generally, even this pushed-back estimate of the age of the first settlements had not been more than 16,000 years, after the end of the so-called “last glacial maximum” — the period when ice sheets were at their most widespread.

This episode, which lasted until about 20,000 years ago, is crucial because it is believed that with ice covering much of the northern parts of the continent, human migration from Asia into North America and beyond would have been very difficult.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday urged all countries to raise their climate ambitions as the UN Security Council took up the environmental crisis, warning that it is aggravating conflicts.

Blinken pointed to recent record rains in New York that contributed to dozens of deaths and said climate has aggravated conflicts in countries including Syria, Mali, Yemen, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

“The climate crisis isn’t coming. It’s already here and clear patterns are emerging and its impact, the consequences, are falling disproportionately on vulnerable and low-income populations,” Blinken said.

“All our nations must take immediate, bold actions,” Blinken said, weeks ahead of high-stakes UN climate talks in Glasgow.

In a veiled reference to China, the only emitter larger than the United States, Blinken highlighted President Joe Biden’s pledge before the United Nations on Tuesday to double financial support for the hardest-hit countries.

“We urge other governments to step up in making these investments, particularly those like the United States that are the biggest emitters,” Blinken said.

The Security Council meeting called by current president Ireland follows a first top-level session on climate led by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in February.

“It’s time to act. We have to act to show we are ready,” said Ireland’s prime minister, Micheal Martin.

But Russia has been skeptical, saying climate does not fit the agenda of the Security Council.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is participating in the annual UN General Assembly but did not attend the session, instead sending Russia’s deputy ambassador, Dmitriy Polyanskiy.

“There are more suitable fora,” Polyanskiy said, voicing concern about duplicating efforts.

“Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

But Blinken said that taking up climate sends a “clear message to the international community of the serious implications that climate change has for our collective security.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the session that a recent report by UN scientists that showed dangerously intensifying levels of climate change was “a code red for humanity.”

He said at least 30 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters last year and that “no region is immune.”

“Our window of opportunity to prevent the worst climate impacts is rapidly closing,” he warned.

Archaeologists in Morocco have identified clothesmaking tools fashioned from bone dating back 120,000 years, the oldest ever found, one of the researchers said.

“It’s a major discovery because while older bone tools have been found elsewhere, it’s the first time we have identified bone tools (this old) that were used to make clothing,” Moroccan archaeologist Abdeljalil El Hajraoui said.

The international team discovered more than 60 tools in Contrebandiers (Smugglers) Cave, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the North African country’s capital.

They had been “intentionally shaped for specific tasks that included leather and fur working”, the team wrote in a study published in the journal iScience.

The discovery could help answer questions on the origins of modern human behaviour, said El Hajraoui, a researcher at the National Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (INSAP).

“Sewing is a behaviour that has lasted” since prehistory, he told AFP. 

“Tools like those discovered in the cave were used for 30,000 years, which proves the emergence of collective memory.”

The iScience paper predicted that “given the level of specialization of the bone tool material culture at Contrebandiers Cave, it is likely that earlier examples will be found.”

The team also discovered living spaces dug into the ground or built in the cave, as well as perforated seashells apparently used as ornaments.

“This was a cultural evolution that still needs study,” El Hajraoui said.

Morocco has been the location of a number of significant archaeological findings, including on Wednesday when the country’s culture ministry announced that researchers in a cave near Essaouira, about 400 kilometres southwest of Rabat, had discovered a collection of about 30 shaped marine snail shells dating back as much as 150,000 years. 

In a statement, it said they were “the oldest ornaments ever discovered”.

That followed an announcement in July when archaeologists revealed the discovery of North Africa’s oldest Stone Age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3 million years.

The find pushed back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in North Africa of the Acheulian stone tool industry associated with a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, researchers on the team told journalists in Rabat.

In 2017, the discovery of five fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, estimated at 300,000 years old, overturned evolutionary science when they were designated Homo sapiens.

Britain, which faces soaring natural gas prices, has been forced to run coal-fired power stations in order to secure energy supplies, electricity generation company Drax said on Thursday. 

The country is particularly exposed to Europe’s ongoing energy crisis due to its reliance on natural gas to generate electricity. The price of European gas futures has more than doubled since May.

“These facilities have fulfilled a critical role in keeping the lights on at a time when the energy system is under considerable pressure,” the group said in a statement emailed to AFP.

Drax — which owns the nation’s biggest facility in Yorkshire, northern England — had planned to switch from coal to biomass this year to help tackle climate change.

The group could now extend the use of coal, Chief Executive Will Gardiner told the Financial Times.

“We’re very aware that the country might have a significant problem and if there’s something Drax can do we will absolutely think about doing that,” Gardiner told the business-focused newspaper.

Any delay could complicate Britain’s plans to scrap coal-powered electricity generation by October 2024.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, which seeks to reduce Britain’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, will in November host the COP26 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow.

Prices of wholesale natural gas in Britain hit record highs last week, after a fire knocked out a vital point connecting the country’s power grid to France.

Runaway prices also sparked fears of rocketing domestic energy bills as demand peaks during the cold northern hemisphere winter.

Britain will face a “tough winter” if temperatures are colder than normal, Gardiner also told the FT.

About 1.5 million consumers in Britain have seen their domestic energy suppliers go bust in recent weeks as a result of chronic turmoil in the market.

Europe’s energy crisis has also been exacerbated by a lack of wind for turbine sites, coupled with ongoing nuclear outages — and the winding down of coal mines by climate-conscious governments.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday urged all countries to raise climate ambitions as the UN Security Council took up the environmental crisis, warning that it is aggravating conflicts.

Blinken pointed to record rains in New York that contributed to dozens of deaths and said that climate has aggravated conflicts in countries such as Syria, Mali, Yemen, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

“The climate crisis isn’t coming. It’s already here and clear patterns are emerging and its impact, the consequences, are falling disproportionately on vulnerable and low-income populations,” Blinken said.

“All our nations must take immediate, bold actions,” Blinken said, weeks ahead of high-stakes UN climate talks in Glasgow.

In a veiled reference to China, the only emitter larger than the United States, Blinken highlighted President Joe Biden’s pledge before the United Nations on Tuesday to double financial support for the hardest-hit countries.

“We urge other governments to step up in making these investments, particularly those like the United States that are the biggest emitters,” Blinken said.

The Security Council meeting called by current president Ireland follows a first top-level session on climate led by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in February.

Russia has been skeptical, saying that climate does not fit the agenda of the Security Council.

Blinken said that taking up climate sends a “clear message to the international community of the serious implications that climate change has for our collective security.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the session that a recent report by UN scientists that showed dangerously intensifying levels of climate change was “a code red for humanity.”

He said that at least 30 million people were displaced by climate-related disasters last year and that “no region is immune.”

“Our window of opportunity to prevent the worst climate impacts is rapidly closing,” he warned.