AFP UK

Silos, smokestacks and brown pools of water line the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, where scores of refineries and petrochemical plants have metastasized over a few decades. Welcome to “Cancer Alley.”

Industrial pollution on this ribbon of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge puts the mostly African-American residents at nearly 50 times the risk of developing cancer than the national average, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

For years activists, who gave the 87-mile (140-kilometer) stretch its sinister nickname, have been fighting to clean up the area. 

Then, last spring, it began making headlines for a different reason: one of its parishes — Louisiana’s equivalent of US counties — was hit with the highest rate of Covid-19 related deaths in the country. 

“It ran through this community. People were terrified here,” says Robert Taylor, 79, a resident of the parish of St John’s the Baptist. 

In April 2020, at the height of the first wave, three residents were dying every day in the community of 43,000. 

“It changed our way of life,” says Angelo Bernard, 64, who works for the Marathon refinery. 

“In Reserve, we all used to get together all the time,” he remembers. “We don’t anymore. I go out as little as possible.” 

Since then nearly one in eight parishioners has been infected.

The Delta variant has made the situation even worse: infections have exploded in the last three weeks.

– ‘We jumped on it’ –

Deaths, however, have slowed in recent months — eight this summer, perhaps thanks to a vaccination rate that is among the highest in Louisiana.

After the trauma of 2020 parishioners rushed to get their shots, and St John’s the Baptist now has 44.3 percent of its residents fully vaccinated, compared to 39.4 percent in the rest of the state.  

“When it first came up that vaccination, you know, would help people, well we jumped on it,” smiles another resident, Robert Moore.

That reaction is perhaps not surprising in a community that has already dealt with so much tragedy. 

Like many of the residents of his neighborhood in the small town of Reserve, Moore devoted his life to the nearby plant formerly owned by US chemical company DuPont.

Set up in 1968 on a former plantation, the plant — some of whose pipes reach into the opaque waters of the Mississippi — was purchased in 2015 by the Japanese company Denka.

It is the only site in the United States that produces neoprene, a material used to make wetsuits, gloves or electrical insulators. 

To produce neoprene the plant emits chloroprene, a chemical classified as a probable carcinogen by the EPA in 2010.

Astronomical amounts of the chemical were detected in Reserve’s air in the early 2010s, prompting the environmental agency to set a recommended limit of 0.2 micrograms of chloroprene per cubic meter.

Across the road from the plant, an air quality monitoring station serves as a grim reminder.

– ‘Vulnerable’ –

When Taylor got wind of the scandal, he was only half-surprised: the former construction worker had long wondered why cancer — which struck his mother, and his sister, and his wife, and his nephews — was so prevalent in his town.

Chloroprene is not the only factor affecting the health of Cancer Alley residents.

In Reserve, where more than 60 percent of the 9,000 residents are Black, the poverty rate is two and a half times the national average.  

It is a population with “lots of comorbidities, lots of social challenges, socio-economic factors that contribute to poor health outcomes,” notes Julio Figueroa, an infectious disease specialist at Louisiana State University. 

“They are going to be a vulnerable population,” he said. 

President Joe Biden acknowledged the challenges facing “Cancer Alley” shortly after his arrival in the White House.

He said he aimed to address “the disproportionate health and environmental and economic impacts on communities of color… especially… the hard-hit areas like Cancer Alley in Louisiana.”

The United Nations has also drawn attention to the area’s plight, releasing a report earlier this year denouncing “environmental racism” in the area.

For resident Angelo Bernard, the spotlight placed on his community in recent months is an opportunity for the country to overcome some of its divisions — whether they be race, or the intensely partisan divide over vaccinations and other Covid measures.

“God is allowing all this to happen for a reason, you know,” he told AFP. 

“We got to find the right way to come together and get people vaccinated.”

With untreated sewage in the water and rubbish piled on the sand, pollution on Tripoli’s Mediterranean coast is denying residents of the war-torn Libyan capital a much-needed escape.

The environment ministry last month ordered the closure of a number of beaches along the 30-kilometre (18-mile) Greater Tripoli coastline, despite the roasting summer heat.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said Abdelbasset al-Miri, the ministry official in charge of monitoring the coast.

“We need quick solutions for this problem because it harms the environment just as much as it harms people.”

Daily discharges of untreated sewage from the capital’s two million population make this the most polluted section of the North African country’s 1,770-kilometre coastline.

Cans, plastic bags and bottles plague the water and shore.

On one beach, near a large hotel, open-air rivulets channel untreated wastewater into the sea, where a few young men brave the contaminated waters in search of cool.

Libya’s infrastructure has been devastated by a decade of conflict, state collapse and neglect since the 2011 overthrow and killing of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a NATO-backed rebellion.

But Tripoli’s only sewage works closed years before that, like many industrial facilities shuttered for lack of maintenance or funding. 

As a result, all of Tripoli’s wastewater goes directly into the Mediterranean.

“Huge amounts of sewage gets dumped in the sea every day,” said Sara al-Naami of Tripoli city council.

– ‘Summer prison’ –

Laboratory tests have found “a high concentration of bacteria, 500 percent more than normal,” including E. Coli, at five sites along the capital’s coastline, she added.

“We have raised the issue of pollution in Tripoli’s seawater with the former and current governments, and emphasised the urgent need for a sanitation facility,” Naami said.

But, she said, in the absence of such infrastructure, “temporary solutions” are needed such as settling tanks to filter wastewater before it reaches the sea.

A hard-won ceasefire last year led to a UN-backed government being installed several months ago, with elections set for December.

But day to day, Libyans continue to face power cuts, a liquidity crisis and biting inflation.

And for a country of seven million where leisure facilities are almost non-existent, swimming is a much-needed way to relax and cool down.

Some take to the water despite the risks.

But shop owner Walid al-Muldi doesn’t want to risk getting sick.

“It’s become worse over the years. During heatwaves, the smell gets disgusting,” the 39-year-old said, sitting on a plastic seat a few paces from the shoreline.

“You have to go more than 100 kilometres east of Tripoli to find water that’s a bit cleaner.”

His friend, Mohammed al-Kabir, agreed.

Because of coronavirus restrictions and the unhealthy sea water, “Libyans live in a summer prison,” he said.

The effectiveness against infection of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines dropped from 91 percent before the Delta variant became dominant to 66 percent afterwards, according to a large study of US health workers published Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been examining the real-world performance of the two vaccines since they were first authorized among healthcare personnel, first responders and other frontline workers.

Thousands of workers across six states were tested weekly and upon onset of Covid-19 symptoms, allowing researchers to estimate efficacy against symptomatic and asymptomatic infection.

By looking at the rate of infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated people and the amount of time they were tracked, vaccine effectiveness was estimated at 91 percent in the initial study period of December 14, 2020 to April 10, 2021.

But during weeks in the run-up to August 14, when the ultra-contagious Delta variant became dominant, effectiveness fell to 66 percent.

The report’s authors said there were a number of caveats, including that the protection from vaccines could be waning over time anyway, and the 66 percent estimate was based on a relatively short study period with few infections.

“Although these interim findings suggest a moderate reduction in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in preventing infection, the sustained two thirds reduction in infection risk underscores the continued importance and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination,” they said.

A number of studies have now concluded vaccine efficacy has dropped against Delta, even though the precise level of that drop differs between papers.

Protection against severe disease appears more stable, exceeding 90 percent, according to a recent CDC study of patients in New York. 

Another CDC study of Los Angeles patients released Tuesday that was carried out from May 1 to July 25 showed unvaccinated people were 29.2 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid-19 than the vaccinated — corresponding to efficacy of about 97 percent.

Delta became the dominant strain in the United States in early July.

According to a recent paper in the journal Virological, the amount of virus found in the first tests of patients with the Delta variant was 1,000 times higher than patients in the first wave of the virus in 2020, greatly increasing its contagiousness.

The slow rollout of coronavirus vaccines will cost the global economy $2.3 trillion in lost output, a report released Wednesday found.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s study found that emerging and developing economies, whose vaccine rollouts are far behind those of wealthier countries, will bear the brunt of those losses.

The report comes as advanced nations move towards providing booster shots to their populations while the international effort to provide vaccines for poorer nations remains inadequate.

The study calculated that countries which fail to vaccinate 60 percent of their populations by mid-2022 will suffer the losses, equivalent to two trillion euros, over the 2022-2025 period.

“Emerging countries will shoulder around two-thirds of these losses, further delaying their economic convergence with more developed countries,” the EIU said.

It warned the delayed rollout of vaccines could fuel resentment, increasing the risk of social unrest in developing economies.

The Asia-Pacific Region will be the worst hit in absolute terms, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the losses. 

But as a percentage of GDP, sub-Saharan Africa will suffer the worst losses.

Around 60 percent of the population of higher-income countries received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of late August, compared to just one percent in poorer nations, according to the study. Two doses are required to be fully vaccinated for most shots.

“Vaccination campaigns are progressing at a glacial pace in lower-income economies,” it said.

The report’s author, Agathe Demarais, said the international effort to provide coronavirus vaccines to poor nations, Covax, has failed to live up to its even modest expectations.

“There is little chance that the divide over access to vaccines will ever be bridged” with rich countries providing only a fraction of what is needed, she said in a statement.

“Finally, the focus in developed economies is shifting towards administering booster doses of coronavirus vaccines, which will compound shortages of raw materials and production bottlenecks,” she added.

The EIU said its study was conducted by combining its in-house forecasts for vaccination timelines in around 200 countries with GDP growth forecasts.

The slow rollout of coronavirus vaccines will cost the global economy $2.3 trillion in lost output, a report released Wednesday found.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s study found that emerging and developing economies, whose vaccine rollouts are far behind those of wealthier countries, will bear the brunt of those losses.

The report comes as advanced nations move towards providing booster shots to their populations while the international effort to provide vaccines for poorer nations remains inadequate.

The study calculated that countries which fail to vaccinate 60 percent of their populations by mid-2022 will suffer the losses, equivalent to two trillion euros, over the 2022-2025 period.

“Emerging countries will shoulder around two-thirds of these losses, further delaying their economic convergence with more developed countries,” the EIU said.

It warned the delayed rollout of vaccines could fuel resentment, increasing the risk of social unrest in developing economies.

The Asia-Pacific Region will be the worst hit in absolute terms, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the losses. 

But as a percentage of GDP, sub-Saharan Africa will suffer the worst losses.

Around 60 percent of the population of higher-income countries received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of late August, compared to just one percent in poorer nations, according to the study. Two doses are required to be fully vaccinated for most shots.

“Vaccination campaigns are progressing at a glacial pace in lower-income economies,” it said.

The report’s author, Agathe Demarais, said the international effort to provide coronavirus vaccines to poor nations, Covax, has failed to live up to its even modest expectations.

“There is little chance that the divide over access to vaccines will ever be bridged” with rich countries providing only a fraction of what is needed, she said in a statement.

“Finally, the focus in developed economies is shifting towards administering booster doses of coronavirus vaccines, which will compound shortages of raw materials and production bottlenecks,” she added.

The EIU said its study was conducted by combining its in-house forecasts for vaccination timelines in around 200 countries with GDP growth forecasts.

The effectiveness against infection of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines dropped from 91 percent before the Delta variant became dominant to 66 percent afterwards, according to a large study of US health workers published Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been examining the real-world performance of the two vaccines since they were first authorized among healthcare personnel, first responders and other frontline workers.

Thousands of workers across six states were tested weekly and upon onset of Covid-19 symptoms, allowing researchers to estimate efficacy against symptomatic and asymptomatic infection.

By looking at the rate of infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated people and the amount of time they were tracked, vaccine effectiveness was estimated at 91 percent in the initial study period of December 14, 2020 to April 10, 2021.

But during weeks in the run-up to August 14, when the ultra-contagious Delta variant became dominant, effectiveness fell to 66 percent.

The report’s authors said there were a number of caveats, including that the protection from vaccines could be waning over time anyway, and the 66 percent estimate was based on a relatively short study period with few infections.

“Although these interim findings suggest a moderate reduction in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in preventing infection, the sustained two thirds reduction in infection risk underscores the continued importance and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination,” they said.

A number of studies have now concluded vaccine efficacy has dropped against Delta, even though the precise level of that drop differs between papers.

Protection against severe disease appears more stable, exceeding 90 percent, according to a recent CDC study of patients in New York. 

Another CDC study of Los Angeles patients released Tuesday that was carried out from May 1 to July 25 showed unvaccinated people were 29.2 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid-19 than the vaccinated — corresponding to efficacy of about 97 percent.

Delta became the dominant strain in the United States in early July.

According to a recent paper in the journal Virological, the amount of virus found in the first tests of patients with the Delta variant was 1,000 times higher than patients in the first wave of the virus in 2020, greatly increasing its contagiousness.

Wildfires, mostly started intentionally, have scorched almost 600,000 hectares of land in eastern Bolivia already this year, authorities said.

On Monday night there were 20 active fires in Santa Cruz state affecting seven protected areas.

The government said 200,000 hectares (495,000 acres) had burned in just two days.

Most of the fires are in the forests of Chiquitania, a region that lies between the Amazon to the north, the plains of Cahco to the south and the Pantanal — the world’s largest wetland — to the southeast.

The San Matias nature reserve — a national park the size of Belgium — is one of the worst affected areas.

Volunteer firefighters and forest rangers have been digging trenches to try to halt the spreading fires.

The government has deployed around 1,800 military personnel to help, with two helicopters due to join in the effort.

Despite a lack of resources to fight wildfires, Bolivia cannot ask neighboring countries for help unless local and regional authorities declare a “disaster,” said Juan Carlos Calvimontes, the deputy civil defense minister.

A disaster can only be declared once the government exhausts its budget for fighting wildfires.

This law “needs to be changed,” said Calvimontes.

The government says most of the fires were started deliberately.

Environmentalists blame laws enacted under former leftist President Evo Morales, who for years encouraged burning of forest and pasture land to expand agricultural production. 

The practice is legal in Bolivia for areas up to 20 hectares between May and July — once the rainy season is over.

Penalties for illegal fires can be remarkably lenient, though, amounting to a fine of just one US dollar per hectare burnt.

However, for large scale wildfires, perpetrators can be given a sentence of up to three years in prison.

Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk said Tuesday it was speeding up plans for an environment-friendly fleet with the order of eight carbon-neutral container vessels, a pioneering project in the highly-polluting industry.

Maersk said in a statement that it will introduce the “groundbreaking” ocean-going vessels, capable of operating on carbon-neutral methanol, in the first quarter of 2024.

The ships, built by Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and equipped with dual fuel engines, will be able to each transport 16,000 containers, and will account for about three percent of the company’s fleet.

The deal with HHI includes an option for four more vessels in 2025.

According to Maersk, the new ships will enable the company to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by about one million tonnes.

Global maritime transport is more polluting than the aviation sector, according to the Higher Institute of Maritime Economics (Isemar).

It is responsible for 2.98 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, 2018 figures from the International Maritime Organization (IMO) show.

“The time to act is now, if we are to solve shipping’s climate challenge,” AP Moller-Maersk chief executive Soren Skou said in the statement.

“This order proves that carbon-neutral solutions are available today across container vessel segments and that Maersk stands committed to the growing number of our customers who look to decarbonise their supply chains.”

“Further, this is a firm signal to fuel producers that sizable market demand for the green fuels of the future is emerging at speed,” he added.

In February, the group announced it would launch its first carbon-neutral vessel in 2023, seven years ahead of its initial target.

That ship will operate on bio-methanol and will sail intra-regional routes.

Maersk, which sold its oil division in 2017 to TotalEnergies, aims to be carbon neutral by 2050.

In 2020, it said it had reduced its carbon emissions by 42 percent from the previous year.

Thailand on Tuesday decriminalised kratom, a tropical leaf long used as a herbal remedy but which some health regulators around the world have criticised as potentially unsafe.

Kratom — scientific name Mitragyna speciosa — is part of the coffee family, used for centuries in Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea for its pain-relieving and mildly stimulating effects.

It has become increasingly popular in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against its use, citing risks of addiction and abuse.

The change to Thai law means “the general public will be able to consume and sell kratom legally”, government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri said in a statement.

A Thailand Development Research Institute study estimated that decriminalisation will save authorities about 1.69 billion baht ($50 million) in prosecution costs. 

Kratom stimulates the same brain receptors as morphine, though with much milder effects, and in Thailand it is mainly used in the deep south, where Muslim workers use it for pain relief after manual labour.

It has not been subject to international restrictions, though the World Health Organization announced last month that it was examining whether kratom should be considered for control.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said the decriminalisation of kratom — which is native to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea — was “welcome, and frankly long overdue”.

“The legalisation of kratom in Thailand ends a legacy of rights-abusing criminalisation of a drug that has long been used in traditional, rural communities in the country,” Robertson told AFP.

Soontorn Rakrong, an adviser to the committee on drafting the new legislation who has long advocated decriminalisation, said farmers in southern Thailand could grow kratom as a crop to make up for a fall in rubber prices.

In Indonesia, kratom is legal but its status is under review, with some politicians pushing for it to be banned.

Thai lawmakers have shown some appetite for reforming the kingdom’s harsh anti-drug laws in recent years.

In 2019, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian country to legalise medical marijuana, and the government has invested in the extraction, distillation and marketing of cannabis oils for use in the health industry.

But overcrowded Thai prisons are still packed with inmates handed long sentences for drugs offences — possessing just a few methamphetamine pills can earn a decade in jail.

Jeremy Douglas of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said Thailand is discussing and considering drug rehabilitation and diversion programmes for meth users to ease some pressure off the system and “also because it is more effective”.

Senegal’s Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome is up to his knees in water, in a suburb of the West African country’s capital, surveying flood damage.  

He’s inspecting a home in the eastern Keur Massar district: The first floor and courtyard have been submerged in brown water for three days. 

Dragonflies hover over the swampy courtyard, which a lone pump is struggling to drain. Inside, furniture has been raised off the ground.

The owner of the home, who declined to be named, is scathing. 

“They are incapable,” he tells AFP, gesturing towards the minister and his entourage.

Anger has been growing over the increasingly routine flooding in Dakar. 

Diome and other officials were booed as they toured Keur Massar, and protesters elsewhere in Dakar blocked a highway.

Comprising about 3.7 million people, the city regularly floods during the July-October rainy reason. But the problem is getting worse. This year, heavy flooding struck after only two days of rain. 

The floods have also come after repeated government promises to solve the problem. 

Moise David Ndour, another Keur Massar resident, is also fed up. “Nothing has been done,” he says. “Some people have even moved away because of this”.

Many are expecting worse flooding to come as the rains continue.

According to experts interviewed by AFP, whole districts are built on flood plains, and on soft soils close to the water table. Planning is haphazard and local authorities appear to exert little control.

– ‘Worrying paradox – 

Senegalese President Macky Sall launched a 10-year plan to combat flooding when he came to power in 2012, with a budget the equivalent of about 1.14 billion euros ($1.4 billion).

Water pumps and culverts have been installed in some areas of Dakar, successfully warding off flooding. However, other districts of the rapidly expanding city have been left untouched.

About a quarter of Senegal’s population of 16 million people live in the seaside city, where there is fierce pressure to build because of housing shortages.

The government has sought to relieve inundated areas without tackling the reasons underlying regular flooding, according to Senegalese geologist Pape Goumbo Lo.

“The construction of housing must take into account the nature of the soil,” he said, adding that there is a need for more studies of the land and the water table. 

Free-for-all construction has also exacerbated flooding even as downpours have become less frequent. 

“This is a very worrying paradox,” says Cheikh Gueye, a geographer and researcher at the Dakar-based NGO Enda Tiers-Monde.

“Less and less rain is causing more and more damage,” he adds.

– Horses to the rescue – 

In Mbao, another Dakar suburb, it hasn’t rained in three days, but the main road is still flooded with stagnant water.

Motorbikes, scooters and public transportation vehicles can no longer use it. 

Ibrahim Cisse, a local with water lapping round his ankles, says “we have no choice but to get wet or use the horse-drawn carriages to cross the street”.

In front of him, about a dozen people are perched on a horse-cart, which are common in Senegal but are mostly used to transport goods. 

“There is a lot of damage, the shopkeepers can’t open,” says another local, who declines to be named. “We have to get past this”. 

But Cheikh Gueye, the geographer, is pessimistic. 

“We build in flood zones: Every day new neighbourhoods are created, and the same mistakes are made”.