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Zaafarana wind farm along Egypt's Gulf of Suez — the country is targeting 42 percent of electricity output from renewables by 2035

A month before Egypt hosts the UN climate change conference, Cairo is finalising the list of world leaders coming as it weathers criticism over its human rights and environmental records.

Cairo voiced disappointment that King Charles III, a long-time champion of the environment, cancelled a plan to attend and speak at COP27 after Britain’s Prime Minister Liss Truss reportedly objected.

“We hope this does not signal Britain stepping back from the global climate change movement” after it chaired last year’s COP in Glasgow, a COP spokesman was quoted as saying by the Guardian daily.

Egypt will from November 6 host the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Critics have questioned the choice of venue, pointing to Egypt’s mixed record on the environment and on civil rights, with thousands of dissidents in jail, including Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been on a hunger strike for months.

Human Rights Watch warned that Egypt may “try to use its role as the COP27 presidency to promote an image of openness and tolerance, although political oppression under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government has caused one of the country’s worst human rights crises in decades”.

Protests of the kind that have sought to spur action at past climate summits are expected to be muted, and civil society groups have been relegated to a building away from the main venue.

“We have already been told that only registered protests are allowed,” said Patience Nabukalu, of the Ugandan branch of activist group Fridays For Future. 

High room rates for hotels in the resort town will keep away many activists, especially from Africa, she said, adding: “Where are the victims in this COP?” 

– ‘Far too little, far too late’ –

The conference will once more seek to boost global efforts to slow the climate crisis that is intensifying natural disasters, from wildfires to severe storms such as Hurricane Ian that just hit Florida.

Egypt itself faces major threats, from soaring temperatures in its vast desert areas to rising seas flooding its breadbasket the Nile River delta.

But the summit comes as global attention is focused on other turmoil, from Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is driving sky-high food and energy prices, to crises from Iran to Taiwan to North Korea.

UN chief Antonio Guterres, in his latest warning to the Group of 20 nations, charged that their collective commitments on climate change are “far too little and far too late”.

COP26 last year ended with a pledge to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels — a goal the world is set to miss on current emission trends.

Egypt has said it will champion the plight of poorer countries, in Africa and beyond, which are least to blame for climate change but suffer its worst effects.

Poor countries are now demanding funding to compensate them for the “losses and damages” of climate change, an issue expected to be fiercely discussed.

The debate takes place in a climate of mistrust, as rich countries have yet not fulfilled their commitment to give poorer countries $100 billion a year for emissions reduction and adaptation.

– Vanishing green spaces –

Questions have also been raised about Egypt’s own climate and other environmental policies.

Egypt’s Environment Minister Yasmina Fouad has told AFP that until recently, worrying about the environment was considered “a luxury” in the country of 104 million people, the Arab’s world’s most populous.

Its goal now is to produce 42 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2035, in part by building large solar plants.

But Egypt is also Africa’s second largest gas producer and actively scaling up oil and gas production and exports, especially of liquefied natural gas.

The group Climate Action Tracker rates as “highly insufficient” the overall climate policies of Egypt.

Egyptians have also criticised the destruction of green spaces, especially in the sprawling metropolis Cairo. 

Recent months have seen the disappearance of the Happyland parks in the Nile Delta and much of Merryland in Cairo, while the International Garden in Nasr City has been turned into a car park.

Greenpeace has, meanwhile, slammed Egypt’s “appalling” choice of Coca-Cola as an official sponsor of COP27, blaming the soft drink giant for much of the “plastic pollution in the world”.

Bear-ly there: by the time hibernation is over, bears will be shadows of their former selves, so gorging on salmon ahead of the winter is crucial to survival

Americans are weighing their options this week and deciding where to cast their ballot in the only contest that really matters: Fat Bear Week.

The annual poll will see thousands of people glued to webcams watching bears in Alaska stuff themselves with salmon as they ready for hibernation.

The creatures in Katmai State Park “could easily be eating 100 pounds (45 kilograms) or more of fish in a day,” former park ranger Mike Fitz, who thought up the vote, told AFP.

“It’s common for them to eat 20 or more salmon in a day.”

In a series of head-to-head elimination contests, voters are looking for the creature that appears to have piled on the most pounds to help it get through the lean months of winter.

A solid reserve of chubbiness is vital to survival.

During five months of deep sleep, the bears do not wake to eat, drink or even go to the toilet, emerging famished — and a lot thinner — in the spring.

Defending champion Otis, who has four titles to his name, tips the scales at around 1,000 pounds.

This year, he faces a hefty challenge for the overall crown from a bear dubbed 747 — named after Boeing’s enormous plane, and himself a former champ.

But, says Fitz, another pretender to the crown of Ursa-most-Major could emerge from the park’s population of 2,000 bears.

The contest, which takes place online — and of which the bears are probably unaware — began in 2014 with just a few thousand people voting.

By last year, it had become a titan in its own right, with more than 800,000 ballots cast.

“It’s an event to raise awareness for brown bears in Alaska and in Katmai National Park,” said Fitz, who now works as a naturalist for environmental NGO Explore.

“And hopefully through that awareness, people come to care for the animals.” 

That awareness is crucial to Fitz’s larger aim of helping to prevent environmental damage.

“On much of the west coast of North America, salmon runs are just hanging on by a thread,” he said.

“We’re doing very poorly in parts of California, in Oregon and Washington due to habitat loss and barriers to their migration like dams. 

“And climate change is exacerbating those things with drought and heat waves.” 

Ballots for Fat Bear Week can be cast at www.explore.org, and voting begins on Thursday.

Bear-ly there: by the time hibernation is over, bears will be shadows of their former selves, so gorging on salmon ahead of the winter is crucial to survival

Americans are weighing their options this week and deciding where to cast their ballot in the only contest that really matters: Fat Bear Week.

The annual poll will see thousands of people glued to webcams watching bears in Alaska stuff themselves with salmon as they ready for hibernation.

The creatures in Katmai State Park “could easily be eating 100 pounds (45 kilograms) or more of fish in a day,” former park ranger Mike Fitz, who thought up the vote, told AFP.

“It’s common for them to eat 20 or more salmon in a day.”

In a series of head-to-head elimination contests, voters are looking for the creature that appears to have piled on the most pounds to help it get through the lean months of winter.

A solid reserve of chubbiness is vital to survival.

During five months of deep sleep, the bears do not wake to eat, drink or even go to the toilet, emerging famished — and a lot thinner — in the spring.

Defending champion Otis, who has four titles to his name, tips the scales at around 1,000 pounds.

This year, he faces a hefty challenge for the overall crown from a bear dubbed 747 — named after Boeing’s enormous plane, and himself a former champ.

But, says Fitz, another pretender to the crown of Ursa-most-Major could emerge from the park’s population of 2,000 bears.

The contest, which takes place online — and of which the bears are probably unaware — began in 2014 with just a few thousand people voting.

By last year, it had become a titan in its own right, with more than 800,000 ballots cast.

“It’s an event to raise awareness for brown bears in Alaska and in Katmai National Park,” said Fitz, who now works as a naturalist for environmental NGO Explore.

“And hopefully through that awareness, people come to care for the animals.” 

That awareness is crucial to Fitz’s larger aim of helping to prevent environmental damage.

“On much of the west coast of North America, salmon runs are just hanging on by a thread,” he said.

“We’re doing very poorly in parts of California, in Oregon and Washington due to habitat loss and barriers to their migration like dams. 

“And climate change is exacerbating those things with drought and heat waves.” 

Ballots for Fat Bear Week can be cast at www.explore.org, and voting begins on Thursday.

Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless, together with Denmark's Morten Meldal, were honoured "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry", the Nobel jury said.

A trio of scientists from the United States and Denmark won the Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday for laying the foundation for a more functional form of chemistry where molecules are linked together.

Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless, together with Denmark’s Morten Meldal, were honoured “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”, the jury said.

Bertozzi is the only woman among the seven Nobel laureates honoured so far this year, with women vastly under-represented in the history of the prizes, especially in the science disciplines.

The chemist is only the eighth woman to win a Nobel Chemistry Prize, out of 189 recipients.

As an undergraduate at Harvard she played keyboards in a band called Bored of Education, with future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. But, speaking to AFP, Bertozzi conceded she didn’t have the musical talent of her former bandmate.

“So I think I chose the right path. Especially today,” she said.

Benjamin Schumann, a chemist at London’s Imperial College and former student in Bertozzi’s lab, said she was still known as “the rock star of sciences”.

The award marks the second Nobel for 81-year-old Sharpless, who won in chemistry in 2001. 

Only four other individuals have achieved the feat of winning two Nobel Prizes, including Polish-born Frenchwoman Marie Curie, who won the chemistry prize in 1911 after first winning the physics prize in 1903.

“Prizes aren’t what I’m doing science for. For better or for worse, I have to do it. It’s kind of a compulsion,” Sharpless told a news conference.

– Like Lego –

Click chemistry “is an elegant and efficient chemical reaction that is now in widespread use,” the jury said in a statement.

“Among many other uses, it is utilised in the development of pharmaceuticals,for mapping DNA and creating materials that are more fit for purpose,” it added.

Sharpless, a professor at Scripps Research in California, “started the ball rolling” and “coined the concept of click chemistry” around 2000, the jury said.

Afterwards, Sharpless and Meldal, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, independently of each other, presented “what is now the crown jewel of click chemistry: the copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition”.

The process allows chemists to “snap” molecules together “with the help of some copper ions”, which among other things allow for the production of new materials.

It is possible to click in substances that conduct electricity, capture sunlight, are antibacterial, protect from ultraviolet radiation or have other desirable properties, it said.

“The discovery that we did was more or less by serendipity” Meldal told AFP, calling his win a “big surprise”.

Speaking to reporters, the Danish professor said the application of click chemistry could be likened to Lego — the iconic plastic blocks that also hail from Denmark.

“You can make a house or bike or car or whatever functionality you want. By combining differently these building blocks… in chemistry, we do the same thing,” Meldal explained.

– ‘A new level’ –

Bertozzi, 55, a professor at Stanford University in the United States, was highlighted for then taking “click chemistry to a new level”.

“She developed click reactions that work inside living organisms. Her bioorthogonal reactions take place without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell,” the jury said.

Her research is now being used to investigate how these reactions can be used to diagnose and treat cancer.

“I’m absolutely stunned, I’m sitting here and I can hardly breathe,” Bertozzi told reporters via telephone, minutes after the announcement.

Silvia Diez-Gonzalez, a chemist who works on click chemistry at Imperial College, London, welcomed the win.

“Thank goodness” that the days of women not being allowed in chemistry labs are over, she told AFP, though “there is a lot of bias still out there”.

“I want to believe that it’s just a matter of time that as women and non-white people get more opportunities to achieve their potential, then eventually the recognition they get will be spread more widely.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobels in the science disciplines, has refused to introduce quotas despite the dearth of women laureates.

Goran Hansson, then-secretary general of the academy, told AFP last year after all of the science nods went to men, that it wanted every laureate to be accepted “because they made the most important discovery, and not because of gender or ethnicity”. 

The lack of women laureates “reflects the unfair conditions in society, particularly in years past but still existing”, he acknowledged.

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US President Joe Biden and Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis observed a political truce during the visit to areas hit by Hurricane Ian

US President Joe Biden flew over the devastation left by Hurricane Ian in Florida on a politically charged trip Wednesday that marked a truce with bitter Republican critic and potential 2024 opponent, Governor Ron DeSantis.

The Democrat, accompanied by First Lady Jill Biden, boarded a helicopter at Fort Myers for an aerial inspection of the havoc wreaked in one of the worst storms ever to hit the country.

“Everything — this historic and titanic, unimaginable storm ripped it to pieces,” Biden said in a speech after witnessing the destruction. “You’ve got to start from scratch.”

Authorities say at least 93 people — more than 100 according to US television networks citing local officials — died in Hurricane Ian.

The Category 4 storm flattened whole neighborhoods on the Sunshine State’s west coast, knocking out power for millions of people, and then weakened before tearing into South Carolina and up the East Coast.

For Biden, who visited hurricane-hit Puerto Rico on Monday, the Florida trip also had an inescapable political dimension, taking him into the stronghold of both DeSantis and Biden’s scandal-plagued predecessor in the White House, Donald Trump.

The Democrat, who says he wants to seek a second term despite already being the oldest man ever in the job at 79, could realistically end up facing a rematch with Trump in two years or a challenge from the up-and-coming DeSantis.

DeSantis has been a caustic critic, as he builds his brand of muscular right-wing politics in a bid to replace Trump as the biggest name in the Republican party. Biden has returned fire, painting DeSantis as part of what he says is an increasingly extreme right.

The hurricane, however, has prompted a ceasefire, with phone calls between the two men and acknowledgement from DeSantis that the federal government was quick to provide assistance.

“Mr President, welcome to Florida. We appreciate working together,” DeSantis said at the damaged waterfront neighborhood of Fisherman’s Pass.

Biden returned the warm words, saying DeSantis had “done a good job.”

“We have very different political philosophies, but we’ve worked hand in glove.”

– ‘Above politics’ — for now –

Biden’s main goal, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, is to check that “the people of Florida have what they need.”

In addition to getting briefings from federal emergency management chief Deanne Criswell and DeSantis, Biden met small business owners and local storm survivors.

In his remarks, he emphasized togetherness — something rarely celebrated in today’s gladiatorial Democrat vs Republican politics.

“This is the United States,” he said in his remarks, stressing the word “united.”

Biden’s visit to Puerto Rico earlier in the week covered similar ground, although there he was updated on recovery from Hurricane Fiona, which hit the island last month.

Again, Biden stressed the unity message, telling the Caribbean territory — which often feels overlooked by the mainland and the federal government — that “all of America’s with you.”

The disagreements with DeSantis, however, are many and will likely resurface as soon as Floridians recommence a semblance of their previous lives.

DeSantis opposed Biden on his Covid-19 policies during the pandemic, accusing the president of overreach. He has likewise made himself the standard bearer of the conservative backlash to growing tolerance for LGBT issues — something Biden has championed.

Another right-wing Florida Republican who often comes under fire from Biden, Senator Rick Scott, was also present for the visit. But again, Biden held his tongue.

The visit was “above politics,” Jean-Pierre said.

“There will be plenty of times, plenty of time to discuss differences between the president and the governor. Now is not the time.”

Carolyn Bertozzi is a co-winner of the 2022 Nobel prize in chemistry

“All kinds of crazy things” is how Carolyn Bertozzi, a 2022 Nobel laureate, describes her life’s work. Actually performing “chemistry in cells and in people.”

When she started her research in 1997, the Stanford professor was aiming only to observe the evolution of certain molecules on the surface of cancer cells. 

Today, thanks to her discoveries, at least two companies — including one she co-founded — are developing innovative cancer treatments.

The multitude of applications made possible by her findings are impressive: delivering treatments with extreme precision, understanding better how drugs act inside the body, visualizing certain bacteria, to name a few.

“I can’t even really enumerate them. The vast majority of those applications I would never have foreseen,” she told AFP in an interview.

The Nobel Prize committee recognized Bertozzi’s pioneering advances on Wednesday, making her only the eighth woman to win the chemistry prize, at just 55 years old.

– Lego pieces –

Her journey began when she found she had a passion for organic chemistry, while taking pre-medicine courses at Harvard. 

The subject is notoriously — many say fiendishly — difficult, but she credits an “amazing professor,” the late David Evans, for bringing it to life — and changing the course of her life.

“I said, forget the med school thing. I’m going to be a chemist,” said Bertozzi, whose sister is a professor of applied mathematics, and father a retired professor of physics.

After completing her post-doctorate and joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she wanted to take a closer look at glycans: complex carbohydrates, or sugars, located on the surface of cells, which “go through structural changes” when they become cancerous.

At the time, “there was no tool to image sugars, like in a microscope, for example,” she said.

She had an idea that would require two chemical substances that fit together perfectly, like pieces of lego.

The first lego is fed to cells via a sugar. The cell metabolizes it and places it on the tip of the glycan. The second piece of lego, a fluorescent molecule, is injected into the body.

The two lego pieces click together, and voila: hidden glycans reveal themselves under a microscope.

This technique is inspired by “click chemistry” developed independently by Denmark’s Morten Meldal and American Barry Sharpless — Bertozzi’s co-winners. But their discoveries relied on using copper as a catalyst, which is toxic to the body. 

One of Bertozzi’s great leaps was achieving the same type of ultra-efficient reaction without copper.

The other tour de force: making it all happen without wreaking havoc with other processes in the body.

“The beauty of it is that you can take the two Legos and click them together, even if they’re surrounded by millions of other very similar plastic toys,” she explained.

She coined the term “bioorthogonal chemistry,” meaning a reaction that doesn’t interfere with other biochemical processes. Perfecting the technique took 10 years.

– ‘Cycle of science’ –

Researchers are now leveraging these breakthroughs to develop cancer treatments. 

Glycans on cancer cells “are able to hide the cancer cell from the immune system — and so your body can’t fight it, it can’t see it,” she explains.

Using bioorthogonal chemistry, “we made a new type of medicine, which basically acts like a lawnmower,” says Bertozzi.

The first lego attaches to the cancer cell’s surface, and the second, which clips onto it, is equipped with an enzyme that “mows off the sugars as if they’re just grass, it cuts the grass and the sugars fall off,” she says with a smile.

The drug is currently being tested in the early stages of a clinical trial.

Another company is seeking to use bioorthogonal chemistry to better target cancer treatment. The first lego piece is injected into a tumor, then a second, which carries the drug, attaches itself and acts only on its target.

“So that allows the oncologist to treat the tumor and kill the tumor without exposing the person’s entire body to a toxic chemical,” she says.

“What the future holds is hopefully an impact in human health,” says Bertozzi. “But the people who decide that more so than myself, are the students and postdocs that join my lab.”

Hundreds of them, current and former, filled her email box with messages of congratulations this morning.

“That really is the cycle of science —  it’s being mentored and then mentoring” she adds. And “mentoring students gives you an opportunity to amplify the impact of your science.”

Barry Sharpless, one of three winners of this year's chemistry Nobel for click chemistry

The Nobel Chemistry Prize was awarded to three scientists on Wednesday for their work on click chemistry, a way to snap molecules together like Lego that experts say will soon “change the world”.

But how exactly does it work?

Imagine two people walking through a mostly empty room towards each other then shaking hands. 

“That’s how a classical chemical reaction is done,” said Benjamin Schumann, a chemist at Imperial College London.

But what if there was lots of furniture and other people clogging up the room?

“They might not meet each other,” Schumann said.

Now imagine those people were molecules, tiny groups of atoms that form the basis of chemistry.

“Click chemistry makes it possible for two molecules that are in an environment where you have lots of other things around” to meet and join with each other, he told AFP.

The way click chemistry snaps together molecular building blocks is also often compared to Lego.

But Carolyn Bertozzi, who shared this year’s chemistry Nobel with Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal, said it would take a very special kind of Lego.

Even if two Legos were “surrounded by millions of other very similar plastic toys” they would only click in to each other, she told AFP.

– ‘Changed the playing field’ – 

Around the year 2000, Sharpless and Meldal separately discovered a specific chemical reaction using copper ions as a catalyst which “changed the playing field” and became “the cream of the crop”, said Silvia Diez-Gonzalez, a chemist at Imperial College London.

Copper has many advantages, including that reactions could involve water and be done at room temperature rather than at high heat which can complicate matters.

This particular way of connecting molecules was far more flexible, efficient and targeted than had ever been possible before.

Since its discovery, chemists have been finding out all the different kinds of molecular architecture they can build with their special new Lego blocks.

“The applications are almost endless,” said Tom Brown, a British chemist at Oxford University that has worked on DNA click chemistry.

But there was one problem with using copper as a catalyst. It can be toxic for the cells of living organisms — such as humans.

So Bertozzi built on the foundations of Sharpless and Meldal’s work, designing a copperless “way of using click chemistry with biological systems without killing them”, Diez-Gonzalez said.

Previously the molecules clicked together in a straight flat line — like a seat belt — but Bertozzi discovered that forcing them “to be a bit bent” made the reaction more stable, Diez-Gonzalez said.

Bertozzi called the field she created bioorthogonal chemistry — orthogonal means intersecting at right angles.

– ‘Tip of the iceberg’ –

Diez-Gonzalez said she was “a bit surprised” that the field had been awarded with a Nobel so soon, because “there are not that many commercial applications out there yet”.

But the future looks bright.

“We’re kind of at the tip of the iceberg,” said American Chemical Society President Angela Wilson, adding that this “chemistry is going to change the world.”

Bertozzi said that there are so many potential uses for click chemistry, that “I can’t even really enumerate them”.

One use is for developing new targeted medicines, some of which could involve “doing chemistry inside human patients to make sure that drugs go to the right place,” she told the Nobel conference. 

Her lab has started research on potential treatments for severe Covid, she added.

Another hope is that it can lead to a more targeted way to diagnose and treat cancer, as well make chemotherapy have fewer, less severe side effects.

It has even created a way to make the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease become fluorescent so it is easier to spot in water supplies. 

Already, click chemistry has been used “to create some very, very durable polymers” that protect against heat, as well as in forms of glue in nano-chemistry, Meldal told AFP.

Wilson said other future applications include personalised medicines, antibacterial and antiviral drugs, brightening agents and more.

“I think it’s going to completely revolutionise everything from medicine to materials,” she said.

Drought gripped parts of Europe throughout the summer

Human-caused climate change made this summer’s drought across the Northern Hemisphere at least 20 times more likely, according to a rapid analysis released Wednesday that warns such extreme dry periods will become increasingly common with global heating. 

The three months from June-August were the hottest in Europe since records began, and the exceptionally high temperatures led to the worst drought the continent has witnessed since the Middle Ages. 

Crops withered in European breadbaskets, as the historic dry spell drove record wildfire intensity and placed severe pressure on the continent’s power grid. 

Successive heatwaves between June and July, which saw temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Britain for the first time, saw some 24,000 excess deaths in Europe.

China and North America also experienced unusually high temperatures and exceptionally low rainfall over the period.

An international team of climate scientists have determined the warming caused by human activity made such extreme weather significantly more likely than it would have been at the dawn of the industrial age. 

The World Weather Attribution service calculated that the agricultural and ecological drought over the Northern Hemisphere was at least 20 times likelier thanks to global heating. 

“The 2022 summer has shown how human-induced climate change is increasing the risks of agricultural and ecological droughts in densely populated and cultivated regions of the North Hemisphere,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and one of the study contributors.

– ‘Faster than expected’ –

To quantify the effect of human-caused climate change on soil moisture levels, the team analysed weather data and computer simulations to compare the real climate as it is today — that is, some 1.2C hotter than pre-industrial levels — with a climate absent of any human-induced heating.

They found that western and central Europe experienced particularly severe drought and substantially reduced crop yields.

Moisture in the top 7cm of soil across the Northern Hemisphere was made five times likelier to experience severe drought due to climate change, the study found. 

For the top one metre of soil — known as the root zone — this summer’s dryness was made at least 20 times likelier due to global heating.

“Really what is most relevant for agriculture and ecological impacts is the top one metre of the soil because that’s where plants have their roots,” said Seneviratne.

Overall, a Northern Hemisphere drought such as this summer’s was now likely to occur once every 20 years in today’s climate, compared to once every 400 years in the mid eighteenth century.

Producers in Europe and China have warned of significantly lower than expected harvests in crop staples due to the dry spell, after food prices spiked to multi-year highs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Imperial College London, called the crop shortfall “particularly worrying”.

“It followed a climate change-fuelled heatwave in South Asia that also destroyed crops, and happened at a time when global food prices were already extremely high due to the war in Ukraine,” she said.

Otto said the Northern Hemisphere in general was showing a “pure climate change signal” in its overall warming trends. 

Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and professor of climate and disaster resilience at University of Twente, said governments needed to do far more to prepare for future heat and drought shocks, which will become ever more frequent as temperatures rise. 

“We’re talking tens of thousands of people killed by these phenomena and one thing that we’re seeing is the impacts compounding and cascading across regions and sectors,” he said. 

“It’s playing out in front of our eyes even faster than we might have expected.”

Ugandan medical staff treating Ebola patients at Mubende Regional Referral Hospital last month.

Sixty-three confirmed and probable cases have been reported in the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, including 29 deaths, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus lamented that the outbreak, declared two weeks ago, was taking a deadly toll on health workers as well as patients.

There are six species of the Ebolavirus genus and the one circulating in Uganda is the Sudan ebolavirus — for which there is currently no vaccine.

“So far, 63 confirmed and probable cases have been reported, including 29 deaths,” Tedros told a press conference in Geneva.

“Ten health workers have been infected and four have died. Four people have recovered and are receiving follow-up care.”

The east African nation’s Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero said that a 58-year-old anaesthetist had died of Ebola early Wednesday, following the deaths of a Tanzanian doctor, a health assistant and a midwife.

– Candidate vaccines –

Tedros said the vaccines used successfully to curb recent outbreaks of the Zaire ebolavirus species in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) did not provide cross-protection against the Sudan ebolavirus.

“However, several vaccines are in various stages of development against this virus, two of which could begin clinical trials in Uganda in the coming weeks, pending regulatory and ethics approvals from the Ugandan government,” he said.

There are at least six candidate vaccines against the Sudan species, of which three have made it far enough to be tested on humans, producing so-called Phase 1 safety and immunogenicity data.

They could “proceed to be used in the field in a sort of ring vaccination campaign”, WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said.

She mentioned a candidate vaccine from the University of Oxford and another from the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and said which one goes into trials may depend on which one actually has doses ready to deploy.

“Realistically it may take another four to six weeks,” she said.

Swaminathan said plans were also afoot for testing potential therapeutics.

– WHO sending specialists, resources –

The initial outbreak was discovered in the central district of Mubende.

There are gold mines in the Mubende area which attract people from across Uganda, as well as other countries, the WHO’s Africa regional office said.

“The mobile nature of the population in Mubende increases the risk of a possible spread of the virus,” it said.

Infections have since been found in Kassanda, Kyegegwa and Kagadi districts.

The WHO’s Geneva headquarters has released $2 million from its contingency fund for emergencies and is working with partners to support the health ministry by sending additional specialists, supplies and resources, Tedros said.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has vowed not to impose any lockdowns to tackle the disease, saying last week that there was “no need for anxiety”.

– Haemorrhagic fever –

Ebola is an often-fatal viral haemorrhagic fever named after a river in DR Congo where it was discovered in 1976.

Human transmission is through bodily fluids, with the main symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea.

Outbreaks are difficult to contain, especially in urban environments.

People who are infected do not become contagious until symptoms appear, which is after an incubation period of between two and 21 days.

Uganda has experienced several Ebola outbreaks, most recently in 2019 when at least five people died.

The neighbouring DRC last week declared an end to an Ebola virus outbreak that emerged in eastern North Kivu province six weeks ago.

The worst epidemic, in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, killed more than 11,300 people. The DRC has had more than a dozen epidemics, the deadliest killing 2,280 people in 2020.

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the ISS

A SpaceX rocket carrying a Russian crew member blasted off from Florida Wednesday on a voyage that carries significant symbolism as war rages in Ukraine.

Anna Kikina, the only female cosmonaut in service, is part of the Crew-5 mission, which also includes one Japanese and two American astronauts.

“Let’s do this,” said Nicole Mann, commander of the Crew Dragon capsule and the first Native American woman in space, shortly before liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at noon.

Docking is scheduled for Thursday at 4:57 pm Eastern Time (2057 GMT).

Two weeks ago, an American astronaut took off on a Russian Soyuz rocket for the orbital platform.

The long-planned astronaut exchange program has been maintained despite soaring tensions between the United States and Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

Ensuring the operation of the ISS has become one of the few remaining areas of cooperation between the United States and Russia.

In a post-launch briefing, Sergei Krikalev, head of the human space program at Roscosmos, hailed the occasion as the start of a “new phase of our cooperation,” evoking the historic Apollo-Soyuz mission of 1975, a symbol of detente at the height of the Cold War. 

Krikalev, a former cosmonaut respected by his American colleagues, has been on something of a charm offensive after the last head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, earlier this year threatened to withdraw cooperation and let the ISS crash over US or European territory.

While Russia has announced plans for its own station, analysts believe it would be difficult to build in the next few years, and withdrawing from ISS would effectively ground Moscow’s civilian space program.

– Fifth female cosmonaut, first female Native American – 

Kikina, 38 and an engineer by training, is the fifth Russian female professional cosmonaut to go into space.

“I hope in the near future we have more women in the cosmonaut corps,” the Novosibirsk native told AFP in August.

The Soviet Union put the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963, nearly 20 years before the first American woman, Sally Ride. Since then, the United States has flown dozens more women.

It is also the first spaceflight for American astronauts Mann and Josh Cassada, but the fifth for Japan’s Koichi Wakata.

Mann is the first indigenous woman to go to space with NASA. According to her NASA biography she is registered with the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes.

She holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford, served as a test pilot in the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet, and flew 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

– ISS future unclear – 

Kikina is the first Russian to fly with Elon Musk’s SpaceX which, along with Boeing, has a “taxi service” contract with NASA.

Musk himself waded into the conflict by proposing on Twitter a peace deal that involved re-running, under UN supervision, annexation referendums in Moscow-occupied regions of Ukraine and acknowledging Russian sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula. 

The post enraged Ukrainians, including the country’s envoy to Germany, who responded with an expletive. 

Tensions between Moscow and Washington have increased considerably in the space field after the announcement of American sanctions against the Russian aerospace industry, in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia announced this summer that it wanted to leave the ISS “after 2024” in favor of creating its own station, albeit without setting a precise date.

Krikalev declared Monday he hoped to extend that date. 

On Wednesday he went further still, telling reporters: “We are thinking about building (a) new space station. We start preliminary design of it. 

“And there is no final decision yet but we are going to keep flying International Space Station as long as our new infrastructure will build.”

The United States, for its part, wants to continue operating until at least 2030, then transition to commercially run stations.

As things stand, the ISS cannot function without joint cooperation, as the US side is responsible for power and life support and the Russian side for propulsion and maintaining orbit.