In Congo, activists look to Pope to boost forest protections


By WANJOHI KABUKURU

February 1, 2023

Pope Francis arrives at Ndolo airport to celebrate Holy Mass in Kinshasa, Congo, Wednesday Feb. 1, 2023. Local climate activists in Congo are hoping Pope Francis' visit will help spur action to protect the country's rainforest from oil and gas interests. 

 

(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Local climate activists in Congo are hoping Pope Francis’ visit will help spur action to protect the country’s rainforest from oil and gas interests.

The Pope’s call to protect Congo’s “great green lungs of the world” on Tuesday was welcomed by campaigners who see the papal visit as a fresh opportunity to highlight threats to the country’s biodiversity and global climate goals.

Parts of Congo’s rainforest are up for oil and gas auction and several climate activist groups are petitioning the Pope to support their stance opposing fossil fuels investments.

The activists plan to present a petition calling for the cancellation of the oil blocks leases to the Pope, who is in Congo until Friday.

“We appeal to Pope Francis to engage our government on this very crucial matter to call for the stop to these fossil fuel projects and the prioritization of renewable energy,” said Congolese climate activist Bonaventure Bondo.

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said Tuesday evening that all projects involving natural resources in the country require “a serious and preliminary study of the environmental impact” and said it was richer nations responsible for climate change.

“We have always campaigned for climate justice so the biggest polluters, who are at the root of the destruction of the environment pay compensation to the guardians of the planet that we are,” Tshisekedi said in an address to the Pope.

POPE FRANCIS

Pope urges Congo youth to reject corruption and they respond

Pope consoles Congolese victims: 'Your pain is my pain'


'Hands off Africa!': Pope blasts foreign plundering of Congo

Pope taps Chicago native in Peru to lead bishops' office

The Congo Basin, the world’s largest peatland, is an important carbon sink as it sucks up vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Other threatened areas, such as Virunga National Park, are viewed as important biodiversity hotspots.

On Tuesday Pope Francis condemned the exploitation of the continents resources, saying “Africa is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered.”

Greenpeace Africa’s Mbong Akiy Fokwa Tsafack said the activists’ aims were in line with the position of the church.

“Human creation has a moral responsibility to take care of nature and not to destroy it ... it is our collective responsibility to reverse nature’s decline,” she said.

The Laudato Si movement, which encourages those of Catholic faith to be involved in climate action, also voiced concern about oil and gas exploration in Congo.

It “sets us on the path of more climate catastrophes,” said the movement’s Ashley Kitisya.

___

Nicole Winfield in Kinshasa, Congo and Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


This Dec. 11, 2016, photo shows the Virunga National Park, taken from the rim of the crater of the Nyiragongo volcano and looking over the crater of another, extinct volcano, in North Kivu Province, in Congo. Parts of Congo's rainforest are up for oil and gas auction and several climate activist groups are petitioning the Pope to support their stance opposing fossil fuels investments. 

(Juergen Baetz/dpa via AP, File)

African countries lack ‘immediate access’ to cholera vaccine

By CARA ANNA

1 of 3

A woman carries her son, who has cholera, at Bwaila Hospital in Lilongwe central Malawi, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. Malawi’s health minister says the country’s worst cholera outbreak in two decades has killed 750 people so far. The southern African country of 20 million people first reported the outbreak in March last year. (AP Photo/Thoko Chikondi)


NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Africa’s public health agency says countries with deadly cholera outbreaks on the continent have no “immediate access” to vaccines amid a global supply shortage.

The acting director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ahmed Ogwell, told journalists on Thursday that the agency is working with the World Health Organization and the vaccine alliance GAVI on ways to obtain more doses.

The Africa CDC is also working with two local manufacturers to explore if their facilities can be repurposed to manufacture cholera vaccines, Ogwell said. He didn’t say which ones.

WHO and its partners recommended in October that countries temporarily switch to using a single dose of the cholera vaccine instead of two because of the supply shortage as outbreaks of the water-borne disease surge globally. They said one dose of vaccine has proven effective in stopping outbreaks “even though evidence on the exact duration of protection is limited” and appears to be lower in children.

WHO noted that Haiti and Syria also are trying to contain large outbreaks. WHO and partner agencies manage a stockpile of cholera vaccines that are dispensed free to countries that need them.

Malawi in southern Africa especially is struggling with a cholera outbreak. The country has recorded 3,577 new cases including 111 deaths in the past week, Ogwell said. They make up the bulk of the new cholera cases on the continent.

Since the beginning of 2023, there have been 27,300 new cases of cholera including 687 deaths in five African countries, Ogwell said.

The WHO has said climate change could make cholera epidemics more common, as the bacteria that causes the disease can reproduce more quickly in warmer water.

Iranian film director goes on hunger strike in prison


 Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi is shown at his home after he was freed from jail on bail after more than two months in custody, in Tehran, Iran, on May 25, 2010 . Panahi who was arrested last summer, weeks before his latest film was released to widespread acclaim, has gone on hunger strike to protest his continued detention amid more than four months of anti-government protests.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian director who was arrested last summer, weeks before his latest film was released to widespread acclaim, has gone on hunger strike to protest his continued detention amid more than four months of anti-government protests.

Jafar Panahi, whose films have thrilled critics and won numerous international prizes, issued a statement saying he would refuse food or medicine starting Wednesday “in protest against the extra-legal and inhumane behavior of the judicial and security apparatus.”

He’s among a number of Iranian artists, sports figures and other celebrities who have been detained after speaking out against Iran’s theocracy. Such arrests have become increasingly frequent since nationwide protests broke out in September over the death of a young woman in police custody.

Panahi, 62, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2011 on charges of producing anti-government propaganda, but the sentence was never carried out. Banned from both travel and filmmaking, he continued to make underground films that were released abroad to great acclaim.

He was arrested in July when he went to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to inquire about the arrests of two other Iranian filmmakers. A judge later ruled that he must serve the earlier sentence.

His latest film, “No Bears,” in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself while making a film along the Iran-Turkey border, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, a week before the protests began. The New York Times and The Associated Press named it one of the top 10 films of the year, and film critic Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times called it 2022’s best movie.

The protests erupted after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while being held by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code. The demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s ruling clerics, a major challenge to their four-decade rule.

On Wednesday, around 100 people took part in a protest in the western Iranian city of Abdanan, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. It said five “rioters” suffered minor injuries when security forces intervened and that 10 people were arrested, without providing further details.

Iran heavily restricts media access to demonstrations and periodically shuts down the internet, making it difficult to confirm specific incidents or gauge the scale of the ongoing demonstrations.

At least 527 protesters have been killed and more than 19,500 people have been detained since the demonstrations began, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not released official figures on deaths or arrests.

Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning 2016 film, “The Salesman,” was arrested in December after taking to social media to criticize the crackdown on protests. She was released three weeks later on bail.

US reunites nearly 700 kids taken from parents under Trump

By REBECCA SANTANA

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during a news conference in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, on new border enforcement measures to limit unlawful migration, expand pathways for legal immigration, and increase border security. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Biden administration task force designed to reunite children separated from their families during President Trump’s presidency has reconnected nearly 700 children with their families, officials said Thursday.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families that were split up under the Trump administration’s widely condemned practice of forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border to discourage illegal immigration. Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of the task force.

According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before the task force was created and 689 afterward.

But that still leaves nearly 1,000 children. Of those, 148 are in the reunification process. The department pledged to continue the work until all separated families that can be found have the opportunity to reunite with their children.

The Trump administration separated thousands of migrant parents from their children as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwestern border. Minors, who could not be held in criminal custody with their parents, were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. They were then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a connection to the family.

Hundreds of families have sued the federal government.

Families can register for reunification services through a website and can get help with steps such as applying for humanitarian parole that would allow them to come to the U.S., as well as for behavioral health services to help them.

During a meeting Thursday with reporters, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas discussed efforts to address “the wounds” the separations had caused.

He describing meeting the mother of a teenager who had been separated from her mom when she was 13 and then reunited with her when she was 16. But Mayorkas said, the woman relayed how her teenage daughter “still could not understand how her mother would let her be separated. She didn’t understand the force behind the separation.”

__

Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal

Crowds decry gender-affirming treatment ban in West Virginia

“Leave us alone,” Barker cried. “Find something useful to do with your time, like fix the damn roads.”

By LEAH WILLINGHAM

1 of 3

Cricket Hall speaks against a bill that would ban gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for minors at the state Capitol in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Crowds at the West Virginia state Capitol pleaded with lawmakers Thursday to show as much compassion for saving the lives of transgender children as they showed for unborn fetuses when they voted to ban abortion just months ago.

Over and over, dozens of doctors, parents and LGBTQ people told the Republican supermajority during a hearing that a decision to ban gender-affirming care for youth would put children’s lives at risk. West Virginia is among 26 states considering bans to restrict gender-affirming care for minors or young adults, with the most recent action being in South Dakota and in Utah, where the Republican governor just signed that state’s bill into law. A judge is reviewing whether to strike down Arkansas’ law after temporarily blocking it last year.

Transgender and gender nonconforming children attempt suicide at a disproportionately high rate, and West Virginia has the largest per capita population of transgender youth in the nation.

“You all like to use rhetoric about not killing children as a justification for passing legislation, as you did this summer. You will kill children if you pass this,” said the Rev. Jenny Williams, a United Methodist pastor in Preston County. “If you oppose the killing of children like you say you do, I would hope that you apply your principals consistently.”

Multiple people told lawmakers they would have blood on their hands if they advance the bill to ban gender-affirming treatments for minors, which has moved out of two House committees and is now up for consideration before the full House of Delegates. West Virginia has a Republican governor and one of the largest Republican majorities in any state legislature in the country, and the legislation has a high chance of becoming law.

Some of the handful of lawmakers in attendance watched attentively, others looked at their phones or laptops or averted their eyes. People were given one minute to talk before they were cut off and told to sit down. Almost 80 people spoke against the bill.

 Two spoke in support.

Paula Lepp, who said she is a Christian parent of a Christian transgender child, told lawmakers she believes the bill is contrary to the teachings of Jesus to care for the most marginalized.

“The bottom line is this: I would rather have a live daughter than a dead son, and this bill puts that at risk,” she said.

Republicans in other states who have moved to limit access to the treatments for minors have often characterized the treatments as medically unproven and potentially dangerous in the long term, as another political battle against liberal ideologies. They also say teenagers shouldn’t undergo irreversible surgeries.

Braden Roten, one of the two people who spoke in support of the bill, urged lawmakers to look past the crowds of people who showed up to speak against it and think about what conservatives would want.

“Despite the crowd opposing this bill, this is a red state and there’s a big push in the conservative movement for this bill,” he said, as people watching from the chamber galleries and floor booed. “If you don’t vote on this bill we will vote you out.”

At least 88 bills seeking to restrict gender affirming care for minors or young adults have been introduced across 26 states. West Virginia’s measure prohibits gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for youth.

Many doctors, mental health specialists and medical groups have argued that treatments for young transgender people are safe and beneficial, though rigorous long-term research is lacking. Federal health officials have described the gender-affirming care as crucial to the health and wellbeing of transgender children and adolescents.

Charleston pediatric physician Dr. Allison Holstein spoke Thursday on behalf of West Virginia chapter the American Academy of Pediatrics. She said the bill interferes with doctors ability to provide the best medical care to their patients.

“The bill is dangerous, it’s an intrusion on the physician-patient relationship,” she said. “The attempt to insert politics into medical practice are troubling and very concerning.”

Staff from the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia — formerly West Virginia’s only abortion provider, before the procedure was practically outlawed — also spoke against the bill. The clinic, which offers services predominately to low-income people on Medicaid, began offering gender-affirming hormone therapy when abortion was banned.

Executive Director Katie Quiñonez read a statement on behalf of a transgender man who said prior to coming out as transgender, he attempted suicide four times. The first time he was 12.

“If you’re so pro-life, why are you trying to kill trans kids?” Quinonez said.

Women’s Health Center Communications Director Kaylen Barker, who is a member of the LGBTQ community, said she’s tired of having to come to the Capitol to justify her existence and the experiences of people she loves.

“Leave us alone,” Barker cried. “Find something useful to do with your time, like fix the damn roads.”

SOCIALISM BY ANY OTHER NAME

Kansas commits $304M to chip plant to lure federal funds

ALL CAPITALI$M IS STATE CAPITALI$M
By JOHN HANNA

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly discusses plans by Integra Technologies, of Wichita, Kansas, to build a new, $1.8 billion semiconductor factory, during a news conference, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. The state has pledged $304 million in taxpayer-funded incentives over 10 years, but the project also needs federal funding. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas plans to give $304 million in taxpayer-funded incentives to a semiconductor company in its largest city to build a huge new factory, but the project won’t go forward without funds the U.S. government has promised for rebuilding the nation’s chip-making capacity.

Gov. Laura Kelly announced Thursday that Kansas has an agreement with Integra Technologies, based in Wichita, for a 10-year package of tax breaks and reimbursement of expenses. State officials said the new, $1.8 billion plant would cover 1 million square feet, have 2,000 employees and create 3,000 additional jobs among suppliers and other local businesses.

The announcement comes with the U.S. trying to reverse a loss of capacity for making the chips that are vital to smartphones, laptops and other modern-day conveniences, as well as automobiles and life-saving medical devices. Congress last year approved a measure that provides more than $52 billion in grants and other incentives for the semiconductor industry.

Kelly told reporters during a Statehouse news conference that the state’s incentives are crucial to attracting the federal funds and “making Kansas an essential part of our country’s national security efforts.”

“This advanced manufacturing facility is part of a national push to restore our semiconductor industry so that U.S. workers and businesses can compete and win in the race for the 21st Century,” Kelly said.

Integra CEO Brett Robinson would not say how much federal funding the company needs, only that there is “no commercially viable way” to do the project without it. He and state officials said other states were trying to attract the project, though they did not disclose the competitors.

“It’s not just critical to the United States and to security, but it’s critical to the supply chain,” said Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican.

President Joe Biden pushed Congress last year to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry, because of a shortage of chips made worse by the global coronavirus pandemic and concerns about competing with international rivals, particularly China. There’s been a decades-long shift to cheaper-to-operate Asian chip plants, and the industry is now dependent on Taiwan, which China has long claimed as its own.

“If we were ever to lose, for a sustainable amount of time, access to the southeast Asian supply chain, what we just went through would pale in comparison,” Robinson said.

Integra, founded in 1983, has about 500 employees in Wichita and Silicon Valley and describes itself as the largest U.S. provider of the last two major assembly and testing steps in the chip manufacturing process. The new factory is expected to pay an average annual wage of $51,000, about 46% higher than the state’s average of roughly $35,000.

For Integra to receive its incentives, it must invest at least $1.5 billion in the new factory in the next five years and consistently provide the equivalent of 1,600 full-time jobs for 10 consecutive years.

The incentives are part of a program Kansas created last year to ramp up its efforts to compete with other states for new, large factories. Under that program, the state was allowed to offer up to $1 billion in incentives to a single company each in 2022 and 2023.

In July 2022, Kelly and other state officials announced that Panasonic Corp. plans to build a mega-factory to produce electric vehicle batteries for Tesla and other carmakers. The state lured the Japanese electronics giant’s project to the edge of the Kansas City area with incentives worth $829 million over 10 years, the most the state has ever offered.

The law allowing the incentives required top leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature to sign off any deal between a company and the state Department of Commerce, which is led by Lt. Gov. David Toland, a Democrat like Kelly. The legislative leaders gave their approval just minutes ahead of the announcement, after meeting in private with Kelly for half an hour to review the agreement, with no opportunity for public review or input.

The law also requires Kansas to drop its corporate income tax rates by half a percentage point for each mega-deal. If the Integra project goes forward, the top rate would decline to 6% from 7%, saving all corporations roughly $100 million a year.

While both mega-projects have had bipartisan support, some lawmakers are critical of promising such big taxpayer-funded incentives to a single firm.

“We have not written the checks for this first project and they’re starting the second one without even knowing that it works,” state Senate tax committee Chair Caryn Tyson, a conservative Republican from eastern Kansas, said before Thursday’s announcement.

___

Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

Washington’s low-income tax credit available for first time  today

UNFORTUNATLY NOT RETROAVTIVE

SEATTLE (AP) — Up to $1,200 is now available for thousands of low-income working Washington residents, thanks to a 2008 law that has finally been funded.

The Working Families Tax Credit is available for individuals and people with children who meet certain eligibility and requirements, The Seattle Times reported.

The money is intended to provide a modest cash boost to Washington workers near the bottom of the economic ladder who pay a far greater portion of their income in state taxes than the wealthy do.

Nearly 400,000 households are eligible for the tax credit, including nearly 100,000 in King County. Eligible families need to apply to receive it.

The state estimates it will pay about $230 million in refunds this year and $257 million next year as more people become aware of it.

The tax credit was signed into law by then-Gov. Christine Gregoire in 2008. But lawmakers, facing a budget deficit, said they’d figure out the funding later.

In 2021, flush with money from the federal government’s emergency COVID-19 packages, state legislators approved funding for the tax credits, saying the popularity of the pandemic-related payments to individuals emphasized the value of cash assistance.

For Nijhia Jackson, of Bremerton, those payments — three separate checks for $1,200, $600 and $1,400, passed under both the Trump and Biden administrations — were lifesavers.

Jackson is a student at Olympic College who lives with her husband and two young sons, and works as a cashier at the Tacoma Dome.

She said she used the COVID-19 payments to pay their internet bill when her boys had to attend school remotely and also used it for rent.

Her family will likely receive $900 from the new tax credit, which will be disbursed in the form of a rebate on sales taxes paid.

“After having those payments, I know this would be helpful,” she said. She plans to use it, again, on the internet bill, on clothes for her kids and maybe to repair her car.

“This money can assist families in whatever their financial needs may be,” said John Ryser, acting director of the state Department of Revenue, calling it “a step in addressing intergenerational poverty and equity in the state.”

Ryser said 10,000 people applied for the tax credit on Wednesday, the first day it was available.

“Our message today is quite simple,” said Emily Vyhnanek, campaign manager for a coalition of about 50 nonprofits, unions and progressive advocacy groups that pushed to fund the tax credit. “If you, your loved ones, your neighbors … your community earned less than $60,000 last year, please don’t miss out. You could be eligible for upwards of $1,200.”

The program is modeled after the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. Thirty-two other states offer their own version of the tax credit, but Washington is the only state without a state income tax to do so.

The state Department of Revenue has set up a new division and has allotted 82 full-time employees to run the program.

How to make a mummy: Ancient Egyptian workshop has new clues

By MADDIE BURAKOFF

February 1, 2023

1 of 4

This illustration provided by Nikola Nevenov in January 2023 depicts a priest during an embalming process in an underground chamber in Saqqara, Egypt. For thousands of years, ancient Egyptians mummified their dead to help them reach eternal life. According to studypublished Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023, in the journal Nature, researchers have used chemistry and an unusual collection of jars to figure out how they did it. (Nikola Nevenov via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — For thousands of years, ancient Egyptians mummified their dead in the search for eternal life. Now, researchers have used chemistry and an unusual collection of jars to figure out how they did it.

Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is based on a rare archaeological find: An embalming workshop with a trove of pottery around 2,500 years old. Many jars from the site were still inscribed with instructions like “to wash” or “to put on his head.”

By matching the writing on the outside of the vessels with the chemical traces inside, researchers uncovered new details about the “recipes” that helped preserve bodies for thousands of years.

“It’s like a time machine, really,” said Joann Fletcher, an archaeologist at University of York who was not involved with the study. “It’s allowed us to not quite see over the shoulders of the ancient embalmers, but probably as close as we’ll ever get.”

Those recipes showed that embalmers had deep knowledge about what substances would help preserve their dead, said Fletcher, whose partner was a co-author on the study. And they included materials from far-flung parts of the world — meaning Egyptians went to great lengths to make their mummies “as perfect as they could possibly be.”

The workshop — uncovered in 2016 by study author Ramadan Hussein, who passed away last year — is located in the famous burial grounds of Saqqara. Parts of it sit above the surface, but a shaft stretches down to an embalming room and burial chamber underground, where the jars were discovered.

It was in rooms like these where the last phase of the process took place, said Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at The American University in Cairo who was not involved with the study. After drying out the the body with salts, which probably took place above ground, embalmers would then take the bodies below.

“This was the last phase of your transformation where the secret rites, the religious rites, were being performed,” Ikram said. “People would be chanting spells and hymns while you were being wrapped and resin was being anointed all over your body.”

Experts already had some clues about what substances were used in those final steps, mainly from testing individual mummies and looking at written texts. But a lot of gaps remained, said senior author Philipp Stockhammer, an archaeologist at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany.

This photo provided by the Saqqara Saite Tombs Project in January 2023 shows an excavation area overlooking the pyramid of Unas and the step pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt.

(Susanne Beck/Saqqara Saite Tombs Project, University of Tübingen via AP)

 

This photo provided by the Saqqara Saite Tombs Project in January 2023 shows vessels from an embalming workshop in Saqqara, Egypt.

 (M. Abdelghaffar/Saqqara Saite Tombs Project, University of Tübingen via AP)

This illustration provided by Nikola Nevenov in January 2023 depicts an embalming process in an underground chamber in Saqqara, Egypt. For thousands of years, ancient Egyptians mummified their dead to help them reach eternal life. According to studypublished Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023, in the journal Nature, researchers have used chemistry and an unusual collection of jars to figure out how they did it. (Nikola Nevenov via AP)

The new finds helped crack the case.

Take the word “antiu,” which shows up in a lot of Egyptian texts but didn’t have a direct translation, Stockhammer said. In the new study, scientists found that several jars labeled as “antiu” contained a mixture of different substances — including animal fat, cedar oil and juniper resin.

These substances, along with others found in the jars, have key properties that would help preserve the mummies, said lead author Maxime Rageot, an archaeologist at Germany’s University of Tubingen.

Plant oils — which were used to protect the liver and treat the bandages — could ward off bacteria and fungi, while also improving the smell. Hard materials like beeswax, used on the stomach and skin, could help keep out water and seal the pores.

Some of the substances came from very far away — like dammar and elemi, types of resin that come from the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. These results show that ancient Egyptians would trade far and wide to get the most effective materials, the authors said.

“It’s interesting to see the complexity,” Stockhammer said. “Having this global network on the one hand, having all this chemical knowledge on the other side.”

Ikram said an important next step for the research will be to test different parts of actual mummies to see if the same substances show up. And these recipes probably weren’t universal — they changed over time and varied between workshops.

Still, the study gives a basis for understanding the past, and can bring us closer to people who lived long ago, she said.

“The ancient Egyptians have been separated from us through time and space, yet we still have this connection,” Ikram said. “Human beings all throughout history have been scared of death.”

———

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Bring back dodo? Ambitious plan draws investors, critics


By CHRISTINA LARSON

January 31, 2023

A rare fragment of a Dodo femur bone is displayed for photographs next to an image of a member of the extinct bird species at Christie's auction house's premises in London, March 27, 2013. Colossal Biosciences has raised an additional $150 million from investors to develop genetic technologies that the company claims will help to bring back some extinct species, including the dodo and the woolly mammoth. Other scientists are skeptical that such feats are really possible, or even advisable for conservation.

 (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The dodo bird isn’t coming back anytime soon. Nor is the woolly mammoth. But a company working on technologies to bring back extinct species has attracted more investors, while other scientists are skeptical such feats are possible or a good idea.

Colossal Biosciences first announced its ambitious plan to revive the woolly mammoth two years ago, and on Tuesday said it wanted to bring back the dodo bird, too.

“The dodo is a symbol of man-made extinction,” said Ben Lamm, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Colossal. The company has formed a division to focus on bird-related genetic technologies.

The last dodo, a flightless bird about the size of a turkey, was killed in 1681 on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

The Dallas company, which launched in 2021, also announced Tuesday it had raised an additional $150 million in funding. To date, it has raised $225 million from wide-ranging investors that include United States Innovative Technology Fund, Breyer Capital and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm which invests in technology.

The prospect of bringing the dodo back isn’t expected to directly make money, said Lamm. But the genetic tools and equipment that the company develops to try to do it may have other uses, including for human health care, he said.

For example, Colossal is now testing tools to tweak several parts of the genome simultaneously. It’s also working on technologies for what is sometimes called an “artificial womb,” he said.

The dodo’s closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon, said Beth Shapiro, a molecular biologist on Colossal’s scientific advisory board, who has been studying the dodo for two decades. Shapiro is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press’ Health and Science Department.

Her team plans to study DNA differences between the Nicobar pigeon and the dodo to understand “what are the genes that really make a dodo a dodo,” she said.

The team may then attempt to edit Nicobar pigeon cells to make them resemble dodo cells. It may be possible to put the tweaked cells into developing eggs of other birds, such as pigeons or chickens, to create offspring that may in turn naturally produce dodo eggs, said Shapiro. The concept is still in an early theoretical stage for dodos.

Because animals are a product of both their genetics and their environment — which has changed dramatically since the 1600s — Shapiro said that “it’s not possible to recreate a 100% identical copy of something that’s gone.”

Other scientists wonder if it’s even advisable to try, and question whether “de-extinction” diverts attention and money away from efforts to save species still on Earth.

“There’s a real hazard in saying that if we destroy nature, we can just put it back together again — because we can’t,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who has no connection to Colossal.

“And where on Earth would you put a woolly mammoth, other than in a cage?” asked Pimm, who noted that the ecosystems where mammoths lived disappeared long ago.

On a practical level, conservation biologists familiar with captive breeding programs say that it can be tricky for zoo-bred animals to ever adapt to the wild.

It helps if they can learn from other wild animals of their kind — an advantage that potential dodos and mammoths won’t have, said Boris Worm, a biologist at the University of Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who has no connection to Colossal.

“Preventing species from going extinct in the first place should be our priority, and in most cases, it’s a lot cheaper,” said Worm.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

1st phase of Mexican solar project to be operating in April


By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

1 of 4

Aerial view of the northern border state of Sonora where state electric utility CFE is building the largest solar plant in all of Latin America, in Puerto Penasco, Sonora state, Mexico Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023. (Raquel Cunha/Pool Photo via AP)

PUERTO PEÑASCO, Mexico (AP) — Mexico was pushed to accelerate its turn toward renewable energy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year drove a sharp increase in global energy costs, Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said late Thursday.

Ebrard made the comments after taking dozens of foreign diplomats to see a massive new solar energy project near the U.S. border.

“Mexico is making a really great effort because it didn’t consider (the shift to renewable energy and electric vehicles) would be so fast,” Ebrard said. The decisions made by the United States and Mexico in the past year to invest heavily in those areas “didn’t appear so near before the war.”

“We too have to change the focus,” he said. “It has to go faster.”

In April, Mexico plans to power up the first phase of a huge solar energy project near a beach town popular with tourists making the short drive from the United States.

Once completed, the full $1.6 billion project will have a generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts — enough to power some 500,000 homes. It will be the largest solar project built by Mexico’s state-owned electric company.

In Puerto Peñasco, near the top of the Gulf of California and border with Arizona, rows of solar panels that tilt with the passing sun run off to the horizon hovering above the sand. The project will eventually cover 5,000 acres in the transition where the desert flattens between the rugged brown mountains and blue sea.

The Federal Electric Commission plans to have the first 120 megawatts of the project operational by April 29, Juan Antonio Fernández, the commission’s strategic planning director, said Thursday.

Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo, who once served as a Cabinet minister alongside Ebrard before running for state office, made the case that Sonora should be the center of Mexico’s electric vehicle production. In addition to the solar energy coming online — in total 5 gigawatts of solar capacity are planned for the state — Sonora has the country’s largest known deposits of lithium, a key component in batteries for electric vehicles.

Ebrard said the plan represented a “new model of development.”

“We’re not going to be able to do that in all of the states at the same time,” he said. “But we have to demonstrate that that idea can be real and is not wishful thinking.”

The turn toward renewable energy is at odds with other priorities of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The president has invested heavily in propping up the long-struggling state-owned oil company. He is building a big new oil refinery. And he has pushed legislation that gives advantages to the state-owned electric company over private energy production, which in many cases was cleaner. It is the subject of a trade dispute with the United States and Canada.

Ebrard is one of several people seeking the presidential nomination of López Obrador’s Morena party for the 2024 national elections.